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

Here is my report:

The whole process took around 1.5 hours for me.

Error - 8 (due to being MPEG format. I converted them to AAC and they uploaded fine)
Duplicate - 6
Not Eligible - 6 (Songs <= 100kbps, not including digital booklets, etc)
Waiting - 11 (due to being MPEG format. I converted them to AAC and they uploaded fine)
Purchased - 915
Matched - 2088
Uploaded - 760

Overall not bad. I will listen to tracks and such and report back any other findings I have...
 
Okay, turned it off. May check back in a week. But no way am I going to sit around for the next two weeks while it uploads half...yes, half....of my songs to the cloud. Songs that are sitting right there in iTunes. Songs that Apple says "oh, just pay us $25 a year and it will match the songs you have with the songs in our library". Really? Why are half the albums, which are ALL available on iTunes, being skipped by Match?

I can understand if these songs weren't in iTunes. I understand totally that the songs it DOESN'T have, I have to upload if I want them available in the cloud. I get that. But as I say, all of these songs and albums (with a handful of exceptions) are all available on the iTunes store, but Match is skipping them for some reason. Skipping even certain songs in the same album! For instance, I have Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare", all ripped from my CD. It sees all the songs except "Some Folks". The little cloud icon is beside all the songs for that album except "Some Folks". Yes, it's available in the iTunes Store. No, Match doesn't see it and wants to "upload" it to the cloud.

Honestly, at this point I want my money back...but I understand that it's brand new and I'm sure these are all bugs blah blah blah. Just infuriating.
 
mtrctyjoe said:
Every song in my 5000+ library got changed to this one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ5TajZYW6Y
Click to expand...

What is up with everyone tricking out links to Rick Astley?
Half of you tube has fake videos that take you to this video... it was funny the first time.... but dude, you're about six months late to the party. It stopped being funny ages ago.

And somehow... I just knew this was going to be this video. I so got rolled. Again.
 
A google music app is expected at this point. When I had an android I uploaded 20,000 songs to googles servers and i didn't have to download a song to my device when I wanted to listening to it. All the money apple has you'd think they'd allow streaming
 
ksgant said:
Okay, turned it off. May check back in a week. But no way am I going to sit around for the next two weeks while it uploads half...yes, half....of my songs to the cloud. Songs that are sitting right there in iTunes. Songs that Apple says "oh, just pay us $25 a year and it will match the songs you have with the songs in our library". Really? Why are half the albums, which are ALL available on iTunes, being skipped by Match?

I can understand if these songs weren't in iTunes. I understand totally that the songs it DOESN'T have, I have to upload if I want them available in the cloud. I get that. But as I say, all of these songs and albums (with a handful of exceptions) are all available on the iTunes store, but Match is skipping them for some reason. Skipping even certain songs in the same album! For instance, I have Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare", all ripped from my CD. It sees all the songs except "Some Folks". The little cloud icon is beside all the songs for that album except "Some Folks". Yes, it's available in the iTunes Store. No, Match doesn't see it and wants to "upload" it to the cloud.

Honestly, at this point I want my money back...but I understand that it's brand new and I'm sure these are all bugs blah blah blah. Just infuriating.
Click to expand...

Dude, its not itunes fault, it's probably yours.

Again, lazy people who stole crap for years and never updated the spellings of their p2p download tracks won't see matches.

Half your songs probably have the artist and song name in one field.

It might suck to spend an hour going track by track to fix that, but ti would be faster then uploading them all.
 
ksgant said:
Seems to be missing some albums. I know for a fact that the iTunes Store has the Stones "Exile on Main Street", yet when Match went through my library, it skipped over it and now there's no little cloud icon by "Exile". I have many other tracks too that are on iTunes yet match isn't seeing them. :rolleyes:

In fact, about half my library seems to be skipped by Match. And about 95% of that IS in iTunes...but for some reason it's not recognizing it.
Click to expand...
A question about this - do you have many songs from older CDs? In other words, the songs you are attempting to upload that iTunes Match isn't matching, are they older songs that have remastered versions in the iTunes Store that YOU don't have? My curiosity about this is two-fold - is it going to upgrade non-remastered tunes to remastered ones, and if so, how in the heck do I keep it from doing so if I DON'T want it to?!
 
So if it doesn't match something correctly or thinks it is a duplicate but it is not (live or something), can you change the title or something and have it re-check the song and upload it?
 
Lord Flashheart said:
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?
Click to expand...

In my opinion that is a terrible idea. Match is not a storage service regardless of how people are thinking about it. It is a personal music distribution service. If the only place that you have a file is in the cloud you are flirting with danger. Now, you might keep songs on the cloud and archived somewhere and delete them from your computer to save space, but I would never count on a third party system, even Apple's to safeguard my data.
 
MacAddict1978 said:
Dude, its not itunes fault, it's probably yours.

Again, lazy people who stole crap for years and never updated the spellings of their p2p download tracks won't see matches.
Click to expand...

You must have missed his example where he said it's ripped from his CD.
 
HeyGreggie said:
A google music app is expected at this point. When I had an android I uploaded 20,000 songs to googles servers and i didn't have to download a song to my device when I wanted to listening to it. All the money apple has you'd think they'd allow streaming
Click to expand...

What's the difference between clicking to play a track and immediately hearing it WHILE it downloads in the background and streaming exactly?

That's what I'm curious about.

Also, why are you excited about paying more for data charges?

With match you listen to song A three times: It starts playing the first time you click it while it downloads you hear it, the subsequent two listens play from the device itself so you only need to be connected to the network for the first listen.


With google you listen to song A three times. You need to be connected to the network for all three listens and you pay data charges for all three listens.


Seems pretty obvious which is the better choice to me...
 
Nunyabinez said:
In my opinion that is a terrible idea. Match is not a storage service regardless of how people are thinking about it. It is a personal music distribution service. If the only place that you have a file is in the cloud you are flirting with danger. Now, you might keep songs on the cloud and archived somewhere and delete them from your computer to save space, but I would never count on a third party system, even Apple's to safeguard my data.
Click to expand...

He does specifically state that he will be archiving the copies somewhere, so he is fairly safe (as long as he checks that archive is still OK, and preferably has a couple of copies).
 
MacAddict1978 said:
Dude, its not itunes fault, it's probably yours.

Again, lazy people who stole crap for years and never updated the spellings of their p2p download tracks won't see matches.

Half your songs probably have the artist and song name in one field.

It might suck to spend an hour going track by track to fix that, but ti would be faster then uploading them all.
Click to expand...

DUDE, it's not my fault. I'm sitting here looking at my CD collection that I ripped into iTunes, and I'm looking at how iTunes Match is skipping over some of these...not all...but some for no good reason even though they're in the iTunes Store.

They were ripped with iTunes. These songs and albums are all correctly cataloged and everything is where it should be. But hey, thanks for just assuming I'm a dirty pirate.
 
KeithJenner said:
Do you have any evidence for that?
Click to expand...

Yes. It was the entire selling point of the service!
Try apple's web site for details... watch the keynote from it's release to have the late Steve Jobs tell you this... and you can also read the user agreement for the service that you clicked OK that tells you this as well.

Also, just about ever news article that explains the service cites this as well :)

This was why Apple needed a license with the RIAA/labels to launch the service, and why it's not available over seas yet.

That $25 you pay pretty much all goes to the RIAA. Apple won't make any money off this service until people hit their second year.

Once you've downloaded your new copy, it is a legally purchased copy via iTunes. All the tracks you have for $25.
 
absurdamerica said:
What's the difference between clicking to play a track and immediately hearing it WHILE it downloads in the background and streaming exactly?

That's what I'm curious about.

Also, why are you excited about paying more for data charges?

With match you listen to song A three times: It starts playing the first time you click it while it downloads you hear it, the subsequent two listens play from the device itself so you only need to be connected to the network for the first listen.


With google you listen to song A three times. You need to be connected to the network for all three listens and you pay data charges for all three listens.


Seems pretty obvious which is the better choice FOR me...
Click to expand...

Fixed that for you.

For example - I have unlimited data. I don't want to take up space on my iPhone with songs I rarely listen to but might want to access. I don't want to have to "manage" my music on my iphone. IE - today I want to hear this album but tomorrow a different one. Why would I need to clutter up my iphone with songs only to keep removing them and adding them.

I'm not advocating for either services. I'm explaining why both options might be preferred. With streaming - you don't have to manage music. You have all your songs and you listen whenever/however you want without having to load and unload.

Again - both models have their +'s and -'s
 
MacAddict1978 said:
Dude, its not itunes fault, it's probably yours.

Again, lazy people who stole crap for years and never updated the spellings of their p2p download tracks won't see matches.

Half your songs probably have the artist and song name in one field.

It might suck to spend an hour going track by track to fix that, but ti would be faster then uploading them all.
Click to expand...

It doesn't use metadata to match tracks. People have tested this by deliberately mistagging songs and Match still gets it right.
 
absurdamerica said:
What's the difference between clicking to play a track and immediately hearing it WHILE it downloads in the background and streaming exactly?

That's what I'm curious about.
Click to expand...

Here is what I want and expect...

My iTunes Library in the Cloud. correct?

I want to have my iPhone empty of music, connect to my library of 15K+ songs and shuffle them like a jukebox.

I don't want to cherry pick what songs I want played and when.

I think this was Apple's original idea but the phone carriers went nuts.
There will always be the morons that never turn on their wifi even though they are in range of it.
 
malnar said:
A question about this - do you have many songs from older CDs? In other words, the songs you are attempting to upload that iTunes Match isn't matching, are they older songs that have remastered versions in the iTunes Store that YOU don't have? My curiosity about this is two-fold - is it going to upgrade non-remastered tunes to remastered ones, and if so, how in the heck do I keep it from doing so if I DON'T want it to?!
Click to expand...

Well, that may be. For instance i have my copy of "Exile on Main Street" from like 20 years ago (give or take)...ripped into iTunes about 6 or 7 years ago. They have the "remastered" version on iTunes so is this why it's not updating? That would suck!

EDIT: So I took some of these tracks, and using the iTunes drop down menu I converted them all to AAC files and updated Match to see if it would see them. Now, I get a cloud icon with a little "x" in the middle. Now what does that mean?
 
tasset said:
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.
Click to expand...

Got it.

But what if I have music on my mac that my wife bought with her own apple ID? Will I be able to listen to these tracks on my iphone?
 
MacAddict1978 said:
While the match feature might not bode well, you could still upload those to have a back up.
Click to expand...

Songs aren't uploaded as lossless, stuff that's higher gets converted down (to 256 I believe).

MacAddict1978 said:
Again, lazy people who stole crap for years and never updated the spellings of their p2p download tracks won't see matches.
Click to expand...

Wow, did you even read the post you replied to? Album ripped from CD, all tunes matched but one. MANY testers reported this exact experience during the beta. This service still has issues (although it sounds like it has improved a lot over the betas). Sure some people may have files munged beyond recognition but Match fails on some material that's in the store and named perfectly.

Just look at iTunes trying to get album artwork. It still fails with albums that are sold in iTunes, identical album, song, and artist.


absurdamerica said:
What's the difference between clicking to play a track and immediately hearing it WHILE it downloads in the background and streaming exactly?
Click to expand...

Whether you have to delete the song afterwards or not. Where I come from, more options for the user is a good thing.

absurdamerica said:
Also, why are you excited about paying more for data charges?
Click to expand...

Wifi.
 
ksgant said:
DUDE, it's not my fault. I'm sitting here looking at my CD collection that I ripped into iTunes, and I'm looking at how iTunes Match is skipping over some of these...not all...but some for no good reason even though they're in the iTunes Store.

They were ripped with iTunes. These songs and albums are all correctly cataloged and everything is where it should be. But hey, thanks for just assuming I'm a dirty pirate.
Click to expand...

My bad. Stuff you ripped off of a CD is different than stuff you downloaded. Didn't mean to lump you all together.
 
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