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Apple Temporarily Halts New iTunes Match Subscriptions in New International Markets

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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With Apple launching a broad international roll-out of iTunes Match yesterday to well over a dozen new countries, it appears that the expansion has come with some growing pains for the cloud-based music service. The service had started to prematurely go live for some users the day before, and several hours after the international expansion users around the world reported temporary problems accessing iTunes Store and iCloud services due to usernames and passwords being rejected.

itunes_match_subscriptions_down.jpg



While those technical issues appear to have been resolved, demand appears to still remain high for new iTunes Match subscriptions, and we've been hearing word that Apple has temporarily shut down new subscription signups in some of the new countries. Customers attempting to subscribe to the service are reportedly being met with the following message:
New subscriptions are currently unavailable.

iTunes Match is temporarily not accepting new subscribers. Check back later.
Click to expand...
So far we have heard of new subscriptions being halted in Canada and the UK, two of the countries that saw the service debut yesterday. Apple instituted a similar temporary pause in new subscription signups following the U.S. launch last month.

As noted in an extensive chart from setteB.IT, iTunes Match rolled out in a total of sixteen new countries yesterday: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. The new countries join the United States and Brazil in offering the service.

Article Link: Apple Temporarily Halts New iTunes Match Subscriptions in New International Markets
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/12/16/apple-temporarily-halts-new-itunes-match-subscriptions-in-new-international-markets/
ChazUK

ChazUK

macrumors 603
Feb 3, 2008
5,393
25
Essex (UK)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 3.2.1; en-us; Xoom Build/HTK75D) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.13)

Tempted to get my wife an iTunes Match subscription when things sort themselves out.

Hoping that it's sorted soon enough.
 
I

ipoppy

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2006
423
9
UK
Yes, I was expecting some kernel panic on Apple servers after uploading my entire iTunes library :D
 
ipedro

ipedro

macrumors 603
Nov 30, 2004
6,232
8,493
Toronto, ON
Twizzy said:
What a screw up.
Click to expand...

This is the opposite of a screw-up. Apple is taking charge in ensuring that quality of use is not degraded for people who have already purchased the service. Demand is greater than what Apple expected so they'll be opening the gates slowly to allow them to meet demand without crashing the whole thing.
 
R

rmwebs

macrumors 68040
Apr 6, 2007
3,140
0
Ahh the Apple (fake) Cloud continues to fail.

----------
ipedro said:
This is the opposite of a screw-up. Apple is taking charge in ensuring that quality of use is not degraded for people who have already purchased the service. Demand is greater than what Apple expected so they'll be opening the gates slowly to allow them to meet demand without crashing the whole thing.
Click to expand...

Explain how its not a screw up?

- 2 days ago they prematurely open Match across the world, charge people and are then forced to refund them because they forgot to update the TOS.

- Yesterday they launch, resulting in the iTunes servers being very slow for most of the day.

- Last night the authentication system completely died and was down for the pest part of the night, intermittently coming back online.

- Then they finally release Match, and have to close it within a day as their tiny server farm (NOT A CLOUD) cant handle the load.
 
R

Reborn

macrumors member
Dec 13, 2011
54
0
The service is useless. I left just 4 albums in my library, i bought them on iTunes in summer. Just one album was matched and it wanted to upload the rest (and it did) when it just could have checked my library against my purchase list, not to mention the fact that even without DRM iTunes files still have Apple ID info attached to them, so no mambo jambo is need in such cases ...no sample analysis or whatever.
 
T

tann

macrumors 68000
Apr 15, 2010
1,944
813
UK
For some reason last night mine seemed to match & upload stuff relatively fast. Matched about 2000 of my 2500 tracks and uploaded the first 300 very fast before slowing down quite a bit and uploading the last 200 in about an hour or so.

I know someone who's waited for an hour earlier today and only had 6 or 7 tracks uploaded!
 
transmaster

transmaster

Contributor
Feb 1, 2010
1,298
606
Cheyenne, Wyoming
ipoppy said:
Yes, I was expecting some kernel panic on Apple servers after uploading my entire iTunes library :D
Click to expand...

In my case if I tried to "match" a bunch of my stuff I would get an answer back "who?";) I am amazed with modern data storage I just looked at my iPod Touch 4G 64gig I have 158 albums loaded, that works out to 1,849 tracks, I have videos, numerous podcasts loaded and I still have 3.8 gigs of space remaining. To think back in the neolithic age of computers we thought and 8 meg hard drive was a huge amount of storeage space. To have 64gig's in a package I can slip in a shirt pocket. :D
 
S

Saturnine

macrumors 65816
Oct 23, 2005
1,485
2,428
Manchester, UK
I don't like to knock Apple but this hasn't gone well at all.

Personally I am *still* having trouble getting the matching process to work. It's just hanging for me during 'Step 2.' I've tried converting ALL non-matched songs to 256kbps AAC, removing illegible files, everything ... still can't get it to complete.
 
NutsNGum

NutsNGum

macrumors 68030
Jul 30, 2010
2,856
367
Glasgow, Scotland
Can someone please explain to me the benefits of this over a service such as Spotify, apart from price?

The higher bit rate is a nice idea, but surely that's going to kill my data allowance for the month quite quickly?
 
acfusion29

acfusion29

macrumors 68040
Nov 8, 2007
3,128
1
Toronto
i'm still confused on whether or not i should get this.

it says it will play the higher bit-rate version, is it possible to download that higher bitrate and keep it on your computer (for instance if you don't have an internet connection)

i don't have many songs (~500) and only have an iPhone so the only reason i would do this would be for the higher quality songs.
 
hortod1

hortod1

macrumors 6502
Jan 26, 2009
462
1,265
How about PLEASE check back later. They could at least be polite about it.
 
saving107

saving107

macrumors 603
Oct 14, 2007
6,384
33
San Jose, Ca
NutsNGum said:
Can someone please explain to me the benefits of this over a service such as Spotify, apart from price?

The higher bit rate is a nice idea, but surely that's going to kill my data allowance for the month quite quickly?
Click to expand...

Two completely different services.

With Spotify or rdio, you have access to unlimited (streaming) music for as long as you continue to pay the monthly fee, stop paying and you no longer have access to that music.

iTunes Match ($24.99 a year) will upgrade your personal collection (if its matched) and back-up your entire library. So if your Hard Drive were to fail or you were to purchase a new machine, you will easily and quickly be able to get your music back (rather than have to re-import your entire cd collection). As a plus of DRM-Free, once iTunes Match matches your music and you upgrade to the iTunes version, you can keep those tracks and not have to re-new your subscription next year.

-Garry- said:
Personally I am *still* having trouble getting the matching process to work. It's just hanging for me during 'Step 2.' I've tried converting ALL non-matched songs to 256kbps AAC, removing illegible files, everything ... still can't get it to complete.
Click to expand...

Since last night my iTunes has been hanging on Step 2 as well.
 
A

adbe

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2008
669
334
NutsNGum said:
Can someone please explain to me the benefits of this over a service such as Spotify, apart from price?
Click to expand...

The two aren't remotely alike, so it's hard to compare.

iTunes Match is simply about having the songs in your iTunes library available wherever you have internet access, regardless of whether they were purchases through the iTunes store. Whether that's worth anything to you is going to depend on how large your library is, and how restless you tend to be.
 
bandalay

bandalay

macrumors regular
Apr 19, 2010
123
92
Canada
saving107 said:
Two completely different services.
With Spotify or rdio, you have access to unlimited (streaming) music for as long as you continue to pay the monthly fee, stop paying and you no longer have access to that music.
Click to expand...

Plus an extra BONUS…no musicians are ever paid!

:D
 
A

adbe

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2008
669
334
acfusion29 said:
i'm still confused on whether or not i should get this.

it says it will play the higher bit-rate version, is it possible to download that higher bitrate and keep it on your computer (for instance if you don't have an internet connection)
Click to expand...

Yes, but only if the higher rate version is available on the iTunes store. I.E. if when matching, a version of a song on your drive is found in the iTunes store at a higher bit rate, you can use match to switch out to Apple's version. Once done, you have a shiny new high bit rate DRM free file to replace your existing one.
 
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