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In iOS 6, iTunes Match Actually Supports Both Streaming and Downloading of Music

Match streams to iTunes

Perhaps this was already mentioned but Match streams to iTunes and downloads to IOS devices. Load iTunes on any computer, and activate Match. It will not download unless you specifically request. Playing music from iCloud simply steams.
 
TelegraphRoad said:
Perhaps this was already mentioned but Match streams to iTunes and downloads to IOS devices. Load iTunes on any computer, and activate Match. It will not download unless you specifically request. Playing music from iCloud simply steams.
Click to expand...
Yes it was mentioned. But as usual when it comes to Match, someone chimed in and claimed it always downloads for them. Read my reply to thebeautyisfake on the previous page of this thread.




Michael
 
I just wish they'd add an option to force a song to upload. I love movie scores and have many newly remastered albums that have tracks that were matched to the original (non-remastered) versions in iTunes. There is an obvious quality difference and it sucks, I wish I could force the remastered tracks to upload instead of matching.
 
retroactiv said:
You are correct sir. The music still downloads. You can see the size in "settings > usage" increase as you play more and more songs. Also, if you disconnect from any wifi or 3g/4g, you can still play the tracks. It's downloading them still. Period. They removed the icons - pure and simple.
Click to expand...

There's one difference - if you turn off iTunes Match, your downloaded music will be removed from the phone. In iOS 5, the music sticks around until you go into your usage settings and manually deleted all your music after you turn off iTunes Match.

This is mainly a UX tweak - makes it easier to turn off (and remove) iTunes Match music and cleans up the interface within the music player. I wonder if removing the cloud icon will make downloading individual songs from playlists more difficult. Maybe a "tap and hold" gesture will work?
 
Yeah this isn't true. The music is still downloading. Go to settings-general-about, and you will see the number of songs increasing as you play more.

No change from iOS 5 except there is no cloud icon by undownloaded songs.
 
liquidsuns said:
Yeah this isn't true. The music is still downloading. Go to settings-general-about, and you will see the number of songs increasing as you play more.

No change from iOS 5 except there is no cloud icon by undownloaded songs.
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I can assure you that with ios5, my vehicle did not see any of the Match Music, but with ios6 I now have access to all my match music.
 
digitalfx said:
I can assure you that with ios5, my vehicle did not see any of the Match Music, but with ios6 I now have access to all my match music.
Click to expand...

I don't understand what you are saying. Do you mean that it didn't show your Matched Music on iOS 5 unless it was already downloaded? There is an option to hide the songs you haven't downloaded, both in ios 5 and 6.

I guarantee you that it is still downloading the music and not just streaming it. You can easily figure this out in two ways; the amount of songs on your device will increase as you listen to music, and after you listen to a song, go into airplane mode and play it again....it will still play, which means it has been downloaded onto the device.
 
liquidsuns said:
I don't understand what you are saying. Do you mean that it didn't show your Matched Music on iOS 5 unless it was already downloaded? There is an option to hide the songs you haven't downloaded, both in ios 5 and 6.

I guarantee you that it is still downloading the music and not just streaming it. You can easily figure this out in two ways; the amount of songs on your device will increase as you listen to music, and after you listen to a song, go into airplane mode and play it again....it will still play, which means it has been downloaded onto the device.
Click to expand...

Plus, I just noticed, the "download all" button underneath the album art goes away if you listen to all the artist's songs, indicating that it has downloaded all the songs.

It's pretty conclusive that iTunes Match on ios 6 is still downloading everything you listen to.
 
Too bad, so sad. I won't be renewing my iTunes Match subscription this year unless they actually let it download album art.
 
britboyj said:
Too bad, so sad. I won't be renewing my iTunes Match subscription this year unless they actually let it download album art.
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It always... err, "sometimes" did show album art for me--if I already had it in iTunes and the moon was in its 3rd phase.

What I don't get, and for the life me don't know why something this trivial has taken so long, is lyrics.




Michael
 
This has been working for me pretty nicely so far. I'm going to want to get the next iPhone with LTE when it comes out of beta though. Sprint's 3G is a little slow, but saying that, streaming (I guess playing while it's downloading) is going a bit quicker than in iOS5 and there is less of a pronounced pause between each song now.
 
steviem said:
This has been working for me pretty nicely so far. I'm going to want to get the next iPhone with LTE when it comes out of beta though. Sprint's 3G is a little slow, but saying that, streaming (I guess playing while it's downloading) is going a bit quicker than in iOS5 and there is less of a pronounced pause between each song now.
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I have noticed the speed increase as well. Welcomed improvement!

iTunes Match was so slow on my 4S before iOS 6 that I turned it off and just synced through iTunes. Even songs that were already downloaded would take forever to begin playing, or fail to play altogether. So far not seeing any of that on 6.0.




Michael
 
thebeautyisfake said:
WRONG. It downloads the file and stores it in a folder.
Click to expand...

The only iTunes music I can find on my hard drive is the songs I've downloaded in playlists.

If I double click a song that is not locally stored, it will stream and play in iTunes. I search my entire hard drive and don't see the song I just streamed anywhere.

Yeah, I think it's streaming.

If you click the cloud next to a song, then it will download.
 
cvam1985 said:
The only iTunes music I can find on my hard drive is the songs I've downloaded in playlists.

If I double click a song that is not locally stored, it will stream and play in iTunes. I search my entire hard drive and don't see the song I just streamed anywhere.

Yeah, I think it's streaming.

If you click the cloud next to a song, then it will download.
Click to expand...
You are correct. iTunes does in fact stream when iTunes Match is on. It only downloads if you want to. I wish it was the same on iOS.

Oh, iTunes Match seems to have taken a turn for the worse on 6.0 beta 2 (for me). Previously I could sync via iTunes to "preload" my iPhone without needing to download from the cloud. When turning on Match on the iPhone, despite the warning, it didn't delete that synced music. Better yet, it left the lyrics in place, which are not available from the cloud with Match.

But now turning on Match completely wipes any existing music. I wish there was an option for it not to do that, particularly since now there is no way to have any lyrics if using Match.




Michael
 
capcaveman said:
Could not agree more, I signed up for Match today thinking I'd save some space but it's absolutely horrible. If you are used to being able to get to your music right away and have the ipod experience on your phone you will be very dissapointed. I couldn't believe it actually deletes all your music from your phone and then you have to redownload it. I know I should have read a little closer beforehand but I didn't expect apple to put out something so horrible. Hopefully they'll make a ton of improvements. So far it's way easier to use DropBox and the SongBox player.
Click to expand...
Yep. Plus with Amazon's recently released cloud player, there is simply no reason to use iTunes Match except to update those old DRM tracks to newer versions.
 
Beta 2 has made not only iTunes match, but also Music and any media playback (like watching a video that's in the camera roll) pretty unstable.

Watching a movie doesn't have volume controls. Pressing volume down takes me to the camera (?). Also the multi-tasking tray won't appear with a double click.

Music is pretty bad at this point for me. It does seem Match is streaming now, and the quality is horrible on my car speakers. Even after the song completes, a replay sounds horrible. I actually preferred the "download only" of iOS 5. If I didn't want a song locally stored, I'd simply swipe to delete.

Cover art, etc is just as bad now as it was in iOS 5. Beta 1 seemed to make the Match issues like that much better.

Just my 2 on it all.


Tinmania said:
You are correct. iTunes does in fact stream when iTunes Match is on. It only downloads if you want to. I wish it was the same on iOS.

Oh, iTunes Match seems to have taken a turn for the worse on 6.0 beta 2 (for me). Previously I could sync via iTunes to "preload" my iPhone without needing to download from the cloud. When turning on Match on the iPhone, despite the warning, it didn't delete that synced music. Better yet, it left the lyrics in place, which are not available from the cloud with Match.

But now turning on Match completely wipes any existing music. I wish there was an option for it not to do that, particularly since now there is no way to have any lyrics if using Match.




Michael
Click to expand...
 
Now iOS6 is out if I play a track and then turn off music match the songs I have played are still there. They have downloaded and not streamed.

Worse still, there is no way to delete them.
 
It's an interesting option, but streaming is more expensive in terms of battery drain and obviously data usage, if you pay for it.
 
So I "streamed" music from iTunes Match and then went to settings and turned off "Show All Music" which leaves music that has been "DOWNLOADED". Went to the Music App and all the music that I had stream were there taking up 182MB of space.

I don't think this is working as expected. :confused:
 
subsonix said:
It's an interesting option, but streaming is more expensive in terms of battery drain and obviously data usage, if you pay for it.
Click to expand...

You don't need to stream. You have the option to download the tunes to your device. My wife uses her iPod touch with this service and it works well.
 
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