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Apple Activates iTunes Match Setting in iOS 5, Suggesting Imminent Launch
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Oh, wait, snap, you have FLAC files in iTunes?
When did this feat get accomplished?
Please tell me how.
I am not overly hopeful. Lala only managed to match about 30% of my music and I am very meticulous with my labeling. It would often match some tracks from an album and not others, which made no sense to me. Unless Apple have improved the technology immensely, I think their servers are going to be crushed trying to upload all that unrecognized content.
............ iTunes match removed a lot of album covers. Anyone know how to fix this?
And how come some of my songs aren't downloaded? I have 976 songs in the iTunes library but there are only 902 songs in my iPhone. Rest of the songs are greyed out
And how come some of my songs aren't downloaded? I have 976 songs in the iTunes library but there are only 902 songs in my iPhone. Rest of the songs are greyed out
Im sure you consented. You just didn't read the TOS
Apple does this all the time, when they turned on viewing apps you already purchased. The did that on the computer and the phone, right? You didn't get a software update at the exact moment they appeared.
Gary
Huh? What am I missing?
Why would i *not* want their service? Right now I use AudioGalaxy so I can hear my complete collection on my iPhone at any time I please. It is the highest quality that can STREAM. It would be much better to have cloud access to have any-time access to higher-than-streaming quality on iPhone. I'll continue to use my FLACs at home, of course.
Additionally it'd be good for the odd 1990's mp3 album I have from Emusic, it would be great to re-download in higher-than-128kbit format... why does any of this have to involve using iTunes as my player? (I used DeadbeeF and Foobar 2000 usually)
My big question with iTunes match is:
Will it match a physical CD? or do I have to rip it first?
It seems like with the CD it should be able to get a much better match than with the ripped/named tunes...
Do you see anything in the options for that?
And I don't need it one way or the other. I want it both ways
Gary
Will it match a physical CD? or do I have to rip it first?
It seems like with the CD it should be able to get a much better match than with the ripped/named tunes...
Do you see anything in the options for that?
And I don't need it one way or the other. I want it both ways
Gary
Definitely not. I don't use iTunes at all except as required (to sync iPhone and sometimes if I really need music on iPhone I transcode the flacs to mp3s and use itunes to copy to iphone... realy pain)
I would like to have this service but I'm not paying them the $25 until I know for sure how it is going to handle collections with over 25,000 songs. If there isn't an easy way to specify which songs should be matched or not then the service is severely flawed.
Any beta users have experience with this?
Any beta users have experience with this?
According to the WWDC keynote, iTunes matched songs can be "upgraded" or replaced with iTunes Plus formatted AAC+ DRM-free. This means matched songs that you downloaded to a device or computer will still be available to you after that first year.
What you'll lose is the benefits of having it in the cloud, which means you'll have to go back to syncing with iTunes for music you didn't purchase through the store.
I recall reading somewhere on Apple's site where songs purchased from iTunes does not count towards that 25,000 song limit. It sounds like you're still an edge case with 50K (wow!), but for people who's library is primarily iTunes purchases, that 25K limit should not be a problem.
Your music will need to be imported into iTunes in order to take advantage of the iTunes Match service. If the majority of your collection is FLAC, you will need to convert them into something that iTunes can play (MP3, AAC+, Apple Lossless, etc). Once there, iTunes Match will be able to do its work.
Few services are compatible with FLAC. Google Music is the one notable exception where the uploader will convert the files into 320kbps MP3 before uploading it, but of course, you don't get the ability to upgrade your lower-quality rips. Amazon Cloud Player doesn't accept FLAC at all.
Basically, if you want to use iTunes Match, be prepared to manage two libraries. One for your FLAC library, and one for iTunes.
i dont understand how this is news anyway. the toggle has been enabled on my iPhone 4 in iOS5 ever since i got it last week
no dev
Because the iTunes app does the actual matching. Unlikely there will be any way to use Match without iTunes.
Yeah, I've been asking that question for a month. You'd think one of the beta testers would know.
I'm waiting this out for a month after release and see what gives. Now that I have a 64 GB phone and do my own backups of data, iTunes Match really doesn't matter a whole lot anymore.
Tony
Read through the whole thread so far and see a number of questions that remain unanswered. Most likely due to the fact that the non-beta isn't live yet, but maybe they're just being overlooked. Just in case, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and ask a couple as well.
1. One of the big concerns is for libraries with over 25,000 songs that were not purchased in iTunes. If I'm understanding correctly, you don't get a choice of what you want iTunes Match to look for, it just takes it upon itself to scan and start uploading your whole library (a very bad design feature IMO), so what happens when it scans file 25,000 and there are still more to go? Do you just not get anything from the rest of your library scanned and potentially matched?
2. Once a file is matched, is it part of your cloud forever? One of my goals with Match was to upload my copies of CDs that I have ripped over the years, download the iTunes versions, and then remove the content from the cloud. I don't want my entire library floating around out there if I'm not going to be ever potentially downloading it to multiple devices. I'd rather only have to look through the albums I'm interested in at the time, not everything I've ever input into iTunes.
3. One of the biggest worries is the preservation of modified data, something a number of other people here are wondering about. I personally add information into the meta fields in order to help with smart playlists all the time, and definitely don't want to lose that. Additionally, my soundtracks are all labeled in specific ways to avoid just having the word Soundtrack or OST showing on every title. Anyone know if all that effort is going to be lost when iTunes matches it to the store which has their own naming scheme? Or might it just overwrite what you already have without losing anything you've changed in the meta data?
Been looking forward to this for a while, but the lack of specifics seem to be a big drawback right now. Hopefully more details are "imminent".
1. One of the big concerns is for libraries with over 25,000 songs that were not purchased in iTunes. If I'm understanding correctly, you don't get a choice of what you want iTunes Match to look for, it just takes it upon itself to scan and start uploading your whole library (a very bad design feature IMO), so what happens when it scans file 25,000 and there are still more to go? Do you just not get anything from the rest of your library scanned and potentially matched?
2. Once a file is matched, is it part of your cloud forever? One of my goals with Match was to upload my copies of CDs that I have ripped over the years, download the iTunes versions, and then remove the content from the cloud. I don't want my entire library floating around out there if I'm not going to be ever potentially downloading it to multiple devices. I'd rather only have to look through the albums I'm interested in at the time, not everything I've ever input into iTunes.
3. One of the biggest worries is the preservation of modified data, something a number of other people here are wondering about. I personally add information into the meta fields in order to help with smart playlists all the time, and definitely don't want to lose that. Additionally, my soundtracks are all labeled in specific ways to avoid just having the word Soundtrack or OST showing on every title. Anyone know if all that effort is going to be lost when iTunes matches it to the store which has their own naming scheme? Or might it just overwrite what you already have without losing anything you've changed in the meta data?
Been looking forward to this for a while, but the lack of specifics seem to be a big drawback right now. Hopefully more details are "imminent".
Thanks for the detailed info.
Now if only iTunes could get one thing right: understanding that a computer does not have all USB harddrives plugged in all the dang time (hello, laptop, portability, Apple have you heard of it?) and files will not eternally be in the same spot... (Hello, Apple, I keep new stuff on small laptop harddrive and migrate it as it is old)
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Hrm? So what, I have to run iTunes ONCE - match everything, and done. I download what I want a better copy of, but I shouldn't even have to run iTunes again
Data charges??
I hope Apple works out a deal with the wireless providers to exempt music streaming of iTunes Match from the data count we get charged for.
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I recall in the keynote them saying playlisys, etc, will be preserved! It's all meta data so trivial on their part.
I hope Apple works out a deal with the wireless providers to exempt music streaming of iTunes Match from the data count we get charged for.
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I recall in the keynote them saying playlisys, etc, will be preserved! It's all meta data so trivial on their part.
I made a YouTube video about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaSn9C30wuo
Your iTunes data is completely separate from the file itself, so song ratings and play counts are synced separately and applied. It's actually very well done.
However, I've disabled iTunes Match in the meantime because I had a lot of problems with Apple overwriting changes in my library from versions that were out of date. Like, I would change a playlist and it would revert to the old versions, or merely stick any new songs onto the end versus the order I'd chosen. Really annoying. When Apple wiped iCloud and reset Match, I didn't re-enable and figured I'd wait for the final version.
I sure hope they improve iTunes's matching capabilities. I have so many CD rips in my iTunes library, which do exist in iTunes store, but iTunes can't match the album to anything in the store to find the cover art. So sometimes iTunes can't really recognize an album even though it exists in the store. And that's gonna create some problems with the Match service.
Sounds like Play Lists are going to more important than ever. Maybe you can take those "undeleted" songs and put them in their own folder or play list, then when you browse your collection you can do so by play lists and you can quickly breeze past the ones you're not interested in. I suspect Apple will start adding more granular control because of issues like this.