iTunes Match: $24.99/Year, Matches Ripped Tunes, Offers Them In The Cloud

[Trek2100]

I have watched the keynote and the indvidual video clips several times.
1. The 5GB does NOT apply to music.
2. It mention a 25,000 cap.
3. Any music you have other than from iTunes and is in the iTunes library will be matched, converted and stored. I'm not sure whether you need the subscription for all your personal music or only the music you own that is not in the library.
4. If you have a non "i" device like an iPod classic, nano, shuffle, etc., I believe you would still have to sync with iTunes as is currently done. Perhaps you could still do the manual sync with the iPhone, etc., as well. Steve said you could cut the cable. Did not hear him say it was mandatory.

 

[The Norman]

This is going to be so interesting to see in action. There are so many variables involved. Those of you with thousands of crappy mono mp3's from Napster are in for a wonderful upgrade. Those of us with perfectly organized Lossless collections must wait to see what they do with our metadata...
I, for one, am so glad that all of my friends will be getting a 256aac upgrade. We all win! Those crappy mp3's are worse than my grandparents' AM radio!

 

[curtisinoc]

This is going to be so interesting to see in action. There are so many variables involved. Those of you with thousands of crappy mono mp3's from Napster are in for a wonderful upgrade. Those of us with perfectly organized Lossless collections must wait to see what they do with our metadata...
I, for one, am so glad that all of my friends will be getting a 256aac upgrade. We all win! Those crappy mp3's are worse than my grandparents' AM radio!

(a non audiophile question here) :
what's better: mp3 @ 192 kbps or aac @ 256 kbps? And if one is better than the other, is there a "noticeable difference" for the normal/non-audiophile?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[morespce54]

I just hope they'll do a better job matching songs than they do with the "Find album artwork" option from iTunes. Geez, right now, this function is such a hit and miss...

 

[DiamondMac]

I do have a question that may not be answered yet but I will ask anyway

Let's say I downloaded a CD illegally and the iTunes Match copies and ports it the way it is supposed to.

Will that CD's music be found in my "previous purchase" category? Or will I be able to download that CD later if my computer dies and I need to add the music to the new computer?

 

[n4uaj]

My question is will iTunes Match give me quality copies of LP's that i have imported using the ION USB turntable with no pops and scratches? That would be more than awesome. I know that as long as I use the correct album name and artist that 98 percent of the time the album cover is correct. Also I wonder will it be done per the album or by track. An example would be like the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album from 1962 is imported but the one on iTunes now has a song or two not on the original.

 

[ftaok]

I do have a question that may not be answered yet but I will ask anyway

Let's say I downloaded a CD illegally and the iTunes Match copies and ports it the way it is supposed to.

Will that CD's music be found in my "previous purchase" category? Or will I be able to download that CD later if my computer dies and I need to add the music to the new computer?

My guess is that any "matched" song will show up in iTunes/iCloud under a separate tab. You'll have your Purchased tab and your Matched tab. I would then extend my guess to say that you'll only have iCloud access to your Matched songs as long as you keep your subscription current, but if you have a back up copy on CD or a hard drive, it'll work regardless of your subscription status.

 

[brapmac740]

I was wondering when they would smarten up and get some money out of pirated tunes...

 

[MonkeySee....]

Can't someone point me in the direction of a thread that discusses people sharing iTunes, iPhoto (photo stream) data on seperate idevices.

Eg. me and the wife having access to our music and photos.

Thanks

 

[PeteJames]

"paying a fee to have access to [their] own music collection."

Why would anyone want to do that?

I thought a while ago that the day might come when apple takes over your laptop and scans it and forces you to pay for anything you didn't buy from the itunes store lol. It could be on it's way!

 

[jowie]

My question is will iTunes Match give me quality copies of LP's that i have imported using the ION USB turntable with no pops and scratches? That would be more than awesome. I know that as long as I use the correct album name and artist that 98 percent of the time the album cover is correct. Also I wonder will it be done per the album or by track. An example would be like the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album from 1962 is imported but the one on iTunes now has a song or two not on the original.

In my library I have 412 tunes that are sourced from vinyl that I know of. Out of these, 9 were matched by iTunes Match. Having said that, your result may well be higher... I seem to be an odd case, but my entire library of 13.6K items was only about 20% matched.

 

[jowie]

"paying a fee to have access to [their] own music collection."

Why would anyone want to do that?

That's an incredibly limited understanding of what iTunes Match does for you.

You have access to your entire music collection, wherever you may be, without thinking about it. It's cloud storage for up to 25,000 songs. In my case, my 13,500 or so songs come to about 135 GB. So if you extrapolate from that, it's offering me up to 250 GB of storage space for £21.99 per year. Where else can you get that level of cloud storage for that price?

What I also love is that it effectively adds the feature I have been longing for for years - an iTunes Server that I can manage from any Mac. Previously I could only login to another machine where my music was stored and then I could only read that information. Now, I can stream my own music on my machine at work, edit ID3 tags, playlists etc, all without downloading a single tune.

That's well worth the money for me.

I thought a while ago that the day might come when apple takes over your laptop and scans it and forces you to pay for anything you didn't buy from the itunes store lol. It could be on it's way!

I would say if anything they've done the opposite. You can even now download items from the iTunes Store that you didn't even buy there... For all Apple know, you could've obtained them illegally!

 

[Eric S.]

That's an incredibly limited understanding of what iTunes Match does for you.

You have access to your entire music collection, wherever you may be, without thinking about it.

I already have that. It's called iPod Classic.

It's cloud storage for up to 25,000 songs. In my case, my 13,500 or so songs come to about 135 GB. So if you extrapolate from that, it's offering me up to 250 GB of storage space for £21.99 per year. Where else can you get that level of cloud storage for that price?

Who cares? I don't want iCloud storage. I don't want access to my music controlled by Apple at some distant facility, subject to network outages and whatever price increases they may impose in the future. And I also don't want to deal with mismatches, incorrect or missing album art, or incorrect song titles and track info, all of which I have spent many hours correcting in my music database.

...

That's well worth the money for me.

And for me, I have everything I want now for free. Apple's asking me to pay for stuff I don't want, so the choice is pretty simple.

Now what I could use is some online storage for general data use like, oh I don't know... iDisk? Which is something I have used since the day it was offered and now Apple is dropping it. Thanks a lot Apple, just the latest in a long line of dumping on your long time customers.

 

[jowie]

I already have that. It's called iPod Classic.
Who cares? I don't want iCloud storage.

Okay, so we've ascertained iTunes Match isn't for you, obviously. So don't buy it, nobody's forcing you

I don't want access to my music controlled by Apple at some distant facility, subject to network outages and whatever price increases they may impose in the future.

It's stored at a distant facility, but you could just as easily download every track from your library to every device. So it doesn't have to rely on the network... It's for convenience and saving on storage space.

If they put up the price? You just leave the service. You lose nothing, all songs are still on the devices you stored them on. And any songs you upgraded to iTunes Plus will stay with you forever.

And I also don't want to deal with mismatches, incorrect or missing album art, or incorrect song titles and track info, all of which I have spent many hours correcting in my music database.

That's a total misconception. I've spent YEARS organising my collection, correcting ID3 tags and creating smart playlists. iTunes Match doesn't change any of that. Even if it matches a song, it keeps all your metadata exactly as you had it. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be using the service... And I think Apple realised they couldn't do that without annoying a lot of users.

And for me, I have everything I want now for free. Apple's asking me to pay for stuff I don't want, so the choice is pretty simple.

Which begs me to ask, why are you bothering spending time moaning about it? Apple sell lots of stuff I don't want. I don't complain about it though...

Now what I could use is some online storage for general data use like, oh I don't know... iDisk? Which is something I have used since the day it was offered and now Apple is dropping it. Thanks a lot Apple, just the latest in a long line of dumping on your long time customers.

Ah okay... That's the real gripe. I can't say I share your annoyance, I always found iDisk slow and unreliable. Dropbox was always much faster, and free, so I stuck with that. I would highly recommend it if you don't already use it.

 

[Eric S.]

That's a total misconception. I've spent YEARS organising my collection, correcting ID3 tags and creating smart playlists. iTunes Match doesn't change any of that. Even if it matches a song, it keeps all your metadata exactly as you had it. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be using the service... And I think Apple realised they couldn't do that without annoying a lot of users.

That would make it better, certainly, but somehow I don't believe it's all that easy.

Which begs me to ask, why are you bothering spending time moaning about it? Apple sell lots of stuff I don't want. I don't complain about it though...

It's more a case of historical progression. Apple used to do a lot of things that I found interesting, and sell products (i.e., computers!) that I wanted to buy. Now, with its ever-increasing focus on consumer electronics, there is rarely anything Apple does that has any interest for me. It's just frustrating, that's all, that their technical development has gone in this direction. I understand that they're making money hand over fist, but unless you're an Apple stockholder I don't see how that makes any difference.

Ah okay... That's the real gripe. I can't say I share your annoyance, I always found iDisk slow and unreliable. Dropbox was always much faster, and free, so I stuck with that. I would highly recommend it if you don't already use it.

Well the real gripe is what I stated above. But yes, Dropbox is probably where I'm headed before MobileMe sinks beneath the waves. But there it is, another investment that once would have been made in Apple is going elsewhere.

 

[jowie]

That would make it better, certainly, but somehow I don't believe it's all that easy.

Well it's certainly not perfect... Still lots of issues to iron out, like half-matched albums and some items that just stay as "waiting", but one thing I've not had is any problems with the integrity of my library.

It's more a case of historical progression. Apple used to do a lot of things that I found interesting, and sell products (i.e., computers!) that I wanted to buy. Now, with its ever-increasing focus on consumer electronics, there is rarely anything Apple does that has any interest for me. It's just frustrating, that's all, that their technical development has gone in this direction. I understand that they're making money hand over fist, but unless you're an Apple stockholder I don't see how that makes any difference.

I understand your frustration now. Although I guess I'm quite lucky... There are items I've not been interested in buying, but on the whole I've always found something of Apple's that has been of interest to me. For years I've been dying for some way to manage my library from any machine, so worth it to me for that alone. But then I'd have been happy with a piece of software called "iTunes Server", but that's not Apple's way.

Well the real gripe is what I stated above. But yes, Dropbox is probably where I'm headed before MobileMe sinks beneath the waves. But there it is, another investment that once would have been made in Apple is going elsewhere.

I tell you what really p*sses me off right now about the move from MobileMe to iCloud... No Snow Leopard support. My newest personal machine is an older white MacBook which can't run Lion, and my work machine is newer but I can't upgrade until my company get round to it... But I could own a Windows PC older than either of these machines running Vista, and I'd get iCloud support. That really does take the p*ss!