Or use iCloud. You know, like it says in the headline of the article.
Because few people if any are going to hear the difference between AAC 256 and a bigger file, particularly when it's coming out of a mobile device?
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Despite Apple's Denial, iTunes Match is Streaming
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Or use iCloud. You know, like it says in the headline of the article.
Because few people if any are going to hear the difference between AAC 256 and a bigger file, particularly when it's coming out of a mobile device?
I guess I'm confused as I thought streaming was the whole point, eliminating the need for storage 
Ah, but iCloud only allows me to stream stuff I own. Wouldn't it be better to be able to stream anything available in iTunes at anytime? Just sayin'
Only stuff you "own" ? Boy. That's funny considering Apple is allowing people to upload "questionably obtained" music.
I did a Foobar2000 ABX Comparator test between 320Kbps LAME, V0 LAME, 320Kbps AAC, 320Kbps Fraunhofer, 320Kbps ABR LAME, ALAC and FLAC. The lossy formats were derived from the FLAC original.
Between the lossy formats, there was little to no difference in sound quality. V0 had the lowest file size, which makes sense because it's a variable bit rate.
The difference between the lossless formats were nonexistent.
The difference between lossy formats and lossless formats were extremely clear. Because I listen to non-compressed music (as opposed to the 21st century's heavily compressed waveforms), the song I chose was 1812 Overture Telarc edition because:
Cannons provide high peak volumes
The choir entrance provides low volumes
The quality of the recording captures a large range of frequencies
It's an epic song to listen to and does not bore you when you listen to it for the 10th time
In most of the lossy formats, the peak volume of certain cannon shots were distorted. Low volumes were hard to hear. A certain ambience was removed from the original lossless version. The distortion was heavy, especially during the "s" sounds of the choir.
I could write a science paper on this...
Point being, the majority of people listen to the compressed music of the 21st century (see Death Magnetic). Which means the music is somewhat distorted to some extent already when in a lossless format, and when you transcode that music into a 320Kbps file, you won't really notice the degradation because the original itself was already distorted.
When the lossless original is distortion-free, such as the 1812 Overture recording that I tested with, the lost of data is clearly audible when you convert them into MP3s.
(compression in this post means dynamic range compression)
And it's often times not the device that limits the sound quality, but rather it's the speakers. The majority of users either go with the comfort of Apple's remote and mic or with cheap Skullcandy/JVC/etc. which don't even come close to replicating the fidelity of lossless music. When you have high-fidelity studio headphones and speakers, you can enjoy lossless music to its fullest extent.
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Ha. It's not exactly new since Google Music does the same on Android. It downloads the songs into a cache folder (making sure it leaves available space on the device for other apps). In fact, it is even more seamless with Google Music since you don't have to tell it to download. It just downloads it if it isn't in the cache (or manually stored on the device). IMHO, the iOS solution is a tad more complicated.
Wow, nice spin.
So a new song comes out. Now you have to go obtain an illegal copy and synch it to iCloud and then stream it. That sounds wonderful.
Why not just press the "Listen now" button?
Seems like you are trying to describe a new version of "ease of use"
i mean, what else could they do? its not possible to stream a 400MB 4 minute lossless file onto your 3G or even 4G network.
as i stated before, i am quite sure that storing music without compression will most likely be an option for paying subscribers.
1. Lossless files 4 minutes long average 20-30MB at 16-bit settings.
2. Which means it would require a minimum of 1Mbps to stream.
3. Which is perfectly possible if you have a good connection.
How about 24-bit?
Lossless files 4 minutes long at 24-bit are 90-100MB.
Which means it would need 3Mbps+ to stream
Bit of a stretch on 3G, perfectly possible on 4G and Wi-Fi.
What you speak of is a uselessly big 5.1 surround sound 24-bit 96000Hz extreme-hi-fi sound recording contained in a DVD. Which you can't even open in iTunes, because ALAC doesn't support 5.1 surround sound AFAIK.
Sure, storing is easy. What I (and most audiophiles) want is streaming without degradation.
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How would I go about storing it on my device? I'm using an iPod touch, so I rarely have WiFi and so far today I haven't been able to access any songs.
The funny thing is...
...back in the late 90s, Apple had 'streaming' for its videos that worked exactly this way, and everyone roundly mocked them for calling it streaming. "They're just downloading, and starting play before they finish downloading! THAT'S NOT STREAMING!"
No. As it turns out, it's better. In pretty much every way. (For everything but live streams, which are a whole different kettle of corn.)
...back in the late 90s, Apple had 'streaming' for its videos that worked exactly this way, and everyone roundly mocked them for calling it streaming. "They're just downloading, and starting play before they finish downloading! THAT'S NOT STREAMING!"
No. As it turns out, it's better. In pretty much every way. (For everything but live streams, which are a whole different kettle of corn.)
How does that compare to a direct to disc recording on vinyl on high quality speakers? To a live performance? There is lossy then there is lossy. The music most folks listen to is "convenience focused" NOT "quality focused."
Lover of insanely great reproductions.
Rocketman
... Why do you go out of your way to confuse a matter?
No*, it doesn't make a distinction between downloading and streaming, local or <cloud>. If you find a song and play, it doesn't ask you if you wish to 'stream' or download like the IOS5 example.
As I understand both services (from people's statements here) the IOS5 has a 'switch' that decides whether to leave the file on the device after playing or not. The download button just makes the file non-cache. (GMB may have something similar --- I don't have either** platforms so can't test myself.)
I would argue that the IOS5 is the better solution as people (non-technical) can understand it without a visible learning curve. But they are the same damn thing.
* Based entirely on the examples in the article, people's streaming, and the Google Music Beta website. No tests nor analysis of code has been done. Just plain reading without an obvious agenda.
** No smartphone at all; yet ... ;D
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I remember that. It was hard to understand why people had a problem with it.
I agree... in the video, he touches the song which isn't that supposed to just stream a sample of the song, like in iTunes? you can preview the song to make sure its the right track. THEN you touch the Cloud icon to download it.
I think its someone nit-picking the wording of Apples release notes.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)
Geez, some of you are really new around here. Apple has been known to remove feature from betas in their GM releases. This is obviously what is happening here. They've never said there will be streaming and they are now making it very clear. There will be no music streaming in the introductory version of iTunes Match. They're just testing it out in the beta so they can "get it right" in a future release.
Geez, some of you are really new around here. Apple has been known to remove feature from betas in their GM releases. This is obviously what is happening here. They've never said there will be streaming and they are now making it very clear. There will be no music streaming in the introductory version of iTunes Match. They're just testing it out in the beta so they can "get it right" in a future release.
Well thank god you're here otherwise we all would be completely wrong about everything going on!
The spokesperson simply stated that this isn't streaming which is technically correct. However, the difference between streaming and playing while downloading is non existent to the end user.
There is absolutely no reason to remove this in the final build as there is almost no extra overhead to play it while it's downloading and the user doesn't have to wait.
*Note: Most services these days don't truly stream anything anymore. YouTube, for instance, works exactly in the same way as iCloud Match.
What about data usage?!?!
I see a few have raised this point, but no one has really responded to it...
If the iCloud concept is a glorified version of streaming - downloading music files on a temporary, ad-hoc basis - will this not eat up valuable data on a limited plan? In the end, what good is this service if you have to pay through the teeth with your local carrier?
I'm a dinosaur and still have an old school cellphone (phone calls ONLY). I was hoping to finally graduate to a smart phone, and while this service sounds interesting, it also sounds dangerously expensive.
Anyone care to enlighten me? I must have something wrong, because I doubt Apple would overlook this blatantly obvious fact - especially since unlimited data plans are now few and far between.
I see a few have raised this point, but no one has really responded to it...
If the iCloud concept is a glorified version of streaming - downloading music files on a temporary, ad-hoc basis - will this not eat up valuable data on a limited plan? In the end, what good is this service if you have to pay through the teeth with your local carrier?
I'm a dinosaur and still have an old school cellphone (phone calls ONLY). I was hoping to finally graduate to a smart phone, and while this service sounds interesting, it also sounds dangerously expensive.
Anyone care to enlighten me? I must have something wrong, because I doubt Apple would overlook this blatantly obvious fact - especially since unlimited data plans are now few and far between.
Only parts of YouTube work like this, but the majority does not and is streaming. In Arn's example video, just after it starts playing, click somewhere in the middle of the timeline. Note how a) it starts playing almost immediately even the cached/buffered portion hasn't reached that point and b) the red buffered portion before it disappears as it is cleared from cache. This is exactly the difference. That said, what the guy says in the video is true - end users won't notice or care about this difference - and this solution is better than real streaming anyway.