Amazon Cloud Player Upgraded with Scan and Match, 256 Kbps Audio

[jettredmont]

> All matched songs - even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs - are instantly made available in Cloud Player

Has anyone ever managed to get iTunes match to match anything other than songs purchased via iTunes? I tried it on a few beatles songs and there was no match. At that point, I figured it was a scam.

My current library stats:

Total: 13,124 items
Matched: 9,412
Purchased: 1,422
Uploaded: 2,159
Ineligible: 87
Duplicate: 44

So, about 1:4.3 uploaded to matched amongst my non-iTunes tracks. A little under 19% of them, that is. Worse than I expected, based on how often I notice non-matched songs, but looking through that list I see a lot of Jamendo-sourced songs (creative commons licensed ... I doubt Apple could include those in Match if they wanted to), a few defunct local bands, a lot of songs I've marked as re-rip (ripped a long time ago when I had a PC with a sketchy CD-ROM, with stutters or gaps in them now), and maybe about 10% of them are inexplicable non-matches (they are songs Apple has, and are in pristine condition, and are 192kbps or so ...).

So, iTunes Match isn't perfect, but compared to the early days when it was more like 1:1 to 1:2 ratio between uploaded and matched, and it's doing quite well. I'm not sure what I did to get Match to re-match the "uploaded" songs (and thus, how recently it has done so), but it has definitely gotten better over time.

 

[revelated]

No, I think you misunderstood.

The guy had unlimited cloud storage meaning he could already upload all his songs without regard to whether they matched or not.

Now with the new system, Amazon has destroyed that model, split it and your Cloud drive storage is irrelevant to the Cloud player.

Talk about FUD.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200593930

When you complete a purchase in the Amazon MP3 Store, you save your music to Amazon Cloud Player. Amazon MP3 purchases in Cloud Player are stored for free, do not count against any storage limits....

If you want to get technical, yes they split stuff out. Amazon has NEVER allowed unlimited upload of music. Ever. The ONLY unlimited piece was music you bought from them. The poster misunderstood the original offering, which was to allow a free 5 GB of upload-whatever-you-want storage. But that was never given as a lifetime allowance.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1582734

All customers automatically start with 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage to begin uploading their digital music library...

Additionally, you still have and can keep the 5GB that you were given, it's in Cloud Drive. You just can't stream from it. In fact, Amazon went one step further and basically gave you your storage back since now, whatever you imported before does NOT count against whatever storage tier you have and you can use the storage for anything else.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200914180

What happens to music storage in Cloud Drive?

Music files you imported to Cloud Drive before July 31, 2012 will still be accessible in and downloadable from Cloud Drive and will not count against your Cloud Drive storage limits. Your Cloud Drive 'Music' folder is now called 'Archived Music.'

On top of that they gave you a FREE month to commiserate about the new setup and actually TRY it before you criticize.



So basically Amazon -

1. Gave you BACK storage you already consumed.
2. Converted your previous music into higher quality at NO charge.
3. Gave you a month FREE to evaluate the newer service.
4. Still lets you purchase and store UNLIMITED songs from them directly (THIS one is the key. At some point, the cost-benefit comes from buying direct from Amazon. If you're not willing to do this one, you're wasting your time even trying their service)

Sounds like a deal. Unless you're one of those who would just pirate music. Amazon wants you to buy songs from them, period, or pay a very nominal annual fee to use their servers and bandwidth. Anyone who criticizes what they've done, doesn't understand how business works. You'll not find a better deal anywhere, not even Google.

 

[unlinked]

Another example of how Apple is becoming the developer for the rest of the world.

Another example of people making obviously false claims.

 

[AustinIllini]

Another example of how Apple is becoming the developer for the rest of the world.

Clueless.

 

[jettredmont]

Does anyone know how Amazon's matching handles explicit content and tags? Does it use your tags or replace with their tags? These are the two gripes I have with iTunes Match and, as of now, the only thing holding me back.

iTunes Match doesn't touch your tags. At least, it hasn't touched any of mine. Even my clearly-wrong tags are dutifully preserved (the song gets matched correctly, regardless of how horribly f'd up the tags are).

The "explicit" issue was that, early on, iTunes Match was matching songs with their "clean" counterparts, and so when the user downloaded the matched song they found they'd lost all their curse words. Clearly, an error, although better than the alternative (that purchasers of "clean" tracks were given the explicit versions instead). I believe the only place the error persists is where iTunes doesn't sell the explicit version, and the Match is overly-aggressive.

Why? I have always been curious about why MP3 is better/worse than AAC.

Short answer: at low bitrates (esp at 128kbps), AAC tends to have better quality than MP3. At higher bitrates, however, the differences are less significant. I think at 256kbps the difference is minor to say the least, if even perceptible.

 

[jettredmont]

Yeah and have you seen how long MS supports operating systems with updates? 10 years

How long does Apple do it?

Hmm. Well, Apple does supply security updates for quite some time, but general updates aren't provided for anywhere near 10 years. Primarily, because just upgrading to the latest version (assuming your hardware supports it) is dirt cheap.

You can argue about the hardware support issue, and it's been far more of an issue over the past three years or so than in the preceding decade. I certainly wish the half of my machines were Mountain Lion compatible which have been "orphaned" from feature updates, but aside from not getting new OS features they aren't getting any less capable with Lion.

In any case, Apple's philosophy has been to deliver rapid OS releases and accept breaking backwards compatibility every once in a while over Microsoft's backwards compatibility / half-decade release schedule.

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Right now, I am hating iTunes Match. I have matched all my music and when I try and download a higher version of some of my favorite tracks, the track appears to all come in but cuts off after 20-30 seconds. It is horrible. I will certainly not use this service until I hear that they have worked out this problem.

Never heard of such an issue, and certainly have not experienced it. Have you contacted Apple Support? It's not likely to be "fixed" if they don't know about it ...

 

[Aragornii]

Match has improved significantly since it first came out. I don't believe I have any mismatches which aren't due to poor-quality originals any more (and had LOTS of those when I first signed up).

It'd be nice if Amazon does as well or better (ie, better able to deal with a stutter or glitch in the file), but the on-the-face "advantage" for Amazon (that you can use it if you have more than 25,000 tracks to match) seems to be completely countered by the lack of integration (unless you use your Kindle Fire for music playback ...) which would be unbearable with >25k songs.

This thread motivated me to go back and check how many matches I have.

When I first signed up, iTunes matched about 11,000 out of 15,000 tracks. I checked it tonight and about 2,000 of those 4,000 unmatched tracks now show up as matched. I haven't done anything so iTunes must periodically update the matches on it's own.

 

[lostless]

Been trying amazon cloud match player as I still have a month of my free premium upgrade. For 1, It's matching isn't as good as apples. The online interface is clunky. Album art does not upload if matched. It finds a version of a song, be it the album version or greatest hits version, and displays the artwork from those albums. So while playing an album, the alum artwork chages back and forth between the original and other artwork amazon happed to match. But I did find one feature that apple needs. If it matches the wrong song or wrong version it has the option to upload your own copy. So apple needs to apply that and it will be near perfect.

 

[Zimmer62943]

This thread motivated me to go back and check how many matches I have.

When I first signed up, iTunes matched about 11,000 out of 15,000 tracks. I checked it tonight and about 2,000 of those 4,000 unmatched tracks now show up as matched. I haven't done anything so iTunes must periodically update the matches on it's own.

i didnt know it did this.. thats great if it does

 

[garylapointe]

But ML is free for those who bought a Mac after the WWDC keynote. But why should Apple make ML free to everyone who bought a Mac in the last 4 years? And, really, at $20 bucks it's pretty much free. What Microsoft Windows OS update was ever $20 for the general public?

And it's $20 for ALL your computers!

Plus, they even let you skip over Lion if you didn't have it (didn't they?). So that's a pretty cheap update option. Even if they do start updating every year it's still cheap and incremental upgrades are easier to deal with than big ones.

Gary

 

[tatonka]

Thing is, Apple doesn't need to do it. By setting the OS price so low, a much larger percentage of people upgrade, compared to Windows (how many people are still on XP??? ) And besides, I find OS X is generally much more stable than Windows, meaning less problems need to be fixed unlike Windows.

Thing is, this strategy works well with consumers, but is quite problematic when it comes to businesses. Larger IT deparments can't afford (time and compatibility wise) to update the OS's every year.

 

[EbookReader]

Spotify is now the #2 source of label revenue.


#1 Itunes
#2 Spotify
#3 Amazon

Guess where the future is at?

 

[Winni]

Another example of how Apple is becoming the developer for the rest of the world.

I can't hear it anymore. Apple totally invented digital music downloads, online services and cloud computing. Yeah, sure.

 

[numlock]

Spotify is now the #2 source of label revenue.


#1 Itunes
#2 Spotify
#3 Amazon

Guess where the future is at?

is itunes losing sales ($ or %) to spotify?

 

[roadbloc]

CD master race reporting in.

 

[edinburghmac]

As an iTunes Match subscriber who has an iTunes library of over 25,000 songs I may well have to check this out. Currently I have the majority of my library in iTunes match by painstakingly eliminating duplicates from multiple CD editions (remasters/originals and compilations) which means I have about 25K matched at any given time. The pain involved in deciding which songs to jettison when I purchase new CD's is immense - having a 250K limit would make all the difference to me. However, I've never looked into the Amazon player but the fact they offer a free version with 250 songs means I can check it out to see if it is workable. I'd prefer to stick with iTunes for integration between Mac/iPhone/iPad but if they don't increase the track limit I may well migrate to Amazon at the yearly renewal. Hopefully, this will make Apple increase the iTunes Match limit - I put in a 'feature request' for this ages ago but I'm sure Apple take much more notice of market competition than requests from individuals.

 

[Jessica Lares]

Hopefully we can STOP posting news about AMAZON on the FRONT page...



lame

Sorry, one more Amazon related story coming up.

 

[Razeus]

Spotify is now the #2 source of label revenue.


#1 Itunes
#2 Spotify
#3 Amazon

Guess where the future is at?

Link?

 

[pmz]

SWEET! I am a Apple hardware buyer/user through and through, but I buy all my music either on disc, or from Amazon.
Great news.

Why? Are you under some delusion that buying mp3 from Amazon is somehow better than buying AAC from Apple? Because its not.

----------

Spotify is now the #2 source of label revenue.


#1 Itunes
#2 Spotify
#3 Amazon

Guess where the future is at?

Spotify is total garbage. It has no future.

 

[M87]

> All matched songs - even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs - are instantly made available in Cloud Player

Has anyone ever managed to get iTunes match to match anything other than songs purchased via iTunes? I tried it on a few beatles songs and there was no match. At that point, I figured it was a scam.

The vast majority of my music is matched and didn't come from iTunes. I own several albums from Amazon mp3 even, an iTunes competitor, and all are matched on iTunes.

 

[Coastercub]

Right now, I am hating iTunes Match. I have matched all my music and when I try and download a higher version of some of my favorite tracks, the track appears to all come in but cuts off after 20-30 seconds. It is horrible. I will certainly not use this service until I hear that they have worked out this problem.

I thought it was just me having this problem...

 

[thenaes]

Why? Are you under some delusion that buying mp3 from Amazon is somehow better than buying AAC from Apple? Because its not.

----------



Spotify is total garbage. It has no future.

How is it total garbage?
Spotify is great. At least the idea of it -- their software can be buggy at times.

 

[Icculus]

No kidding? I'll give that a shot! Well, I'll give that a shot when I have a week to re-upload half of my unmatchable library.

Here is the crazy thing, it doesn't re-upload! Devil magic is all I can say, because I deleted everything and double checked other computers that just were signed into iTM and showed zero songs. When I dumped everything back in, it took a little bit but then everything said matched/uploaded.

HOWEVER, keep in mind if you dump purchased tracks back in they go to Matched instead of Purchased so they will count AGAINST your limit. This is a HUGE bug that I am not sure if its been fixed or not. I am just about at the limit so this was huge for me. To get them back I had to download all of them again inside itunes to get them be purchased again.

 

[Scarpad]

You can't beat amazon, their Cloud player app is solid, the service I've used since they offered it, is definitely more reliable than Icloud, and their album prices are good and they offer daily deals, picked up the new Rush album for .99 cents today.

 

[Icculus]

I'm very curious about this since I have similar problems with iTunes lag on my iPhone. Do you lose all your playlists and ratings etc when you zero out your library?

All my normal playlists were gone, smart/genius ones stayed. I think the genius ones stayed but I could be mistaken.

Ratings, etc all that stuff was gone. Pretty much metadata stayed but everything else was reset. Annoying yes, but I was able to get a much faster iTM.

**This worked for me, and I know its a gamble on a process and I am not 100% sure this would work so just keep that in mind. I hate to tell people to spend hours breaking their library only to have this not work.