Apple reminds iTunes Match subscribers of auto-renewal
The company is quietly telling subscribers of its nearly 1-year-old iTunes Match service that their year is almost up.
With the one-year anniversary of iTunes Match fast approaching, Apple is reminding annual subscribers that their plan will automatically renew.
The company sent out e-mails to subscribers this morning, noting that the automatic renewal can be turned off just like in-app subscriptions for newspaper and magazine feature Newsstand.
iTunes Match stores music tracks in the cloud, and makes them available on any device with iTunes. It can also tidy up old collections of ripped CDs with high-quality versions from Apple's digital store.
The $24.99-a-year service launched last November following a three-week delay.
Apple was the first out of the gate with its scan-and-match service, but rivals have not sat still. That includes Amazon, which already has a service out, and Google, which this week said thatits own, free service would roll out in Europe in two weeks, then in the U.S. soon after.
Apple has kept mum on just how many iTunes Match subscribers it has. Besides additional storage in iCloud, it's one of Apple's only Web-based subscription services that costs money, which is tallied in the company's music product and services group. In its recently reported fourth-quarter earnings, Apple pulled in an all-time record of $2.1 billion in revenue, which the company attributed to "strong sales" of music, apps, and video content.