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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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After a bit of delay, Apple launched iTunes Match today. The new $25/year service offers users the ability to match their existing iTunes library with high quality versions in Apple's iCloud. The new service, however, has generated a bit of confusion about what exactly happens to your music library after you have enabled it.

One of the first questions, how to determine the iCloud status of a particular song, is solved by right-clicking the column bar at the top of the iTunes window (or pressing Command-J) and making sure "iCloud Status" is selected.

itunesmatch.png



MacRumors forum user Nunyabinez has written a detailed explanation of how iTunes Match works that should answer a number of potential questions if you are planning to enable the feature. We've summarized the key points here, but the full post is worth a read if you are planning on using Tunes Match.
- When you enable Match it goes through a three step process. Analyzing your library, matching songs, uploading non-matched content. It does this for your whole library. You can't choose to exclude songs other than taking them out of your library.

- If a song is matched, it becomes available to download in 256K AAC. If a song is not matched it is copied in its current format and bit rate up to 320K. If the file is Lossless however, it is converted (presumably by your computer) to a 256k AAC file and then uploaded.

- Nothing happens to your local music when you run match. If you have a lower quality song that was matched you can remove it from your local library and then replace it with the 256k version. What happens is you delete the song, but the entry in iTunes stays, but a little cloud now shows up in a newly added column that shows you that you have a song that is in the cloud but not in your library. You can click on the cloud and it will download it to your local library, where again it is now permanently yours at the higher bit rate.

- Match uses your meta-data. If you in an anal-retentive fashion have made lots of custom edits to your files, that is what gets copied to the cloud. Even if you replace your songs with the upgraded versions you keep your previous meta-data.
iTunes Match launched earlier today with the arrival of iTunes 10.5.1. The $24.99/year service offers cloud-based matching and upload of users' complete iTunes libraries.

Article Link: A Clear Explanation of iTunes Match
 

varunsanthanam

macrumors 6502
Dec 28, 2007
459
190
California
Now here's the question:

When iTunes Match tries and fails to upload a song to the cloud, how do you force it to try again?

A select few songs (i.e. like 50) say "This item was not added to iCloud because an error occurred"
 

LastLine

macrumors 65816
Aug 24, 2005
1,313
21
And what if half of your music is from torrents????:confused:

I shan't lecture on the legality of it all - someone else is sure to, but simply put - theft isn't Apple's target audience with this, but presumably if they're rips of a CD they should be recognised by Apple's iTunes match - that said I can't try as I'm in the UK :)
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
And what if half of your music is from torrents????:confused:

I don't understand what you are asking. If half of your music is from torrents, then at least half of your music is pirated, and I wonder about the other half. So what does that have to do with iTunes Match?
 
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cgc

macrumors 6502a
May 30, 2003
718
23
Utah
And what if half of your music is from torrents????:confused:

Then you're <beeped>. I have caught myself DLing a torrent of a CD I have but don't want to dig through my box of CDs in the basement to rip to iTunes. Kind of a shame it's so easy to DL music whether you own it or not.
 

Macs In LA

macrumors newbie
Sep 22, 2008
26
0
Large libraries?

But what happens if you have 92,000 songs in your library like I do?

Do they they tell you that you have too many songs and you have to select 25,000?

Or do you have to create a whole new library with just 25,000 songs in it?

And then what happens if you do you not renew your Match after one year? Can you keep the upgraded songs in your library?

I'll find out in a few days I guess when I experiment with it. I do not want to mess with it while their servers are getting slammed.
 

arn

macrumors god
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,362
5,795
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

https://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/14/how-to-use-itunes-match-with-very-large-itunes-libraries/
 

SteveLV702

macrumors 6502
Oct 15, 2007
338
31
Las Vegas, Nevada
weird I have bunch of songs that status are

Removed

so gotta manually go to each song and hit "Add to iCloud"

then I got some that says are not Eligible...
 

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nemaslov

macrumors 6502a
Jul 22, 2002
753
9
San Francisco
Love this product but disappointed that those of us with large libraries (i have 60,000 + songs in digital form (and will probably transfer twice that in the next few months) won't be able to use it for now unless they offer several song quantity levels. It seems some who have more than 25,000 songs are denied uploading their library.

Some say it's so big deal since most people have smaller libraries but you would be surprised at how many have huge ones.

I'm in my 50s and many many of my friends have large libraries imported from their huge CD collections. Especially some of us who used to work in the Record Biz.

I'd pay multiples of $25. per year for my larger library.
 

iVoid

macrumors 65816
Jan 9, 2007
1,145
190
And what if half of your music is from torrents????:confused:

1) If you're honest, delete the pirated songs and buy the Cds or buy the songs form iTunes.

2) If you're dishonest, then don't use iCloud for your music.

3) If you're REALLY dishonest, then use iTunes match and Apple will try to match them with legit versions. (actually, the music companies might prefer this option over #1 and #2 because they do get some money from you).

Keep in mind, it's possible that Apple may compare the checksum's of your music files and be able to tell if they were downloaded from pirate sites. We'll probably know if a bunch of new RIAA lawsuits start appearing suddenly. :)
(note I don't think apple is likely to do this, but it is TECHNICALLY possible)
 

bpeeps

Suspended
May 6, 2011
3,678
4,629
When you listen to a song on an iDevice and iTunes Match downloads that song to play it, is it a full download or a temporary cache? I'm curious to if the music file stays on your iDevice after it is downloaded to play or simply gets cleared when you close Music/browse away, whatever.
 

AppleScruff1

macrumors G4
Feb 10, 2011
10,026
2,949
Then you're <beeped>. I have caught myself DLing a torrent of a CD I have but don't want to dig through my box of CDs in the basement to rip to iTunes. Kind of a shame it's so easy to DL music whether you own it or not.

Why will you have a problem if your music is pirated, especially if it's of lower quality? iTunes will match and upgrade it, won't it? It seems like it is a good way to get a clean collection for $25.
 

marc11

macrumors 68000
Mar 30, 2011
1,618
4
NY USA
Love this product but disappointed that those of us with large libraries (i have 60,000 + songs in digital form (and will probably transfer twice that in the next few months) won't be able to use it for now unless they offer several song quantity levels. It seems some who have more than 25,000 songs are denied uploading their library.

Some say it's so big deal since most people have smaller libraries but you would be surprised at how many have huge ones.

I'm in my 50s and many many of my friends have large libraries imported from their huge CD collections. Especially some of us who used to work in the Record Biz.

I'd pay multiples of $25. per year for my larger library.

Yeah I do not think this service is targeted at audiophiles or huge music fans like you at the moment. Which is too bad because people like you with huge libraries are the ones that would benefit the most.
 

Matthew Yohe

macrumors 68020
Oct 12, 2006
2,200
142
When you listen to a song on an iDevice and iTunes Match downloads that song to play it, is it a full download or a temporary cache? I'm curious to if the music file stays on your iDevice after it is downloaded to play or simply gets cleared when you close Music/browse away, whatever.

It stays on your device.

You can swipe to delete the song if you want.
 

SuprUsrStan

macrumors 6502a
Apr 15, 2010
715
1,015
Now here's the question:

When iTunes Match tries and fails to upload a song to the cloud, how do you force it to try again?

A select few songs (i.e. like 50) say "This item was not added to iCloud because an error occurred"

Redownload the song from the net. I had a couple albums and it seems like iTunes match didn't like how I heavily edited the song information. After redownloading it and then uploading it to iCloud, I was able to edit the info, that way it stays in the cloud with updated info.

A drag. I know.
 

Gemütlichkeit

macrumors 65816
Nov 17, 2010
1,276
0
What happens when you sign up, convert all your songs to the cloud, replace all your songs. then cancel your subscription. Do you still get access to your songs on your computer that you pulled down from the cloud?


basically can I use it once to up the bitrate on my songs?
 

marine610610

macrumors regular
Mar 23, 2007
236
4
I subscribed to match this morning. I started to let the MBP go first and then went to the iMac. I get an error "only one library can be matched at a time".

Does this mean I can only upload one at a time, or that Apple will only allow one or the other to be uploaded, period?
 

Tony DiNozzo

macrumors newbie
Mar 16, 2011
7
0
im sure this is a noob question but when it says itunes match will replace the music library on this device, does it erase the 2,000 songs i already have on my phone and i have to upload them back in from the cloud?

thanks for your help
 
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