A Clear Explanation of iTunes Match

[gelorobinson]

I may be really thick: my problem with iTunes match is the following:

I have three Apple IDs: US, UK, Germany. If I was to purchase iTunes Match on my US Apple ID, can I still purchase apps with my UK or German Apple IDs (I have my accounts in credit thanks to various birthday gifts in ALL the countries) ?

I mean, I like the idea of Match and I understand that they want to prevent you from sharing songs among your friends with the restriction of ONE APPLE ID PER 90 DAYS PER DEVICE, I genuinely have 3 Apple IDs to my name. And while that may not be usual for the average American, I can imagine that many people here in Europe have at least two accounts if they live away from their native country.

What's the news on consolidating IDs? I hear that Apple is working on it?!

 

[room237]

I am experiencing this as well. Disappointing. I could understand if the play count is not changed over iCloud, but not even when I plug it in to sync? Come on.

Also, 10.5.1 completely wiped a lot of my playlists. Not smart playlists, playlists that I had worked hard to build over the years. All gone.

On top of that, the smart playlists are inaccurate much of the time, containing songs that obviously don't belong there based on my settings, or in one case, a playlist containing over 8000 songs even though I lmited it to 100.

I don't mean to be that guy that double-posts, but I would really appreciate a second opinion on this...

I've got my entire library stored on my Macbook, and it's all either uploaded or matched to iTunes Match. I have an iPhone 4, an iPad 2, and an Apple TV 2 all reading from the Match library. I can access and play all of my music just fine on all of my devices. (which is awesome!)

Unfortunately, I've ran into an error. Play counts don't seem to sync back and forth between devices. I downloaded a new album to iTunes, put it on iCloud, downloaded it on my iPhone and iPad, and played it. I also streamed it to my aTV. Then I went back to iTunes and checked the play counts, and they still said 0. So I plugged my phone in and did a manual sync, and still nothing.

Is anyone else seeing this? Could you try it out - play a song and then check iTunes and see if the play count updates? Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated! It may not seem like a big deal, but I have a few playlists that rely on play counts. Thank you so much!

 

[Mal]

I may be really thick: my problem with iTunes match is the following:

I have three Apple IDs: US, UK, Germany. If I was to purchase iTunes Match on my US Apple ID, can I still purchase apps with my UK or German Apple IDs (I have my accounts in credit thanks to various birthday gifts in ALL the countries) ?

I mean, I like the idea of Match and I understand that they want to prevent you from sharing songs among your friends with the restriction of ONE APPLE ID PER 90 DAYS PER DEVICE, I genuinely have 3 Apple IDs to my name. And while that may not be usual for the average American, I can imagine that many people here in Europe have at least two accounts if they live away from their native country.

What's the news on consolidating IDs? I hear that Apple is working on it?!

This shouldn't affect your situation. The App Store and iTunes Match can use different Apple ID's without issue.

I ran into my first problem with iTunes Match this morning. I turned it on on my iPod, flipped through my library for the first song I could test, and settled on Adoration by the Newsboys. I've had it in my library for a long time, it was ripped from a CD but matched by iTunes, and it wasn't on my iPod at that point in time. I tapped on it, it started to download, and started playing...the wrong song. It said it was playing Adoration, but it was actually playing something by Jack Johnson (not sure exactly which song). I do have a lot of Jack Johnson too, and it was very likely a song that I have, but it definitely wasn't what it said it should be.

Of course, worried (because I had deleted about 1300 of my originals and downloaded the matched versions yesterday), I pulled up the same song in iTunes on my Mac, and sure enough, it was one that I had deleted and downloaded the match for. I was sure I'd lost it and would have to go back to my disk, but when I played it on the computer, it was the correct song. I'm not really sure what happened, but for now I'm just going to continue to sync my iPod to my computer and not use Match on the iPod.

jW

 

[Tinmania]

Is it possible after matching your iTunes music to the cloud to delete the music on your computer to save space? I assume you could then stream your music? Thanks

Yes you can do this but you should of course have it all backed up somewhere locally (hopefully redundantly).

I didn't keep much music on my mb Air before iTunes Match. But now with Match I have deleted all music off of the Air. I can stream it just fine and I always have my iPhone with me which does have music stored locally (but that has been reduced from what I carried pre-Match).




Michael

 

[gnasher729]

I have three Apple IDs: US, UK, Germany. If I was to purchase iTunes Match on my US Apple ID, can I still purchase apps with my UK or German Apple IDs (I have my accounts in credit thanks to various birthday gifts in ALL the countries) ?

For music: You use iTunes Match with one Apple ID. iTunes Match will first check whatever you bought from iTunes _with that Apple ID_ and that will be available for downloading without counting against the 25,000 song limit. Then it will try to match all the other music on your Mac, including music that was purchased with other Apple IDs, or purchased from Amazon, or ripped from CDs, or whatever. So the music bought with different Apple IDs will be fine, unless you go over the 25,000 song limit.

There is of course a slight chance that some song bought on the German store might not be available on the US store and cannot be matched. I know some CDs are released with slightly different songs in different countries as well. Worst case the music will be uploaded.

That is the weirdest thing I've noticed too. A store-bought CD you ripped, often of a quite prominent band, and it matches 9 out of ten tracks and makes you upload the tenth. Examples:

Bush: Sixteen Stone, recognizes everything except for Alien

Bob Marley:, Exodus, it matched everything except for the track Exodus, for pete's sake!

And the biggest shocker of all, the Beatles: Sgt. Pepper, it freakin' uploaded - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What is going on?

As I said, sometimes what should be the same CD is released with slightly different songs in different countries. Or maybe the iTMS version of the CD was remastered, and for all but one song the difference was so little that it still matched.

One thing I'm curious about: Once in a while a ripped song has some faults coming from the CD. I wonder how well that matches.

 

[milo]

Worst case the music will be uploaded.

Actually worst case is the wrong song/version is matched or you get "ineligible" or another error and can't sync the song at all. Apple makes it sound like everything will be matched at worst but so far that's not the case and they haven't provided a way to fix those yet.

 

[auburnfan24]

future songs

question: I have searched and searched and still have three questions that I can't find an answer to. I hope you guys can help.

1) I have a few albums that are not organized with each other and are duplicates and such, when I upload to itunes match, will those be organized from apple's database?

These were songs from cd's, friend's hd, etc.

2) when I upload new songs in the future from cd's I may buy or put new songs in itunes that I don't buy from apple, are those uploaded to match automatically?

3) I'm sure this one has been answered already...but, can my wife and I use the same match library on two separate devices?

thanks!

 

[gelorobinson]

For music: You use iTunes Match with one Apple ID. iTunes Match will first check whatever you bought from iTunes _with that Apple ID_ and that will be available for downloading without counting against the 25,000 song limit. Then it will try to match all the other music on your Mac, including music that was purchased with other Apple IDs, or purchased from Amazon, or ripped from CDs, or whatever. So the music bought with different Apple IDs will be fine, unless you go over the 25,000 song limit.

There is of course a slight chance that some song bought on the German store might not be available on the US store and cannot be matched. I know some CDs are released with slightly different songs in different countries as well. Worst case the music will be uploaded.

I am not so worried about music purchased because I don't usually buy music on iTunes as I am currently using Spotify. Whatever is in my iTunes library is ripped from CDs. I am just wondering whether it is possible to switch between Apple IDs on your iPhone to purchase apps or iBooks for example from different markets (and thus different IDs) when match is enabled for my US Apple ID.

Also: Does anyone maybe know an iPhone/iPad app that pulls music from your iTunes library even via 3G and can store that music locally to make it available offline? Similarly to say, Spotify's "Offline Mode". So essentially a cloud service where the 'cloud' is your own home computer?

----------

This shouldn't affect your situation. The App Store and iTunes Match can use different Apple ID's without issue.

So what you're saying is that Apple effectively only restricts the use of multiple Apple IDs with active iTunes Match subscriptions? So multiple IDs are fine as long as only ONE has Match enabled?

 

[repete7]

Is there a way to tell what song in the ITMS your song has been matched to? I have some Wynton Marsalis tracks that have lost their meta data (just track 7, track 8, unknown album), but were successfully matched. I deleted them and downloaded the matched versions (which sound the same). Since my metadata is retained, they are still labeled track 7 and track 8, so I don't know what they are.

 

[ad2435]

It looks like all matched music is downloaded as .m4a type file even when the original was .mp3 type file.

Since there are some music files that can't be matched, the music collection seems to now have a mix of .m4a and mp3 files.

Does anyone know of any problems with running a music collection that was all mp3 and is now a mix of m4a and mp3 type files?

 

[pooryou]

I haven't been able to figure out a way to get my playcounts to sync back to iTunes yet. Tried syncing the iPad over wi-fi (which doesn't work very well at all) and it didn't seem to do anything with songs. Plugging the iPad in and syncing just ran a useless attempt at Wi-Fi syncing which accomplished nothing.

I have no idea how we are supposed to scrobble what we listen to to Last.FM, or get Smart Playlists to update properly based on Last Played Date etc. This just seems like a mess.

 

[geg]

It looks like all matched music is downloaded as .m4a type file even when the original was .mp3 type file.

Since there are some music files that can't be matched, the music collection seems to now have a mix of .m4a and mp3 files.

Does anyone know of any problems with running a music collection that was all mp3 and is now a mix of m4a and mp3 type files?

I don't think there's a problem with the mixed file types, but I DO see a problem with volume and audio quality jumping around during an album when half of it is from a different master, especially if it's not a new CD since newer ones have the volume pushed so much. Could be pretty jarring. I'm seeing a lot of albums mixed like this. Pretty annoying!

 

[ad2435]

I don't think there's a problem with the mixed file types, but I DO see a problem with volume and audio quality jumping around during an album when half of it is from a different master, especially if it's not a new CD since newer ones have the volume pushed so much. Could be pretty jarring. I'm seeing a lot of albums mixed like this. Pretty annoying!

Agreed regarding audio quality, that is what I am seeing as well.

I am also seeing some problems in playing m4a on windows media player for example. It seems the m4a will play but only from the beginning (cant jump to middle of the song).

I am not sure my audio collection will always be played on only apple hardware.

The audio quality jumping from song to song on matched/unmatched is giving me some heartburn.

 

[geg]

Agreed regarding audio quality, that is what I am seeing as well.

I am also seeing some problems in playing m4a on windows media player for example. It seems the m4a will play but only from the beginning (cant jump to middle of the song).

I am not sure my audio collection will always be played on only apple hardware.

The audio quality jumping from song to song on matched/unmatched is giving me some heartburn.

Yes, there can be issues playing AAC on some non-Apple hardware. ALL iTunes files, purchased or Match upgrades, are that format and not MP3 so it is good to be aware of that -- definitely don't upgrade any albums/tracks if you want them to remain MP3 because they definitely won't!

 

[Mal]

So what you're saying is that Apple effectively only restricts the use of multiple Apple IDs with active iTunes Match subscriptions? So multiple IDs are fine as long as only ONE has Match enabled?

Not exactly. Apple allows the use of different Apple ID's with different functions of the OS. Thus, you can have one Apple ID in use for iTunes Match, one for iCloud, one for the App Store, etc. You just can't change the one you use for each service on a regular basis (more often than 90 days). Not 100% sure if the 90 day requirement applies to all of those areas, but it doesn't affect you across services.

jW

 

[Eric S.]

Just noticed iTunes "matched" the JSP versions of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives/Sevens with the Columbia versions...different mastering, sometimes even different takes. It uploaded a few but mostly matched, except it's not a match! I'm really wanting to like this but unless they open it up to allow us to occasionally force an upload, I dunno...the idea that we just CAN'T LISTEN to some of our music on our devices kind of defeats the whole idea of this! At least if I'm synching, even if everything doesn't fit, what does fit is actually what I intend it to be. I may end up turning match off on my iPhone and just using it for the year on my computer to upgrade a few albums...

Exactly what I suspected would happen when this was first announced. And yet it sounds like Apple didn't plan for it.

 

[geg]

Exactly what I suspected would happen when this was first announced. And yet it sounds like Apple didn't plan for it.

I think Apple planned on appeasing the 99.9999% of users who are just matching a bunch of iTunes-purchased individual pop tracks.

If they don't want to allow us to force uploads, which I understand (although it would work if they limited it so that people don't upload their entire libraries) then they at least need to allow people to manually sync a specified playlist, like how podcasts are not synced thru Match. There needs to be a way to allow us to actually listen to the right editions if we choose...I don't so much mind that Apple is screwing up between four or five editions of any given album -- I can see how that might happen, although I hope they'll continue to fine-tune it -- but there needs to be a way to get the correct music onto our devices if they want us to continue to use them as the centerpiece of our music listening, which they've become to a lot of us. Either that or we'll just end up using Match on our computers and not on our devices, and it's a lot less attractive of a system that way.

 

[Speedracer04]

Is there a way that I can see how many of the songs in my library will be matched before I buy iTunes Match?

 

[geg]

Is there a way that I can see how many of the songs in my library will be matched before I buy iTunes Match?

Pretty sure there's not. Remember, it'll upload whatever it can't match. If this is just for the purposes of upgrading music, it's probably worth gambling $24.95...you'll definitely find a fair amount matched. Remember, though, if you're the type to pass music around to your friends, these tracks may have some sort of identifier embedded within them. The file type is listed in iTunes as "matched AAC file" or something like that.

 

[movieator]

Is anyone else repeatedly getting the "sign in to download prompt" when trying to download?
I sign in, but it keeps popping up over and over again.

 

[geg]

iPhone music app slow?

Anyone else having their iPhone (I have a 4) music app running really slow and freezing a lot? Never had an issue before Match.

 

[Angle Loss]

Is anyone else repeatedly getting the "sign in to download prompt" when trying to download?
I sign in, but it keeps popping up over and over again.

Everything was working fine for me until this afternoon. Now I am having the same problem of it repeatedly asking me to enter my password, and then not downloading some of the tracks.

 

[Tinmania]

Everything was working fine for me until this afternoon. Now I am having the same problem of it repeatedly asking me to enter my password, and then not downloading some of the tracks.

Getting it here too. It just said it was unable to connect to iTunes store but then was able to download 9 app updates. Has to be iTunes match.




Michael

 

[geg]

Getting it here too. It just said it was unable to connect to iTunes store but then was able to download 9 app updates. Has to be iTunes match.




Michael

I'm getting that too. And it's running really slow on my iPhone while I try to download a playlist...freezing at times. Not sure how we're supposed to load music onto these devices if it's going to do that.

 

[geg]

Downloading on iPhone

I'm trying to download a fairly-modest 9 GB playlist onto my phone, so that I can actually listen to music when I'm not in WiFi, and it's continually stopping the download, the music app freezes up, clicking "download all" works until it doesn't and the "download all" button isn't greyed out anymore, as if you hadn't pushed it to begin with. Did they test ANY of this out?