I have a question about iTunes match. I have a Dell laptop that I used for a few years. It has all my music on it. About 400 albums. Now about 300 of those albums I downloaded and got free. I currently have a macbook air. Now my question is if I buy iTunes match for a year on my Macbook air will all those songs from my other laptop be available on my Macbook air via iTunes match? I don't really understand. Thanks.
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Can someone please explain "iTunes match" on to me?
- Thread starter Redrum509
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Yes. iTunes Match doesn't check as to how you obtained your music.
IMO, the idea is that you can be out and about with an iPhone (which can't hold 400 albums worth of music) and if you want to hear something you own that isn't synced to the iPhone, you can download it via iTunes Match on the spot.
If you're just needing to get your music from your Dell to your Mac, it's cheaper to just copy it over with an external drive, IMO.
No - no - no - no - no. Too uncool.
If both machines are on the LAN, you can simply copy them over. Ethernet is the fastest but WIFI is fine if you just start it and go run a errand and when ur back is all done.
Now you can copy the physical files over, I don't think you can "port" the library from a Wintel Machine to an OSX machine. I could be wrong but since Wintel HD and OSX HD have different organizations, I tend to believe it doesn't exists, that means after you copy the files over, THEN you will need to again import them, build, your Mac iTunes library from scratch.
Yea but I my macbook air only has 64gbs. I think an external hdd would be best right? Or would iTunes match be best?
Yes, I did it. I overwrote my Mac OS X iTunes Library file with my Windows 7 one (and copied all songs under the Music folder). I fired up iTunes on new MBA and double-click on a song to 'locate file' and all 10,000+ songs linked correctly. Even my song ratings carried over
Match would be idea; because you can stream the songs instead of storing the on your Air. Amazon Cloud Player would do the same.
Have a look at Flash drives; there is one for sale that is 64 GB and it just sticks out a little bit (a few millimetres) from the USB port. So unlike an external hdd, there are no cables involved. Of course you'd get a 500 GB hard drive for the same money, but 400 albums should fit quite easily.
iTunes Match is _very_ useful if you ripped all your CDs at 128 KBit and now you changed your mind and wished you had used 256 KBit. For $25, it will upgrade most of your music to 256 KBit (usually not all, depends on how exotic your music tastes are).
Oh, OK -- so you can't bring your entire iTunes library over because it won't fit on your Air.
If I were in that situation, I'd consider either using iTunes Match, or the Home Sharing.
Home Sharing is a free feature built into iTunes. As long as your Dell laptop and MacBook Air are on the same network (and you've enabled the Home Sharing feature on both), you can select songs/albums within iTunes on your Air, and they'll copy over from the Dell. To me, the advantages to Home Sharing are that it's free, and since you're copying from one laptop to the other, it'll probably copy the music more quickly than with iTunes Match.
iTunes Match's advantages (to me) are that you won't need your Dell laptop to be around in order to copy music. When you sign up for iTunes Match, it'll upload a list of all of the songs/albums from your Dell computer up to iTunes Match, and you'll see that same list on your MacBook Air/iPhone/iPad. Any song that doesn't already exist on your Air/iPhone/iPad will have a cloud icon next to it, and if you click the cloud icon, it will download the iTunes store version of the song/album to the device from the Internet (which is why you don't need your Dell laptop present for this to happen). Depending on the quality of the song on your Dell, the fact that the iTunes store version gets downloaded may be a good thing (it may be higher quality), or it may be a worse thing (it may be lower quality, if the version on your Dell was ripped at a very high bitrate). From reading posts on MacRumors over the last year or so, it seems like for most people, it's a good thing.
If you're interested in playing around with Home Sharing before you make the decision to purchase iTunes Match, Apple's got a pretty cool page for it here:
http://www.apple.com/support/homesharing/
As long as all of the media is stored within the iTunes folder, there isn't a problem copying the iTunes folder from Mac to Windows (or vice-versa).
If all of the media ISN'T stored within the iTunes folder, all of the instructions I've seen have the user consolidate the library (i.e. have iTunes move the media to within its folder) before copying the folder.
If you're curious, Apple has a guide for it (under the "External Storage" area) here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4527
Oh Dear.
Maybe cheaper in the long run to buy a flash memory card if you have the 13" Air?
Never thought about iTunes match as a solution for the machine that actually holds the library. IM to my mind is intended for an iPhone/iPad that don't have enough room to sync everything from the library sitting at home, but OK not saying it won't work.
Come back and tell us if it works.
Thanks everyone for the replies. Now if I get iTunes match and use my macbook air do the songs I choose to play stay on my air? or do I have to be on wifi in order to listen to them?
Also what happens to the songs I have that are not available on iTunes?
Also what happens to the songs I have that are not available on iTunes?
Huh?
Itunes Match = you HAVE to be in contact with the CLOUD at all times. That's where your music will be coming from.
That's what you want right, you said you have NO ROOM in your Air.
During the set up process they will be uploaded to the cloud, can take a while depending on your Internet connection.
You are wrong. Totally wrong. iTunes Match downloads a list of all your songs, plus all of the album art. That stays on the MBA permanently. When you play a song, it gets downloaded and starts playing a few seconds into the download. Once it's downloaded, the song stays on the MBA and can be played without any internet connection, until the user decides to delete it.
In iTunes, you can choose to display all music (including music in the cloud) or only the music that is on your computer, so without internet connection you'll know what you can and cannot play.
I see. So if I chose to download a few albums than delete them from my air a month later than decide to download again will I be allowed to do so? Or is there a limit on how many times I can download and delete songs?
IIRC, the only limit is that you can only have 10 devices associated with your iTunes Match. No limit on downloads.
You don't have to download the song from iTunes Match. It will stream just fine and not take up any space. I rarely download them.
Philip
That was about someone saying that you _must_ have internet connection with iTunes match. If you only stream, you need Internet. But you can download what's most important to you and play those songs later without internet connection.
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There's no mention of a download limit anywhere. And since you can download _everything_ onto ten devices, I couldn't see Apple having a problem with you downloading one album ten times.