Do you use your iTunes Match?

[Johnny Steps]

I've been wondering if I should delete my 2.9 gigs of music off my iPhone and just use iTunes Match to steam when I want. Some questions though...

1. I have a 3GB AT&T plan. Would I exceed it through normal use?
2. Is streaming the music smooth? Like will it steam immediately?
3. How do I know it's steaming and not simply downloading to my device?

Thanks for any help.

 

[skitzogreg]

I've been wondering if I should delete my 2.9 gigs of music off my iPhone and just use iTunes Match to steam when I want. Some questions though...

1. I have a 3GB AT&T plan. Would I exceed it through normal use?
2. Is streaming the music smooth? Like will it steam immediately?
3. How do I know it's steaming and not simply downloading to my device?

Thanks for any help.

You're going to naturally go through more data streaming. Not to mention, if you're in an area where there's no cell service, that would be annoying.

Look, you have 2.9gb of music. Keep that local. No need for iTunes match on your account.

 

[Johnny Steps]

You're going to naturally go through more data streaming. Not to mention, if you're in an area where there's no cell service, that would be annoying.

Look, you have 2.9gb of music. Keep that local. No need for iTunes match on your account.

I guess I'm freaking out a bit since I'm already down to about 6.9GB of space left on my 16GB phone. I have a 64GB iPad and it has 32GB left with all my music, games, and movies on it.

:\

 

[skitzogreg]

I guess I'm freaking out a bit since I'm already down to about 6.9GB of space left on my 16GB phone. I have a 64GB iPad and it has 32GB left with all my music, games, and movies on it.

:\

6.9gb is still 6.9gb. Reduce your apps before your music. Also get rid of old photos or stuff on your camera roll that you're not going to sort. It's easy to move space back to your phone.

 

[tmanto02]

Keep it local it is so much easier - IMO you only need to consider iTunes Match if you cant fit all your music on your iPhone. I bought iTunes Match because I have 110GB of music - Then I realised how much it sucked and disabled it

 

[Johnny Steps]

6.9gb is still 6.9gb. Reduce your apps before your music. Also get rid of old photos or stuff on your camera roll that you're not going to sort. It's easy to move space back to your phone.

Does photo steam space count as iPhone space? No right?

 

[FSMBP]

No, I don't.

Also, it might be better if this thread has a Poll.

 

[skitzogreg]

Does photo steam space count as iPhone space? No right?

Photo stream and camera roll are two different things. Photo stream downloads your camera roll data to the cloud and syncs it across devices. The camera roll is still space on the phone.

 

[Shorties]

First of all, I have iTunes match and I couldn't live without it, keeping all my computers, boot camp partition, and iDevices automatically synced to my playlists and music without actually having to sync is a godsend.

Second of all its not true streaming, you download the songs to your device when you stream them, so if the song comes up again when you are listening it doesn't use extra data to listen to it again. (From what I understand as you fill up space it starts to delete the stored songs you listen to the least to clear some space for you, not entirely sure how this works exactly). What I do is I make a few playlists on my desktop, then on my phone I download those playlists on Wi-Fi to not waste data. (Every playlist album, artist, has a download button where you can download everything related to the specific list you are looking at on your phone) I still have access to my whole library if there is something I want to listen to, but my main playlists are stored on my phone so they don't waste cell data.

All in all I think iTunes match is one of the best things Apple has ever offered, it amazes me that more people don't use it.


To answer your questions:

1. I have a 3GB AT&T plan. Would I exceed it through normal use?
2. Is streaming the music smooth? Like will it steam immediately?
3. How do I know it's steaming and not simply downloading to my device?

1. Not if you use it like I do, in which you preload your most popular playlists
2. Mostly, I mean obviously this depends on your Cell service, but for the most part it will start within three seconds of tapping on it.
3. It is downloading it to your iDevice, this is a good thing though because it reduces the overall amount of data you need to use. I found in normal usage I usually keep my music library under 4GB's on my phone with iTunes match, which is far less then I used when I had to plan all my playlists out ahead of time and sync them before I left the house.

 

[untg]

And as far as I know, you can't make it download the music to the phone when it streams for the first time, so you're ALWAYS streaming.

 

[Deacon-Blues]

I guess I am fortunate because my entire music collection is around 9GB in size, so it fits comfortably on my 16GB iPhone 5. I don't keep any videos on my phone because it's a phone, terrible for watching movies on.

Even if I did have more music, I probably wouldn't use Match because my data plan is 2GB. I would just manage what was on my phone with playlists. Some day I may use it to upgrade the 128kbps songs I have, but then I would just cancel after updating everything.

 

[Shorties]

And as far as I know, you can't make it download the music to the phone when it streams for the first time, so you're ALWAYS streaming.

No it is the other way around, you are actually always downloading. They did take the download buttons away from individual songs, but thats because when you play one you are downloading it simultaneously. If you want to download in bulk, all of your playlists, or any list view of an artist, or album, has a download button where you can download the entire thing, which is good idea to do on Wi-Fi for your favorite music or playlists.

 

[sundog925]

iTunes match with Siri is AWESOME.

I love just telling it to play whatever I fancy.

I have 119GB of Songs, Music vids and the like.

I may be a special case though. I HAVE to have all my music either on my iPod Classic, or iTunes Match. It's a nervousness I feel without everything. Call it OCD, whatever, I dont plan on seeking help, lol.

There are a few drawbacks though. I noticed ITM matches Explicit versions of songs to its censored counterpart. So on my computer, I have the explicit version, but in the "cloud", when it's played on my ITM device, its censored. Whatever, they'll get it right.

I love being able to replace my crappy VBR music with iTunes quality rips. That's a huge plus. It's essentially like spotify premium, though rather than $10/month, its $25/Year which breaks down to $2 a month. It's a no brainer really. If your an audiophile like me, its a MUST!

By the way, everyone pick up T.Swifts new album RED, its bad-ass!

 

[ipedro]

I was once a broke student who had a pretty big iTunes collection -- most of it... uhhh ripped from CDs (my own and borrowed*). Today, I'm more than happy to buy all of my music and with iTunes 11 putting the store directly in line with our own music collection, I'll likely be buying more.

I got iTunes Match to "legalize" all of my college days collection. It gave me an opportunity to patch up all my songs, upgrade them to iTunes Plus quality and treat it as all as "purchased music".

From the studios' standpoint, iTunes Match was an absolute stroke of Genius. Give everybody a chance for a fresh start with all their music now legit (for an annual price) and from then on they'll want it to stay that way. They would have otherwise not have gotten a penny from these so called "pirates".

I'm rediscovering Albums so I'm finding myself re-buying a lot of those ripped songs in their full albums. My taste in music has also changed so a lot of the crap that I downloaded has sat unplayed for years. I created a smart playlist that shows me those songs so every now and then, I either delete a bunch of them or rediscover songs I used to like. Either way, over time, most of my library is becoming legitimately purchased full albums.

If you got iTunes Match for nothing more than to clean up your library and upgrade it all to 256K, then it's the deal of the century. If you continue to pay the $25 bucks a year to have iCloud access to your entire library (legit and ripped), you're still coming out on top.

*Disclaimer: For legal purposes, all of the above post was pure fiction.

 

[xA4Hx]

I can't decide if I should keep iTunes Match or just use google music since I have app called gmusic and another person uploads their music to it or use to plus google gives u free music umm I just can't decide and my renewal comes up in 2 months and I need to reupload like 30gjgs or whatever it doesn't recognize to iTunes Match to get back online , sorry not trying to take over topic but I need some iPhone reviews because I won't be putting my music on my iPhone due to I would of had to buy a 64gb iPhone .

 

[Djlild7hina]

I don't use mine. It's probably because I deleted all my music (used to have 200GBs) before I went on a cleaning spree and deleted everything. I only have around 10GBs so I just keep it on my iDevice.

 

[Poonz]

I tried rdio for a couple months its convenient and works good but its a little expensive. So now I'm back to iTunes Match which I never cancelled. I just wish I could download one song at a time.

 

[Dash.com]

I was once a broke student who had a pretty big iTunes collection -- most of it... uhhh ripped from CDs (my own and borrowed*). Today, I'm more than happy to buy all of my music and with iTunes 11 putting the store directly in line with our own music collection, I'll likely be buying more.

I got iTunes Match to "legalize" all of my college days collection. It gave me an opportunity to patch up all my songs, upgrade them to iTunes Plus quality and treat it as all as "purchased music".

From the studios' standpoint, iTunes Match was an absolute stroke of Genius. Give everybody a chance for a fresh start with all their music now legit (for an annual price) and from then on they'll want it to stay that way. They would have otherwise not have gotten a penny from these so called "pirates".

I'm rediscovering Albums so I'm finding myself re-buying a lot of those ripped songs in their full albums. My taste in music has also changed so a lot of the crap that I downloaded has sat unplayed for years. I created a smart playlist that shows me those songs so every now and then, I either delete a bunch of them or rediscover songs I used to like. Either way, over time, most of my library is becoming legitimately purchased full albums.

If you got iTunes Match for nothing more than to clean up your library and upgrade it all to 256K, then it's the deal of the century. If you continue to pay the $25 bucks a year to have iCloud access to your entire library (legit and ripped), you're still coming out on top.

*Disclaimer: For legal purposes, all of the above post was pure fiction.

If you purchase iTunes match for nothing more than to cleanup some borrowed/found music then it is indeed a great service. But once it is cleaned up (legal and upgraded to 256k) then IMHO iTunes match is no longer needed. I have just cancelled my subscription (due to renew Nov 25th) and will keep my music locally and backed up on external drives. With IOS 6 removing the ability to download single tracks I have no use for this service with a limited data plan. Streaming music can and will push you over your data limit at some point and that is not something I want or need to deal with.

Of course with my new GS3 and it's 32gig sd card (48gig total space) I have plenty of room to store all my music. Yes I had to take the time to convert all my songs back to .mp3 but they are now all local as well as in Google play music...

For the Wife her iPhone 5 should be here tomorrow and between her iPod and iPhone she can store all her music and will no longer need iTunes match. It is a Great service to cleanup your music but once that has been completed it's not so great anymore...

 

[craftytony]

I love itunes match, it's nice not having to put my full collection of music on my iphone, and if I ever need a song I didn't move over I can still get it. Very nice service!

 

[djransom]

No it is the other way around, you are actually always downloading. They did take the download buttons away from individual songs, but thats because when you play one you are downloading it simultaneously. If you want to download in bulk, all of your playlists, or any list view of an artist, or album, has a download button where you can download the entire thing, which is good idea to do on Wi-Fi for your favorite music or playlists.

You're not downloading they're actually caching the songs on your phone. I use Match daily and listen to alot of music so this service works for me.

 

[enophi1]

I don't bother with Itunes Match, I have hundreds of gigs worth of music, so I just make a few playlists that I enjoy and with 64GB on my iphone I have enough room for a few gigs of music and video.

When I get bored, I switch the playlists around or I put together a playlist I might enjoy .

I buy a lot of music now via itunes on my iphone , I guess I am going down the "honest' path. So buying a few new tracks every week keeps things fresh.

 

[rollingstart]

You're not downloading they're actually caching the songs on your phone. I use Match daily and listen to alot of music so this service works for me.

Same difference. Caching=downloading, for the most part. Only difference is you can't delete individual songs from the cache. In any event you can still listen to songs in offline/airplane mode when downloaded/cached via Match.

Match is great. It allows me to have my entire library of music (90GB) available to me at any time without having to use all of that storage space on my iPhone. The only caveat is you have to have a network connection, which wasn't good last night (Sandy). But losing power during a hurricane is a huge one-off. I'll be connected either via cellular or Wifi 99+% of the time, anyway.

 

[Menel]

I use it all the time, not streaming though.

I adjust playlists wherever on wifi. On vacation, at parents, work. Etc

Wipe music cache in settings and download new playlists.

 

[kalexn]

I love it. It really only makes sense if you have a lot of music that you didn't purchase through iTunes. I was under the impression that the music you purchased through iTunes is always available through the Cloud.

Also, when you have it set to the streaming you see a little cloud/arrow icon next to it. If you click that it downloads the song. So you could really keep the ones you mainly listen to on by pushing the button and listen to the the other ones via streaming.