Apple Activates iTunes Match Setting in iOS 5, Suggesting Imminent Launch

[Kbirish22]

What about multiple computers

This seems crazy to me. But I guess that is correct considering when you slide Match on, it gives you the option to show all music or only music downloaded to the device.

Like others have said, I guess you could always take a moment to download what you want stored on the device after turning iTunes Match on.

How does iTunes match handle files across multiple computers and multiple iDevices? I'd like to use it across my 3 computers, ipad and 2 iphones if possible.

 

[TG1]

I'm curious how it handles live versions of songs. Will it be able to distinguish from the studio recorded tracks on iTunes and upload them?

 

[tasset]

Here's what I have to say of the Match beta.
Out of 3,000 songs for me it matched 2,000. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for what is matched, other than some VERY popular songs are not. I have ripped cd's from pop artists (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Madonna, Pitbull) with iTunes plus settings and 'coincidentally' their most popular hits were not matched. Maybe Apple is still working on licensing issues? Which will suck.
Audio samples are matched only from what I can tell. Artwork and metadata is uploaded however you detail your songs in iTunes. Good for those who are meticulous, bad for those who have stuff mislabeled because I don't believe it will clean it up for you.
The tracks I have redownloaded are now called "Matched" in the Kind option. I don't see any DRM but there is a stamp in the song's info with your iTunes account just as there is when you buy a track.

 

[Bigdaddyguido]

Wirelessly posted (Iphone: 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)

Any word on what happens if you have more than 25,000 songs?

 

[scott911]

does this lower quality to 256 ?

I believe it has been clearly stated in multiple places, including by Steve Jobs in the keynote where iTunes Match was announced, that the files will all be AAC 256.

I recall this too.

That is a step up from the lower rates initially offered in the itunes stores but it is still not terrible good for people who have better equipment (speakers mainly) and good ears.

My stuff is all encoded at higher rates - so will this service perminantly "dumb" down my music quality. Of course, anything listened to in the cloud will be at the lower 256, but will it effect my actual library?

 

[Cory Bauer]

I'm very excited about this service but also a little confused. Two questions keep crossing my mind:

1. If I have an album ripped at 128k MP3s from a decade ago, and iTunes "upgrades" them in the cloud to 256K AAC files, will it also replace the copies in iTunes on my Mac with those 256k AAC files? Because things could get really confusing if it doesn't.

2. Presumably, the songs that iTunes is currently unable to locate album artwork for are the very same ones it won't be able to find a match for from iCloud, right? Because sometimes you have a track that is most certainly on iTunes but for some reason it doesn't recognize it. Soundtracks containing a mixture of artists is one area where I've noticed iTunes really struggles.

 

[jamesarm97]

It is indeed working again. I have not been able to see my music match data since the iOS5 release even though I did have the option. As of today my music is showing again.

 

[tasset]

I recall this too.

That is a step up from the lower rates initially offered in the itunes stores but it is still not terrible good for people who have better equipment (speakers mainly) and good ears.

My stuff is all encoded at higher rates - so will this service perminantly "dumb" down my music quality. Of course, anything listened to in the cloud will be at the lower 256, but will it effect my actual library?

Basically iTunes will mirror your library in the cloud to what is on your Mac/PC. Your i-Device will get 256 quality from the cloud. Your library on your PC with either higher or lower bitrate will not be replaced, unless you delete it from your computer or your hard drive crashes. iTunes cloud saves those tracks in the cloud like an insurance policy if you will.

 

[TrickyTree1984]

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)

Boo. Take my pounds

 

[wovel]

You can "stream" music but its more like caching recent songs. It'll take time to load the "stream".

You do have to download songs, but as soon as you select songs from iTunes to download, they are available in the music app. You can start streaming a song before it downloads. There is no way to "just stream" and not take up space.

 

[Peace]

Basically iTunes will mirror your library in the cloud to what is on your Mac/PC. Your i-Device will get 256 quality from the cloud. Your library on your PC with either higher or lower bitrate will not be replaced, unless you delete it from your computer or your hard drive crashes. iTunes cloud saves those tracks in the cloud like an insurance policy if you will.

The upside of that is the cloud will replace 128kbps songs with 256kbps. However it will also replace a 1500kbps with a 256kbps song.

 

[pianophile]

>256k tracks?

I wonder how well iTunes will match >256k bitrate tracks, e.g. I rip mine in AIFF. Probably no different, I suspect, though I wouldn't be crazy about uploading my library, nor streaming it again at 256k after going to all the trouble of ripping/storing it uncompressed.

 

[gus6464]

Just turned it on and it recognized all the music that I matched from one of my machines. I am going to move all music to an external that is connected to my router so all my macs can recognize it.

 

[FearlessFreep]

I wonder how the 'match' will be determined? I have many songs that have 'extended' versions, not the chopped up radio edit that iTunes seems to love. The song itself is the same, but it's not the same edit. Hopefully those won't get replaced by the 'radio' edit.

 

[Patriot24]

Hopefully it goes without saying, but please backup your music before enabling Match. That way if something goes south, you'll always have your original files.

This message was brought to you by common sense in conjunction with foresight.

 

[macbookman83]

Duplicate songs??

My main concern would be how does Itunes match handle duplicate songs?

I have a library of over 12,000 songs and I'm sure a great deal of them are dupes. I've tried several apps but non seem to work on removing all duplicates.

In some cases I will have a song that's repeated but have a number 1 or 2 in front of it (IE Purple Rain.mp3 the dupe will read 01 Purple Rain or Purple Rain02).

Does anyone know how to remove those kind of dupes or if Itunes match will be able to remove them???

 

[milo]

I'm surprised we still don't have a real answer about how metadata and ratings work, whether they are preserved with new downloaded files on the computer or sent over the cloud to mobile devices.

And what happens with libraries with more than 25k songs or more than 5 gigs of unmatched songs? Is there any option to exclude certain material or does it still just give an error for the whole library?

Taken from Apple's website.

Yeah, but if it doesn't work well, those "few songs" could be a huge part of my library. If I have 2000 songs and 200 don't match, those will fit on the free upload space. If 1000 don't match that's all the room and I'd have to pay extra just because Apple doesn't have it working well enough.

Some way to test the library and see how many would be matched before laying out the cash would be great, if too many of my songs aren't matched, I pretty much can't use the service. Really, we're all going to just drink the kool-aid and trust apple that the ones that don't match will just be a "few songs"?

Beta testers have reported that many songs available in the iTunes store, with the exact same song titles, artist, album etc. were not matched. Is that working better in these more recent betas? I'd have more confidence in Apple if my iTunes didn't do such a bad job at getting album art, which should be a much easier task.

i had about 50,000 songs in my Library so I had to cut out about 25,000 songs.

How did you do that, was there a way to exclude them from Match or did you have to actually remove them from the iTunes library?

 

[MrDelux]

Ive been using it but I noticed it was buggy with the first beta and a little better but still buggy now.

I have a hard time it recognizing new tracks on my iPhone 4. While on my 3GS seems to work fine.

Also I turned off iTunes Match on my iPhone 4 hoping to restart it and remove all the music and it doesn't work. Seems to keep the music on permanently even when I sync music from iTunes and Sync "Nothing" the old music is still on the unit from the cloud

 

[tasset]

I wonder how the 'match' will be determined? I have many songs that have 'extended' versions, not the chopped up radio edit that iTunes seems to love. The song itself is the same, but it's not the same edit. Hopefully those won't get replaced by the 'radio' edit.

I pretty much expect a mixed bag with this. You might get some to match, others won't depending on the sample iTunes Match takes. For instance I have a Shakira song in Spanish. It matched it to a Spanish and English mix.

 

[SkippyThorson]

AC/DC?

If you mean the band then yes.

It's my opinion that iTunes has been collecting songs from developers in order to set a catalog of unmatched songs to increase the library size in the cloud.

AC/DC, Garth Brooks, and Kid Rock are very famously not on iTunes.

Shame, because an AC/DC catalogue and every Garth Brooks album ever released (across 3 box sets) make up a major part of my library. I'll look in to this, but I think this is going to be one of those features that's just not worth it for me. It'll certainly make a big difference to some, though.

 

[Rootus]

Here's what I have to say of the Match beta.
Out of 3,000 songs for me it matched 2,000.

That's roughly the ratio matched for my collection as well.

 

[jamesarm97]

My main concern would be how does Itunes match handle duplicate songs?

I have a library of over 12,000 songs and I'm sure a great deal of them are dupes. I've tried several apps but non seem to work on removing all duplicates.

I'm in the same boat. I am / have been using Jaikoz for the past few days trying to get rid of dups and clean up tags. I already have my music uploaded to music match and hopefully they will either wipe it one more time or somehow allow us to delete.

 

[Popinbottles]

Hope the Apple servers hold up when they do activate this. Don't think I can wait 7 hours while they try to match my library.

 

[PeterSharp]

I may have found a way to determine if your iTunes song is "iTunes Match friendly".

In iTunes, open the right sidebar with music recommendations (using the little icon in the bottom right corner). Select a song in your iTunes library.
After few seconds, on the top of sidebar you should see your song's info and genius recommendations below that. If the song hasn't been recognized (or mirrored in iTunes Store) you will get a "iTunes could not find matches for your selection".

Hope it helps.

 

[tazinlwfl]

So, wait.... unmatched/uploaded songs count towards your free 5GB plan?