Apple Wiping iTunes Match Libraries Again on Thursday, October 27th

The songs from iTunes Match are 256 KBPS AAC iTunes plus. That means they don't contain any DRM.

It looks like the only thing you would lose if you stopped paying for it the next year is the ability to re-download the songs from iTunes. Which isn't really a problem if you back up your music anyway.

AidenShaw said:

I hope for all Itunes Match users' sake that Apple is fixing this screwed-up system so that non-destructive upgrades are supported.

It's "amateur hour" to have to wipe the database for an upgrade.

This isn't even tolerable for the beta - non-destructive upgrades should have been designed in from day one.

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Dude, you don't even know what they are doing. Maybe they are moving to production servers and don't want to have problems ported over that may have sprung up during testing. You always want to go to a clean slate when you are going from Beta to Production.

Families with multi-apple ids

My question is will everyone in my family have to pay the yearly fee if we all have different apple IDs? All our music is in one central location now but we all maintain separate libraries.

AidenShaw said:

But why, unless you're more concerned with the logo on a product than its specs and performance?

Oops, never mind, Apple forum.

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Aiden, not like you to assume the worst about somebody based upon the brand of computer they use.......

Obviously your comment was posted *after* the ridiculous Gucci spam post to which I was referring got deleted. Still, thanks for not jumping to any conclusions about me. Good to see you remaining as tolerant as ever.

crisss1205 said:

Dude, you don't even know what they are doing. Maybe they are moving to production servers and don't want to have problems ported over that may have sprung up during testing. You always want to go to a clean slate when you are going from Beta to Production.

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I completely disagree.

If you plan to support upgrades in the product, the Beta should support and test upgrades.

Anything less is lazy programming.

If your tools can't move the beta database to the production servers without "porting problems over", then your tools are bad.

"Itunes Match" has "train wreck" written all over it - how many times have they wiped the database to date? Why should we not take that as a warning that the design has fundamental flaws?

Anaemik said:

Aiden, not like you to assume the worst about somebody based upon the brand of computer they use.......

Obviously your comment was posted *after* the ridiculous Gucci spam post to which I was referring got deleted. Still, thanks for not jumping to any conclusions about me. Good to see you remaining as tolerant as ever.

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AidenShaw said:

But why, unless you're more concerned with the logo on a product than its specs and performance?

Oops, never mind, Apple forum.

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Just incase you missed it, which you obviously did.

http://cl.ly/1a1d1R2M1v0b2R3G1Y09

AidenShaw said:

I hope for all Itunes Match users' sake that Apple is fixing this screwed-up system so that non-destructive upgrades are supported.

It's "amateur hour" to have to wipe the database for an upgrade.

This isn't even tolerable for the beta - non-destructive upgrades should have been designed in from day one.

Click to expand...

Um, from day one on the Beta they said that they would wipe it multiple times, and at least right before the official product launches. Who knows what they have been doing behind the scenes, maybe their matching algorithm is being tweaked so less songs have to be uploaded, wiping the servers would be a good way to reset with less redundant data. And the Beta participants are getting 3 free months, apple can do as many destructive upgrades they need to during this period, they are practically paying for us to test the service for them. Now if this was the case post official launch, that would be something to worry and complain about, but this is part of the matinence they warned of from the beginning. (Hell on the match my songs screen in iTunes it says "iCloud libraries will be deleted at the end of this beta")? You seem to be reaching for a reason to complain about the service, it is complaints like this that make Apple close these betas off to developers only with NDA's, because the average fan can't help but judge their product on an unoficially released beta product.

iTunes Match is a streaming download in that the music plays before the song is completely downloaded but once you start playing a song, the entire song will download to the device whether or not you skip to the next song after 5 seconds of listening. On a 4S, it only takes a couple of seconds to start playing a cloud stored song...same as previewing a song on the iTunes store.

AidenShaw said:

I hope for all Itunes Match users' sake that Apple is fixing this screwed-up system so that non-destructive upgrades are supported.

It's "amateur hour" to have to wipe the database for an upgrade.

This isn't even tolerable for the beta - non-destructive upgrades should have been designed in from day one.

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You were told this from day one. It's a DEVELOPER PREVIEW, and Apple consistently states that you should never use developer environments for production data. Besides, for buying into the Dev version Apple gave you 15 months for the price of 12. Quit your childish whining.

AidenShaw said:

But why, unless you're more concerned with the logo on a product than its specs and performance?

Oops, never mind, Apple forum.

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That's churlish troll talk. Can you give it a rest?

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AidenShaw said:

I completely disagree.

If you plan to support upgrades in the product, the Beta should support and test upgrades.

Anything less is lazy programming.

If your tools can't move the beta database to the production servers without "porting problems over", then your tools are bad.

"Itunes Match" has "train wreck" written all over it - how many times have they wiped the database to date? Why should we not take that as a warning that the design has fundamental flaws?

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Spoken as someone who definitely doesn't rely on a dev/production model to make his living...

Two words: Holy. ****.

I have a few questions about iTunes match. If I have songs in my collection that are poor quality, say 64kb or 128kb, the match will ugrade the quality to 256kb. Can I download these upgraded songs and keep them permanently? Or will they self destruct in one year if you don't renew your match subscription? Are they free for me to use as I like, even after my subscription expires?

DaffyDuck said:

iTunes Match is a streaming download in that the music plays before the song is completely downloaded but once you start playing a song, the entire song will download to the device whether or not you skip to the next song after 5 seconds of listening. On a 4S, it only takes a couple of seconds to start playing a cloud stored song...same as previewing a song on the iTunes store.

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so if my phone is filled to capacity with pre downloaded stuff I still will be able to play any of my stuff on the cloud not on my phone?

AidenShaw said:

If your tools can't move the beta database to the production servers without "porting problems over", then your tools are bad.

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You have no idea what you are talking about, if during development you have a bug that replicates a users playlist 1,000 times you DO NOT want to bring that data over to a production server. It would be almost impossible to port the data over reversing the effects of the bug.

rdlink said:

Spoken as someone who definitely doesn't rely on a dev/production model to make his living...

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Just ignore him, obviously he is not a developer or knows anything about programming.

AppleScruff1 said:

I have a few questions about iTunes match. If I have songs in my collection that are poor quality, say 64kb or 128kb, the match will ugrade the quality to 256kb. Can I download these upgraded songs and keep them permanently? Or will they self destruct in one year if you don't renew your match subscription? Are they free for me to use as I like, even after my subscription expires?

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The files are iTunes Plus, which means they can't do anything to them.

LoganT said:

The files are iTunes Plus, which means they can't do anything to them.

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So I could theoretically pay my $25, and get 25,000 songs matches at a higher quality bit rate and keep them forever, move them from pc to pc, phone etc? Even if they are pirated songs?

AppleScruff1 said:

So I could theoretically pay my $25, and get 25,000 songs matches at a higher quality bit rate and keep them forever, move them from pc to pc, phone etc? Even if they are pirated songs?

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Yes.

But say you lose all your music and didn't have it backed up. If you continued paying for iTunes Match every year you could go to iTunes and redownload all of your lost music. You wouldn't be able to do that if you stopped paying for it annually.

wackymacky said:

i'm not sure about that.

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Please don't start this whole thing up again. Please.

crisss1205 said:

You have no idea what you are talking about, if during development you have a bug that replicates a users playlist 1,000 times you DO NOT want to bring that data over to a production server. It would be almost impossible to port the data over reversing the effects of the bug.

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Actually, detecting duplicate playlists would be rather simple.

Have you ever written code using an "IF" statement?

crisss1205 said:

Just ignore him, obviously he is not a developer or knows anything about programming.

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And you don't know about the software that I wrote that you use every day, nor about the patents that I have been granted, or how to design maintainable software. (Hint: if you intend to support upgrading the released software - consider supporting upgrades of the alpha software. By the time it reaches beta, you'll have it working.)

LoganT said:

Yes.

But say you lose all your music and didn't have it backed up. If you continued paying for iTunes Match every year you could go to iTunes and redownload all of your lost music. You wouldn't be able to do that if you stopped paying for it annually.

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This sounds like a great deal for $25. So if you back up your music, you could just pay for one year and be done with it. Or if you had another 25,000 songs, you could add them the second year buy paying the $25 again and have 50,000 legitimate high quality songs?

AppleScruff1 said:

This sounds like a great deal for $25. So if you back up your music, you could just pay for one year and be done with it. Or if you had another 25,000 songs, you could add them the second year buy paying the $25 again and have 50,000 legitimate high quality songs?

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I'm not sure. I think 25,000 might be the cut off point, meaning you can upgrade a total of 25,000 songs.

AidenShaw said:

Actually, detecting duplicate playlists would be rather simple.

Have you ever written code using an "IF" statement?

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Ha, you make me laugh! The "if" statement? Really?

It is not that simple, not only would you have to create playlist objects but check the data in that playlist object to make sure it is the same, and within that data (songs) there is more that you have to compare to make sure it is the same object. And when you are comparing lets say 30 songs per playlist, with 20 playlists, and 1,000 duplicates you are creating > 600,000 "if" statements for a single user. (You obviously wouldn't use an if statement) And that is just going by lets say a track name. If you have to compare 2 tracks in order to see if it is the same song you would have to compare at least 5 more things. (Title, artist, time, composer, release date, other) and that would make > 3,000,000 comparisons.
This is just some stupid example I made up.

Good try.

crisss1205 said:

Ha, you make me laugh! The "if" statement? Really?

It is not that simple, not only would you have to create playlist objects but check the data in that playlist object to make sure it is the same, and within that data (songs) there is more that you have to compare to make sure it is the same object. And when you are comparing lets say 30 songs per playlist, with 20 playlists, and 1,000 duplicates you are creating > 600,000 "if" statements for a single user. (You obviously wouldn't use an if statement) And that is just going by lets say a track name. If you have to compare 2 tracks in order to see if it is the same song you would have to compare at least 5 more things. (Title, artist, time, composer, release date, other) and that would make > 3,000,000 comparisons.

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So, if you're upgrading from the beta it will take a millisecond or two longer to do it right?

crisss1205 said:

This is just some stupid example I made up.

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Agreed.

What will this mean for data usage when you aren't on wi-fi? I assume the songs can be accessed on 3G? I have "unlimited" from AT&T but I'm still curious.

AidenShaw said:

So, if you're upgrading from the beta it will take a millisecond or two longer to do it right?
...
Agreed.

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You really don't get it do you? That was just one example that I came up with. When you are making 3,000,000 comparisons for ONE user it is not just a few milliseconds. You have thousands of users. And what about making a program that will do this? Why spend time and money creating a program when there is an easier solution, just delete everything and upload it again. It would take maybe weeks just to do something like that when wiping a database can take seconds.

You would make some pretty bad business decisions if you always think like that.

EDIT: And don't forget to look at your post rating!

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Two quick questions:

1a) are song purchases that you made previously via iTunes also converted to DRM-free High-Quality matches?

1b) what about music videos, how are they treated?

2) how long should you expect it to take to download a matched iTunes library that's around 20 gigs in size? Assuming you're using a decent and steady DSL connection?