Comment by ChuckMcM

"2. I don't think they're giving you a license. You're supposed to already have a license for the song you already have. Apple is merely replacing a likely lower-quality copy with a higher-quality copy."

This is the curious bit. The music companies have argued in the past that I didn't get a license to convert my audio into digital form (aka rip an MP3) when I bought my CDs. So your postulate that 'you already have a license' would not be valid to a company that held I didn't get any rights other than the court stipulated 'archive copy'.

Anyway, I don't know one way or the other. But I have seen other companies take a similar approach unsuccessfully, and its interesting to see how Apple is moving the conversation about digital media along.

Since it would be possible to keep a non-DRM copy in perpetuity on disk, I'm really curious about how this will implement. It seems on its face to be something the music industry is currently very invested in preventing. And frankly I don't think 150M$ + some fraction of $25 one time from iCloud subscribers is going to cut it for them.