'iTunes Match' Allows Both Streaming and Downloading of Music

[Carouser]

We now are able to sync wirelessly, so that mindset is bound to change. It is smart for Apple to announce something like this BEFORE iOS 5 and PC-free was available to the general public.

iOS 5 and PC-free do not replace iTunes Match. If you think this is so, you do not understand what they are.

Furthermore, the $25 yearly subscription rate does not seem like much. So it's more the smaller, sooner reward that we get of having our music "in the cloud" that makes it seem worth it than the larger, later reward of holding out and seeing the service for what it really is - worthless to most.

What is any other way of obtaining this service, for those interested?

 

[0309385]

Question:

So like the songs we upload to iCloud that aren't in the iTunes store will they stream too? Or are we gonna have to download them.

Thanks

Ethan

 

[iSingandiDance]

iOS 5 and PC-free do not replace iTunes Match. If you think this is so, you do not understand what they are.

What is any other way of obtaining this service, for those interested?

I never said it replaced iTunes Match; it's just an alternative. The whole point I was trying to make is that we are adapted to this ecosystem where the iOS device depends on the PC via USB, to this day (for those without beta). How we view iTunes Match now will be different from how we view it then.

Some of us think we need iTunes Match because ALL we know is the burdensome, dependence that is the Mac(PC)/iTunes/USB relationship. After we've accustomed ourselves to synching wirelessly, the allure that is iTunes Match won't be so apparent.

And there is no other service for those interested. That's why I said for "worthless to most". The interest will undoubtedly wane as an acclimation to iOS 5 is acheived.

 

[Lvivske]

Can someone please explain the differences between Apple's $25 service and Google's free cloud based music service? As a Mac and iOS owner, I'm trying to figure out if there's much difference here.

Google Music stores your file (its metadata, album art, etc), iCloud streams you back their copy (if they have it)

Apple will offer an upconverted file, or compress it, depending you're plus/minus on the 256kbps front; Google will keep the files as-is and only downconvert if you're lossless

Google is web interface....iCloud uses iTunes software suite

Outside of that....

 

[JAT]

I tend to get the least amount of storage possible when choosing an iOS device. I don't have a lot of memory to be hoarding every single song and my music taste are very diverse and what I want to listen to fluctuates daily.

So, it would not beheave me to sync those 500 songs when that space can be used for other things.

That makes no sense. If your tastes for the moment change so frequently, taking it with you is the best option. This is why I want a large storage space.

I keep about 4GB open on my phone for pics/video I might want to take, or other new things. Having a 32GB gives me a lot more options. I'd love more storage. Or, Match could help.

I can see how it caters to some - frequent flyers, vagabonds, and nomads, but the majority of us are settled into one location and can go a few days without listening to that one song. If not, there are ways around it. That $25 can be put to much better use.

But it's the new thing, so obviously droves are going to flock to it.

So, you don't like having ANY form of access to the variety you like. Sounds masochistic to me.

 

[Lvivske]

RIAA: Let's charge them to listen to their own music.
Apple: It's the perfect plan.

While on the surface iTunes Match looks like a great service with a lot of promise, it's really nothing but smoke and mirrors.

With iOS 5 I'll be able to sync my own songs to my iOS device for FREE. If I'm in the mood for a certain artist or genre one day, I'll sync accordingly. No longer will I have to deal with tedious backups and syncs when all I really want is to add an album or two. No matter how ferocious your music appetite, you can listen to one song at a time. So, I'll take those two or so minutes out of my day and pocket that $25.

Let's not even get into the fact that most data plans are limited and music streaming is one of its many usages. And what about when I'm underground or in a bad area where the signal isn't great.

Local storage is the way to go.

Thanks Apple, but no thanks.

Personally, I'd rather not have to sync; I usually forget to or am too lazy.

Also, you're not longer constrained by the size of your drive...I'd mostly like to, if I'm on the go, run a shuffle of my favorite songs....and this count exceeds the 16gb on my phone or ipod.

It's a nominal fee for a service that makes life easier and gives expanded range of options on the go.

I'm on the fence about this, I use an Android phone....but if I can rate songs while I'm at the office and it syncs with my home library, I'm sold on that alone. If not, I'll stick to Google Music.

 

[iSingandiDance]

That makes no sense. If your tastes for the moment change so frequently, taking it with you is the best option. This is why I want a large storage space.

I keep about 4GB open on my phone for pics/video I might want to take, or other new things. Having a 32GB gives me a lot more options. I'd love more storage. Or, Match could help.

So, you don't like ANY form of having access to the variety you like. Sounds masochistic to me.

How doesn't it make sense when I don't mind syncing my music? It should even make more sense that come October, I'll be able to wirelessly sync.

And how does masochism correlate to me not wanting my entire library on hand? My music taste don't change that frequently and I always have go-to albums on deck.

I love the cloud and all its offerings, but this one doesn't seem to fit the bill.

It isn't the price; it's the principle.

 

[Carouser]

I never said it replaced iTunes Match; it's just an alternative. The whole point I was trying to make is that we are adapted to this ecosystem where the iOS device depends on the PC via USB, to this day (for those without beta). How we view iTunes Match now will be different from how we view it then.

Some of us think we need iTunes Match because ALL we know is the burdensome, dependence that is the Mac(PC)/iTunes/USB relationship. After we've accustomed ourselves to synching wirelessly, the allure that is iTunes Match won't be so apparent.

And there is no other service for those interested. That's why I said for "worthless to most". The interest will undoubtedly wane as an acclimation to iOS 5 is acheived.

So people are enthused about iTunes Match primarily because they don't want to use their USB cord to sync at home, and that when they can sync at home wirelessly iTunes Match won't seem like such a big deal?

I and many others like the prospect of having minimal storage on our devices and being able to access our libraries from anywhere. Wireless sync has total zilch to do with this.

 

[eye]

I tend to get the least amount of storage possible when choosing an iOS device. I don't have a lot of memory to be hoarding every single song and my music taste are very diverse and what I want to listen to fluctuates daily.

So, it would not beheave me to sync those 500 songs when that space can be used for other things.

And the mentality to sync all of one's playlist or collection is influenced by the pc - usb - ios device relationship. We now are able to sync wirelessly, so that mindset is bound to change. It is smart for Apple to announce something like this BEFORE iOS 5 and PC-free was available to the general public.

Furthermore, the $25 yearly subscription rate does not seem like much. So it's more the smaller, sooner reward that we get of having our music "in the cloud" that makes it seem worth it than the larger, later reward of holding out and seeing the service for what it really is - worthless to most.


For my purposes, it isn't really feasible. And yes I do leave the house and travel often. On such instances, I'll probably take my pc with me.

I can see how it caters to some - frequent flyers, vagabonds, and nomads, but the majority of us are settled into one location and can go a few days without listening to that one song. If not, there are ways around it. That $25 can be put to much better use.

But it's the new thing, so obviously droves are going to flock to it.

You just reminded me of the best feature of ios5 - wireless syncing. Makes the cloud even more worthless to me. Don't get me wrong, many will love it, but most won't bother with it or even be remotely excited about it.

 

[milo]

Some of us think we need iTunes Match because ALL we know is the burdensome, dependence that is the Mac(PC)/iTunes/USB relationship.

While it will be great to no longer have USB necessary, wireless syncing still requires the "burdensome" computer. The cloud means even that isn't necessary. If you can't see any advantage to being able to listen to any song in your collection in locations away from home (and your PC) I don't know what to tell you.

 

[iSingandiDance]

While it will be great to no longer have USB necessary, wireless syncing still requires the "burdensome" computer. The cloud means even that isn't necessary. If you can't see any advantage to being able to listen to any song in your collection in locations away from home (and your PC) I don't know what to tell you.

I see the advantage, just not the need for it.

And I welcome that burden without the pesky usb cable.

 

[AaronEdwards]

iTunes Match is great for those who primarily steal their music. $25/year to match 25,000 stolen songs and have the iTunes version accessible from anywhere. What's not to like about that?

For those who don't primarily steal their music, a service like Spotify is way better than buying music on iTunes and then having it in the cloud with iTunes Match. Unless you listen to a lot of artists not available on Spotify...

 

[Carouser]

I see the advantage, just not the need for it.

You see the advantage of being able to access one's music library, a library which may far exceed the storage capacity of mobile devices, from anywhere; but you don't see the need for accessing one's music library from anywhere? It does something people want, plain and simple.

 

[Eric S.]

Do you never leave your house? If you don't, then I see how iTunes Match may seem useless. However, for people who do go outside, travel, etc., and would like to access any of their music library from anywhere then iTunes Match makes sense.

Not to me. Wherever I go my iPod Classic goes with me. I have my entire iTunes collection and I don't have to worry about connection or bandwidth issues, or paying for music I already own.

They better improve the algorithm if it's only matching half of your library (and that's one of the higher ones I've seen posted). The service has the potential to be a big hit but it's going to tank if matching is that bad.

I figured it would be bad, based on the results I've seen trying to add album art from iTunes for CDs that I ripped.

 

[Carouser]

Not to me. Wherever I go my iPod Classic goes with me. I have my entire iTunes collection and I don't have to worry about connection or bandwidth issues, or paying for music I already own.

cool story bro, but there's a handful of people who use the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad, or have libraries larger than what a Classic can hold, and iTunes Match is something they might be interested in as a result.

Also, iTunes Match isn't 'paying for music I already own', it's paying to have one's music delivered to one's device anywhere on demand.

 

[tasset]

iTunes Match is great for those who primarily steal their music. $25/year to match 25,000 stolen songs and have the iTunes version accessible from anywhere. What's not to like about that?

For those who don't primarily steal their music, a service like Spotify is way better than buying music on iTunes and then having it in the cloud with iTunes Match. Unless you listen to a lot of artists not available on Spotify...

Haha, I needed a good chuckle today. Your beliefs are misguided if you think your Spotify subscription is some virtuous compensation to the artists. http://wampusmm.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/music-streaming-royalties-crumbs/
http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

 

[AaronEdwards]

You mean they'd go online and find a bunch of illegal copies, get the checksums of those (along with whatever metadata may be unique), and match to those?

I guess that could flag some illegal copies, but that's a huge amount of work for not a lot of benefit. On the user end, tags are easy enough to change (especially wiping out the "comments" tag which is the common one to have things added by the ripper). For the audio data itself, it would be easy enough to just convert any rejected files to a different bitrate and the checksum thing goes out the window. Filenames, you'd only be able to reject ones that had obvious "pirate" things since files named with title/artist/album in whatever configuration could appear in illegal ones but also in legal ones as well.

Basically to know a file is pirated, they'd need to find the exact same version of that pirated file online and be able to recognize it. And hope that the user doesn't take a couple simple steps to change the file. Maybe Apple will try that, but it seems to impractical and ineffective to be worth the trouble. My guess is that at this point just as many legal tracks aren't getting recognized as illegal ones - Apple has a hard enough time recognizing legal tracks (and already was having trouble in the case of album art), I would hope their first priority would be putting most of their effort into making recognizing tracks work as well as possible.

It's not a huge amount of work. You need to keep a database with checksums of stolen files, scene releases and files found on sharing networks, something I'm pretty certain the RIAA already have. The software comparing your files against this would then be run on your computer using your computer power. No files will be uploaded.

I agree, people could down-sample, people could change tags, people could do a lot of things. But most of them won't. Simple as that.

It's not a lot of work and it would find pirates. Not all of them, but then that's not something I've ever argued.

I'd argue that making sure that people don't use iTunes Match to match stolen files would be a lot more important that album art, but I guess people prioritize different.

You are not even close. It takes far less than 1 minute to rip one track to Apple Lossless on my old CD 1.66 Mac Mini. (no doubt faster on faster machines) Some whole CDs can rip in a minute. And Lossless sounds just fine in my system. I am nowhere near the 50000 mark, but I did rip a few thousand songs from my 1000+ CD collection a few years ago. It took me 2 months to do it since I can't just sit there not sleeping and working. And I picked through, did not just rip every song I own.

I actually re-ripped my collection from Lossless to 256k aac recently to store more easily on my iPhone. (that took 8 hours or something on a C2D 2.4 Mini, I didn't sit and watch) On such a device, I really can't hear the difference enough to matter, and I'd rather have more songs available. I will have to see exactly how Match works to see if I keep the 256k versions or what.

I don't see why anyone with a 50000+, or even 25000+, collection of legal songs wouldn't care about quality of the ripping they are doing especially when it will take them a lot of time.

Personally, I want a perfect copy, which means that I get a program that can make exact copies, and I rip to a lossless format (space has never been cheaper). If I then want smaller files to use for a portable music player, I can then convert the lossless files. It also means that I never will have to re-rip my collection.

And Lossless sounds just fine in my system.

Not sure what you mean here? Did you mean to write lossy?

 

[iSingandiDance]

Also, iTunes Match isn't 'paying for music I already own', it's paying to have one's music delivered to one's device anywhere on demand.

So, I'm still paying for music I already own? Hmm.

If anything, this should have been a free service for say the first 1000 songs. Then we'd be talking.

I've already paid Apple $10 for an album. They should want to deliver the music to my device. And if early indications are accurate, Apple only matches the song purchased through iTunes anyways, and even some of those don't match.

Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture?

 

[Eric S.]

cool story bro, but there's a handful of people who use the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad, or have libraries larger than what a Classic can hold, and iTunes Match is something they might be interested in as a result.

A fairly small percentage of users fall into that category, I'd imagine.

Also, iTunes Match isn't 'paying for music I already own', it's paying to have one's music delivered to one's device anywhere on demand.

I'll take the minute or less it takes to plug my Classic into my computer and save the trouble. And as sure as we're sitting here, $25/year is just the start; you can bet that once people come to depend on this service, Apple will find a way to make a profit from every download.

 

[Dcuellar]

You just reminded me of the best feature of ios5 - wireless syncing. Makes the cloud even more worthless to me. Don't get me wrong, many will love it, but most won't bother with it or even be remotely excited about it.

God, I'd love to put a camera or some sort of tracker on your phone to count the number of times you will be using the cloud.

We should put a shock collar around your neck and have it shock you every time you do use it.

 

[Carouser]

So, I'm still paying for music I already own? Hmm.

You pay people to deliver things to your house, presumably, yet you already paid for those goods. This is similar.

I've already paid Apple $10 for an album. They should want to deliver the music to my device.

If you bought the album through iTunes then you can get it through iCloud for free. This is as clear as day on Apple.com.

A fairly small percentage of users fall into that category, I'd imagine.

What category? People who use iOS devices? This is a small percentage of users? So all the people using iOS devices should recognize how silly iTunes Match is and just buy an iPod Classic instead, because that's what some guy does and he's fine with it.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Haha, I needed a good chuckle today. Your beliefs are misguided if you think your Spotify subscription is some virtuous compensation to the artists. http://wampusmm.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/music-streaming-royalties-crumbs/
http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

That one has been posted here a couple of times. Please find any sources for their numbers about Spotify. (It's a document that's gone from the Internet and "industry resources"...)
Beyond that it's rather old and Spotify dispute the numbers.

And my point still stand, iTunes Match is great for pirates. For people who pay for their music, not so much.

 

[Dcuellar]

So, I'm still paying for music I already own? Hmm.

If anything, this should have been a free service for say the first 1000 songs. Then we'd be talking.

I've already paid Apple $10 for an album. They should want to deliver the music to my device. And if early indications are accurate, Apple only matches the song purchased through iTunes anyways, and even some of those don't match.

Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture?

Anything you have purchased through iTunes is free to stream. You are paying 25 bucks a year to stream music you purchased outside of iTunes.

 

[Eric S.]

You pay people to deliver things to your house, presumably, yet you already paid for those goods. This is similar.

Not at all; if I buy something I may pay for delivery once. From then on I do whatever I want with the goods; I don't continue to pay the delivery company for every use.

What you describe is more like, say, I buy a hammer and the hardware store holds it for me. Then whenever I want to pound a nail they charge me to use the hammer, when I could just be keeping it at my house.

 

[iSingandiDance]

You pay people to deliver things to your house, presumably, yet you already paid for those goods. This is similar.

Yes, but the difference is I don't need to have my music locked up in the cloud. I need a product that I paid for to be shipped to my house.

----------

Anything you have purchased through iTunes is free to stream. You are paying 25 bucks a year to stream music you purchased outside of iTunes.

Yes, I've noticed my error.

Still, I won't pay to listen to my own music. It can be delivered on a silver platter. Wouldn't make a bit of difference.