[Not15CharsLong]

Interesting yet very anti-competitive move by Apple.

There are lots and lots of existing providers of karaoke tracks: these invest (depending on quality) between several dollars and several hundreds of dollars to record "soundalike" tracks

Sales of such tracks do not generate royalties for the original performer, but do pay out to the composer (per track sale and for things like public performance).

Apple is now garroting these middlemen using technology, and most likely using this capability as leverage in negotiating with recording artists ("hey, give us a 14-day exclusive on iMusicOrWhateverWeCallItThisWeek, and we'll kick back an additional point on residuals").

This is bad news for the existing providers, and barely good news for anyone else.

[JohnBooty]

    There are lots and lots of existing 
    providers of karaoke tracks: 
    these invest (depending on quality) 
    between several dollars and several 
    hundreds of dollars to record "soundalike" 
    tracks

Commercial karaoke establishments will still need to pay for the licensed versions if they want to be legal. That doesn't change.

People who don't want to do that already had tons of options - Adobe Audition and tons of other software can remove/reduce vocals.

So I don't feel like this changes the commercial picture too much? I feel like this will mainly affect at-home singalongs.

[Not15CharsLong]

Commercial karaoke establishments are, outside Japan and Korea, not very relevant.

The at-home market in the UK, on the other hand, is pretty significant. None of these households know how to operate Adobe Audition or something similar: they just want to sing along with whatever is on the telly*.

There are lots of companies catering to that market. In fact: in the past, Apple was more than happy to allow them on their platform, to fill in the gaps left by Apple's inability to negotiate certain agreements.

In the past year or so, Apple has gotten more and more restrictive with regards to "soundalike" content. And we now know why... Is this inevitable? Possibly. Is it fair? Maybe. Is it yet another cottage industry that Apple strangulates? Definitely.

*And yes, this is a very simplistic caricature by choice. Of course UK consumers are more sophisticated, but...

[hbn]

How is that anti-competitive?

In what cases to we continue to use a slow, antiquated process to do a task when an automated technology comes out that can do it faster and/or better?

Sure, I could pay a contractor to go through my files to find and replace every instance of a text string with another text string. Or I could use sed. It's not anti-competitive for sed to exist.

[NaturalPhallacy]

It seems like just regular old competition to me. Like lightbulb manufacturers pushing out big candle or automobiles pushing horse breeders out of business.

Who Moved My Cheese comes to mind.