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Apple Launches iTunes Match with Release of iTunes 10.5.1 [Updated]

Is iTunes Match for me?
So I'm still trying to see if Match would be a good idea for me. Most if not all my music is in a good enough format for me. I have maybe a small amount of music under the 256kbs. I also have a rather small iTunes account on my current MBP. However while thinking Match over I realized somewhere I have an old laptop with tons of music on it. Does Match take all the music from any iTunes account I have had on multiple computers and put them all together?
If so my current MBP would have all my lost music plus current music correct? Or is it only stored in the Cloud?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong...

...but even if I sign up for iTunes match on my imac, AND on each of my ios devices, I can STILL sync up music when I connect to my mac, and KEEP these tracks loaded on my idevices.

THEN, if I should want to download/stream a track that wasn't loaded on my idevice, I can download it from the cloud.

Do I have it right? I see people on here freaking out that all of the tracks currently on their idevice will be wiped away, but I don't think that's true.

Can anyone confirm?
 
Anyone tried spoofing meta data yet to trick it into giving you songs you don't have? Also, does it match songs that are in other countries itunes stores but not your own?
 
Jacquesass said:
Who is going to be the first person to get their library down just under 25k songs, sign up, let Match complete, and then drop an extra thousand songs in your library?

I can get my library under 25k if I need to - but I don't want to then bump up against the limit in a few weeks...
Click to expand...

Mine is hopefully under 25k, I might be looking at that situation soon but I'd be curious if someone has already tried it out. The other situation I'm facing is getting Match enabled on a machine with under 25k songs but another machine on my account is over the limit. I don't want it to upload songs from that other machine but I'd still like the ability to retrieve them from the first computer.


tharris0101 said:
My unofficial estimate during the beta, was about 5 to 10 minutes for songs, metadata and playlists getting updated on my phone after changing things on my computer. That's not bad.
Click to expand...

5 to ten for what? Are you talking about updating the playlists (without grabbing the files in them) or actually fetching every song in those updated playlists? Right now I can just sync (including wirelessly) to fetch all song files in all synced playlists, I'm trying to figure out if I'll be able to do the same with Match.

tharris0101 said:
And remember, any songs you already have locally on your hard drive, iTunes will play first rather than stream.
Click to expand...

I'm not worried about that, my concern is if I want to sync a few gigs to an iOS device. Right now it takes a few minutes getting files from my local drive (even with wireless sync). Getting a few gigs over the internet from an Apple server could take hours with my connection, which could be unusable for me.
 
More metadata questions...artwork

Thank you for those who have posted info on metadata. The way I understand it from you is that your icloud music will match the metadata of your originally matched song. So If I have a 128kbs song by Elton John and edit my data to say that the genre is "gangster rap", the 256 aac song that I can redownload from the cloud will still list it as "gangster rap" right? (It was just an example, don't get a huffy about it).

My real question is, does your artwork stay the same as well? Will newly downloaded tracks have the same artwork as my original?
 
tharris0101 said:
That is a good question. People in the beta were having issues with getting clean versions of their songs matched when they had the explicit versions.

Remember, though, nothing on your local library gets deleted, so even if it didn't match them right you still have your original files.
Click to expand...

Say what? Apple wan't to replace my Tupac with some soft ****? I was always interested in iTunes Match as a way of cleaning up a library that has some music sourced from non-commercial channels, but this is not the cleaning I had in mind.
 
kavika411 said:
Well, that does in fact appear to be my problem, but it's telling me 10.5 is still the most current.

Image

Is 10.5.1 only available for developers? I thought it went live earlier today for everyone. Is that where I am wrong? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Read the first post, jesus.
 
starkmj said:
...but even if I sign up for iTunes match on my imac, AND on each of my ios devices, I can STILL sync up music when I connect to my mac, and KEEP these tracks loaded on my idevices.

THEN, if I should want to download/stream a track that wasn't loaded on my idevice, I can download it from the cloud.

Do I have it right? I see people on here freaking out that all of the tracks currently on their idevice will be wiped away, but I don't think that's true.

Can anyone confirm?
Click to expand...

Not exactly. If you turn on iTunes Match on an iDevice it will sweep off all the tracks you have synced previously and give you access to everything in the iCloud. But don't freak out there's an easy solution!
Before you turn on iTunes Match on your iDevice do this:
Create a playlist on your Mac called "favorites to sync" or something. Drag all the songs over that you had synced to your phone. Then turn on your phone's iTunes Match, go to that playlist and "Download all."
 
touchmonkey said:
I was gung-ho to try this, especially after the wait.
Spent a lot of time trying to chop my library down to under 25k songs.
Its at 27.5k, and when I tried to purchase Match it told me I couldn't due to being over 25k.
I now question whether I need or want it. I have a 16g iPad and a 16g iPhone4, and a 160g iPod Classic. I'm not sure its that hard for me to just put what I want to hear currently on the Pad and Phone, and if I want access to (almost) everything I own, there's the iPod Classic.
I'm gonna pass for now although I like the concept and it will work for many/most.
Click to expand...

I have a hard time seeing how there are more than 25,000 good songs in music history.

I've been pretty fervent about selectively collecting good music for the past 12 years and I have about 2,300 songs (some of which aren't very good).

There's only a handful of music archetypes that exist anyway. Everything else is a derivative of those few songs.
 
superjew1492 said:
until they make it so you can manually sync music and use the matched cloud music to supplement your desired tracks on the go as needed (currently rocking 50gb of music on my iPhone...so downloading wirelessly isn't a good option) and make it so you can edit cloud playlists after they're matched i'm going to leave match in the 'off' position.
Click to expand...

I have been a Beta tester, and with Beta 3, when I turned "iTunes Match" on in the iPhone settings, it did not erase my stored music on the iPhone. It kept all of the music I had previuously added from manual syncing with my computer and then added songs that were in the iCloud as "available" to download to the iPhone.
 
Canadia Land...?

I have a US iTunes account, but I live in Canada. Does anyone know if iTunes Match will work in the Great White North if I buy it...?
 
tasset said:
Not exactly. If you turn on iTunes Match on an iDevice it will sweep off all the tracks you have synced previously and give you access to everything in the iCloud. But don't freak out there's an easy solution!
Before you turn on iTunes Match on your iDevice do this:
Create a playlist on your Mac called "favorites to sync" or something. Drag all the songs over that you had synced to your phone. Then turn on your phone's iTunes Match, go to that playlist and "Download all."
Click to expand...

But does that mean if I'm on an airplane, with no wifi, or say on a subway, etc etc, that I can no longer listen to music because I can't keep music loaded on my iphone?

Do I always have to have access (wifi/3G) to the cloud in order to enjoy my music?
 
I have a question, since I am running out of HD space on my SSD, can I (after I back up to an external drive of course) sign up to iTunes match, upload music, and get rid of the copies on my HD to free up space? I would have the cloud / iTunes match to access and will have copies on an external HD if there are problems. Would that be a bad idea? Or do I need to have them on my HD after I upload my music with iTunes match?
 
Cybbe said:
Say what? Apple wan't to replace my Tupac with some soft ****?
Click to expand...

Sounds like it was just a bug in their matching software. Explicit versions worked some of the time, and there were also some issues with different versions of other songs - different recordings, live versions, edits/remixes, etc. But it sounds like that has improved and they'll continue to try and improve it.

It wouldn't make sense for apple to try to sanitize explicit versions since they sell them.
 
starkmj said:
But does that mean if I'm on an airplane, with no wifi, or say on a subway, etc etc, that I can no longer listen to music because I can't keep music loaded on my iphone?

Do I always have to have access (wifi/3G) to the cloud in order to enjoy my music?
Click to expand...

No no. Once you download any given track to your iDevice it stays there until you manually delete it off. Then you can listen to those specific tracks anywhere regardless of your network connection.
 
starkmj said:
Do I always have to have access (wifi/3G) to the cloud in order to enjoy my music?
Click to expand...
"Do I always have to have access to the cloud to listen to music on the cloud?"

Come on, people.

There is always the option to download and store music from the cloud that you want to keep locally, although obviously you're limited to the amount of storage space available on your particular device. But this is primarily a cloud-based service; obviously you have to have access to the cloud to use it.
 
evan0g said:
I have a US iTunes account, but I live in Canada. Does anyone know if iTunes Match will work in the Great White North if I buy it...?
Click to expand...

I have a US iTunes account but live on a tiny island 1.5 hours from Puerto Rico an I'm using it :cool:
 
starkmj said:
But does that mean if I'm on an airplane, with no wifi, or say on a subway, etc etc, that I can no longer listen to music because I can't keep music loaded on my iphone?

Do I always have to have access (wifi/3G) to the cloud in order to enjoy my music?
Click to expand...

Once again, when you download a song to your device it is there until you delete it.

Just remember to download some songs before you get on the plane.
 
Drunken Master said:
I have a hard time seeing how there are more than 25,000 good songs in music history.

I've been pretty fervent about selectively collecting good music for the past 12 years and I have about 2,300 songs (some of which aren't very good).
Click to expand...

Then you loose the ability to listen to music in its proper context. Sure, you can probably enjoy your Beatles by only having the #1 or some other "top hits" album, and do the same with The Who, Beach Boys, or Rolling Stones, but you would then loose out on the context in which this music was born. And that's only a few of the key artists of the 60s. Certainly for older artist the discography reveals much more than the individual song (these days the ease of which a single song can be downloaded or purchased lessens the impact of albums as such).

Add this up for different genres and periods. And yes, to truly get the most out of the "best" 2000 or whatever song, one needs to appreciate music history as such.

And once you account for that proper context, music history would need a lot more than 25,000 songs to be complete.
 
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