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

[fabian9]

How incredibly lame. Downloaded and installed new version of iTunes. Go to subscribe to iTunes match and am denied because my library has more than 25 thousand songs. I would just assume most folks have more than this and to not be able to use this service because of the amount of music in my library is ********.

1. It has been clear for several months that iTunes Match will only work for libraries up to 25k songs for now. I'm sure this will be lifted at some point, but Apple had to put a limit on it for until they can see how their server structures handle the huge demand this will cause.

2. I very much doubt that many people have more than 25k songs. Maybe 0.5% of all iTunes users?

3. I suppose one option might be to remove some songs from your library that you don't listen to much, then sync with iTunes Match, and then re-add those songs? Haven't tried it obviously but maybe it'll work?

 

[kavika411]

Control click on the column headings in the list view of Music.

Thanks. Again, I'm sure it is user error on my end, but I can't find any kind of "iCloud Status" option. When I control click on the column headings in the list view of music, this is what appears:

What am I overlooking? Thanks.

 

[KeithJenner]

I can see the posts now, "I used how much data last month?" I think this is a great feature if you have unlimited data, not if you are limited to 200meg, if you have to up it to 2gig that's another 10 bucks a month. So an additional 120.00 a year. Not such a cheap service anymore. Unless i am missing something where you are not charged for data with itunes match.

What you are missing is that most people will have the songs they listen to most often permanently on their devices and will learn to download when on wifi.

That's not to say that there won't be people who get caught out, at least initially.

 

[superjew1492]

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.

 

[Tabris82]

A silly question...
Does Match copy and maintain the rating for a song via metadata?

 

[tasset]

Thanks. Again, I'm sure it is user error on my end, but I can't find any kind of "iCloud Status" option. When I control click on the column headings in the list view of music, this is what appears:

Image

What am I overlooking? Thanks.

Odd. Are you sure you are on iTunes 10.5.1 ??

 

[Kahnyl]

Thanks. Again, I'm sure it is user error on my end, but I can't find any kind of "iCloud Status" option. When I control click on the column headings in the list view of music, this is what appears:

Image

What am I overlooking? Thanks.

I don't even have access to Match and it's there for me.

 

[auburnfan24]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

So I haven't been paying much attention, but I know that you have to have a connection to be internet (3G or wifi) to listen to match music.

So what are my options when I fly or when I have no internet connection?

 

[mdhwoods]

What you are missing is that most people will have the songs they listen to most often permanently on their devices and will learn to download when on wifi.

That's not to say that there won't be people who get caught out, at least initially.

I'm not sure if I buy that. The whole point in the cloud is to have access to your music anywhere. I think most people will play their songs when and where they are and not think twice if they are on wifi or not. There will be a lot of people with overages.

 

[penajmz]

The final release seems solid. All the names are in the right order finally. Let's see what happens.

 

[AnionicStrength]

Thanks. Again, I'm sure it is user error on my end, but I can't find any kind of "iCloud Status" option. When I control click on the column headings in the list view of music, this is what appears:

Image

What am I overlooking? Thanks.

Are you sure you have updated to iTunes 10.5.1?

Download iTunes

 

[kingsrule5]

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.

How are you getting 50GB of music on a phone that caps out at 32gb?

 

[kavika411]

Odd. Are you sure you are on iTunes 10.5.1 ??

Well, that does in fact appear to be my problem, but it's telling me 10.5 is still the most current.

Is 10.5.1 only available for developers? I thought it went live earlier today for everyone. Is that where I am wrong? Thanks.

 

[KeithJenner]

3. I suppose one option might be to remove some songs from your library that you don't listen to much, then sync with iTunes Match, and then re-add those songs? Haven't tried it obviously but maybe it'll work?

The solution, until Apple do something about the limit is to have two libraries, one with all your songs, and another that acts as the Match seed. There is a article linked earlier.

I'm hoping that by the time this gets to the UK then this will be sorted, but if not then I will be doing that, or moving my "second tier" tracks to another computer so they would still be available via home sharing but not go into Match.

My preference would be to be able to pay double for a 50,000 limit. I suspect Apples solution if they come up with one will be some sort of playlist selection though.

 

[milo]

That would be ultra-cool if that's what really happens. I assume then that this applies to all match and unmatched songs. It would even be cooler if in fact that meta-data such as lyrics gets transfered to your DEVICE when downloading from iCloud.

Sounds like it's even better than that. You don't even have to download the song again to get the new metadata, beta testers reported that when you change the metadata on your computer, the tags change on the iOS device almost immediately. So fixing something immediately pushes the fix to all devices. Pretty cool.

That limit still exists, but Macworld just published this article describing a work-around.

Thanks for the link but that's a pretty cumbersome way to do it. I'm planning to try getting that number under 25k by switching ones I don't need in the cloud from Music to Audiobook. Anyone else tried that yet, does that get them out of the count?

That's terrible really, since not only does it mean that you have to download over the air EVERY song that you want on your device permanently but it also means that you can't use the iTunes 128 kbps on the fly conversion to load music onto your device to save room.

This seemed cool until they made that FATAL flaw. What were they thinking?

Is it possible NOT to enable iTunes Match on the devices but still have your uploaded songs (and all meta-data) be "available" for download on request like it does currently using iCloud?

Completely agree, it seems insane that all iOS song downloads come from Apple's servers instead of from a hard drive that's sitting right there. Vastly slower syncs for me and tons of wasted bandwidth. And it sounds like it won't work well for smart playlists, right now when I sync it updates all of them and replaces old songs with new ones. Without the ability to sync will I have to manually tell it to download/refresh each playlist? Sounds like a nightmare. Hopefully they'll come to their senses and allow both Match and syncing, it would make much more sense.

Where is the switch that says DO NOT sync over cellular network?

According to the release notes:

By default, downloading over a cellular network is disabled. To download using cellular data, you must manually enable downloads using cellular data.

 

[superjew1492]

How are you getting 50GB of music on a phone that caps out at 32gb?

64gb iphone 4s

 

[absurdamerica]

Where is the switch that says DO NOT sync over cellular network? I could totally see ATT being complete wankers about data caps.

It's called "Don't click the cloud icon and redownload all of your music while not connected to a wifi network".

Everybody keeps asking about "synching", "data use", and "streaming"

It's really simple guys:

1. There is no more syncing. A song is either on your device or it's not just like with the list of "purchased" music in the iTunes application.

If it's not, click the cloud icon and it will be on your device, After that no data is used because the song exists locally.

2. Apple will start to stream the song if you click to listen to it and it isn't on your device. It's still just going to download the whole song to your device, that way it only needs to use data services for one play of the song.

 

[KeithJenner]

I'm not sure if I buy that. The whole point in the cloud is to have access to your music anywhere. I think most people will play their songs when and where they are and not think twice if they are on wifi or not. There will be a lot of people with overages.

But once they play it it is on the device until they delete it.

As I say, people will get caught out initially, but they will work it out.

 

[superjew1492]

How are you getting 50GB of music on a phone that caps out at 32gb?

64gb iphone 4s

the larger point is i theoretically could download all of my music over wifi over a few nights at home on wifi, but don't know if that cache is going to stay after say...my next software update. really just stupid. not sure why they can't just let you manually manage music and show you what cloud options you have...say...like you will have in your computer's iTunes library.

 

[jackrv]

You can delete the song from your library and iCloud and try again. But based on my experience with the betas I really don't think metadata/song info is involved at all. It seems like all tracks are sampled for sound.

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.

It is not available via software or iTunes update yet. But it is publicly available from the iTunes website.

 

[KeithJenner]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

So I haven't been paying much attention, but I know that you have to have a connection to be internet (3G or wifi) to listen to match music.

So what are my options when I fly or when I have no internet connection?

You need to be on the Internet to download tracks, but they stay there. You can't grab more music from the cloud without Internet, but you still have the music that's on your phone.

 

[penx]

I would definitely not assume that "most folks" have more than 25,000 songs.

What is that, like 150+ GB? Two months worth of music played straight through, 24 hours a day, with no repeating? Tens of thousands of dollars worth of music ? No, I don't think that represents "most folks" music collection.

I don't think most would have 25,000 songs but it seems like a very low, restrictive limit.

A few points:

1. It doesn't need to mean "Tens of thousands of dollars worth of music". There are plenty of sites offering (legal) free MP3s, music out of copyright, unsigned bands, label samplers, DJ mixes, radio recordings, spoken word that could easily mean someone has 25000+ legitimately obtained songs.

2. Buying 2 CDs a week with 10 tracks per CD over 25 years would result in a library of 26000 tracks.

3. Bands, producers, DJs, labels will have a lot of their own music or music people have sent them for free, easily totalling 25000.

 

[richard4339]

Couple of questions before taking the plunge:
- that 25,000 song limit, is it per itunes collection or per user account? Right now I have three different logins (thanks, icloud) tied to my itunes, does that mean i will get 75,000 songs?
- I've never been able to figure out how itunes works with non-US music. For example i have a lot of European music not available in the US version of the itunes store, but it is available in the respective Itune stores of the countries form the music originates. So will i able to match those with Itunes match or not?

Thanks!

I'm not sure how to answer the first, but the second is the US store only per http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4914

 

[kavika411]

It is not available via software or iTunes update yet. But it is publicly available from the iTunes website.

AHHHHH. Thanks.

 

[ctdonath]

How do audiobooks fit into this? They tend to break each disc down into ~5-minute chunks, and can chew up a lot of CDs (eyes nearby 30-disc copy of Under The Dome). A few books could chew up a LOT of the 25k track limit (ex.: 46 books like Under The Dome and that's your limit).