'iTunes Match' Allows Both Streaming and Downloading of Music

[Eric S.]

I qualified that statement and said iTunes Match does make sense for people who 'go outside, travel, etc., and would like to access any of their music library from anywhere'.

Since we keep coming back to semantic details, this is exactly what you said:

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.

Well, I am a person who goes outside, travels, etc., and would like to access any of my music library from anywhere. But guess what? iTunes Match does not make sense to me. Therefore, as I said before, your assertion is not universally true. That is all I am saying.

I submit it still makes sense for you, in the sense that that it is not a scam or irrelevant, that if you subscribed to it you would not be, on the face of it, throwing away money.

And my opinion is that I have no use for it, and if I did subscribe to it I would certainly be throwing money away, since in fact I have no use for it.

 

[AaronEdwards]

What I would want Apple to do, that is identify known pirated songs, is a lot easier than what Apple is looking to do, identify and match a song to a song available on iTunes.

It needs to be able correctly identify the same song, the same artist, the same album, etc.

For instance would I want the album version of a song when I'm trying to match a live version? Would I want the remastered version version when I'm trying match the original version. And so on.

It's a lot easier to match either actual copies of the music in the iTunes store or known, unaltered, scene releases.

I highly doubt that the matching of iTunes Match will be able to achieve the Apple Standard.

----------

I don't see what is unique about that to pirates. Anyone can have a crappy version, either ripped from CD at lower bitrate or even purchased (including iTunes while they were at 128, hopefully those files will be upgraded considering that everything else will) and get that same benefit. Not to mention the whole point of the service, downloading and streaming on the go.

Beside the fact that pirates in general, but not always, have larger collections? Or that they don't have to pay twice?

 

[monoskier]

I've never written that the iTunes version they get for their stolen mp3 is proof for legit rights.

I understand you never stated that the new iTunes version would be proof for legit rights. I inferred that as being an added benefit to the pirating user from (paraphrasing now) "pirated users are getting more from the service". My bad.

But why would they worry about legit rights, if their pirated files won't be checked when they match them, then when will they be checked?

Most likely never. But I don't see how there is a perfect way to do this anyways.

Example: Person A buys Coldplay's Viva la Vida from BestBuy and rips it. Person B borrow's Person A's cd and rips it. Person B pirated the cd (in the US at least), but the resulting file is the same to both people.
How is iTunes supposed to differentiate between the legit rip and pirated rip?

Why it is better for pirates? They get their version, which could be a crappy version, replaced by a better version. Whenever they show their music to other people it will be a consistent collection and people won't distinguish it from legal files, unless people start to think of iTunes files as being pirated in general.

There are two critical (and in my opinion flawed) assumptions to your statement though. One being that the illegitimate song exists in iTunes at a higher bitrate, and Two being that pirated versions are lesser quality versions than the legit copies.

Go back to my example above. Person A and B both rip'd it at 128 kbits. Each now have a better version, because it the cd in question exists in the iTunes store. Now if they rip'd it at an even lesser quality, and that cd in not in the iTunes store, they still have a "crappy" version of the song. What did Person A gain over Person B?

 

[milo]

Just tried finding album artwork on another machine, found a bunch but missed some in the iTunes store.

One album had (2001 remaster) after the title, seems like that's a common one that they should be smart enough to work around.

Another was in the store and had the artist/title/album info identical down to the capitalization. Not only did album art not find it, but when I did the little pull down menu, it also said it couldn't find a match in the store. Another came up with the totally wrong artwork, seemed like something completely random and unrelated, but the pulldown menu went to the correct album in the store.

If they can't even match artwork for a file with identical metadata to the store, something is seriously wrong and they need to fix it before iCloud gets a public release.

It needs to be able correctly identify the same song, the same artist, the same album, etc.

Should it really be that difficult to do when metadata matches the iTunes store exactly? Yet they seem to be having trouble with it.

Beside the fact that pirates in general, but not always, have larger collections? Or that they don't have to pay twice?

If someone has a bunch of music at lower bitrate, the size of the collection doesn't make much difference (unless it's extremely tiny, but a library doesn't have to be that big to be worth spending $25 instead of reripping a bunch of CDs or paying apple to upgrade). And if someone wants the higher quality, the time and effort saved, not to mention the actual feature of cloud access, may be totally worth $25 regardless if it may arguably be "paying twice". I don't see how either of those issues makes the feature only useful to pirates.

 

[AaronEdwards]

I understand you never stated that the new iTunes version would be proof for legit rights. I inferred that as being an added benefit to the pirating user from (paraphrasing now) "pirated users are getting more from the service". My bad.



Most likely never. But I don't see how there is a perfect way to do this anyways.

Example: Person A buys Coldplay's Viva la Vida from BestBuy and rips it. Person B borrow's Person A's cd and rips it. Person B pirated the cd (in the US at least), but the resulting file is the same to both people.
How is iTunes supposed to differentiate between the legit rip and pirated rip?




There are two critical (and in my opinion flawed) assumptions to your statement though. One being that the illegitimate song exists in iTunes at a higher bitrate, and Two being that pirated versions are lesser quality versions than the legit copies.

Go back to my example above. Person A and B both rip'd it at 128 kbits. Each now have a better version, because it the cd in question exists in the iTunes store. Now if they rip'd it at an even lesser quality, and that cd in not in the iTunes store, they still have a "crappy" version of the song. What did Person A gain over Person B?

There's no perfect way to find pirated songs, and I doubt there ever will. But I have written about things that can be done.

It would not be able to find songs you have ripped from a friends CD, but then I think this, or your friend giving you digital songs that he ripped from his CD, was more common years ago. My guess is that it's more likely today that if you get music files from a friend that those are pirated songs than that those are from his bought and paid for CD.
(And I don't mean YOU personally)
Also, in a lot of countries there is a private copying levy to somewhat deal with this kind of copying.

And just because you won't achieve to get 100% doesn't mean that you should stop trying. The fact that you can get caught would also act as determent to even try to upload pirated songs.

Did you mean what Person B (the guy who got the CD from Person A) gained over Person A?

 

[AaronEdwards]

Another point about iTunes Match.

If the mean number albums a person owns is 250 (according to a large UK poll), and each album would contain 12 songs, and each song would be 7Mb, that means that the entire collection would be about 20Gb.

Now, there isn't a new audio format coming with would mean larger files, but flash memory is getting cheaper. Which means that, for an average person, storing all your music on every device you own will pretty soon not be a problem and this service will be obsolete.

But if someone would want to be able to store all music ever recorded on their device that's still a problem. Both when it comes to space and to pay for all of it. And that's what services like Spotify and Rdio is for, and I bet that sooner or later, Apple will get a service like those too.

(We are also at a point very soon where a hard drive will be able to, sort of, be the Library of Alexandria, by be able to store the text of every book written. The estimates for how much space is need differs, and according to some estimates we are already there.)

 

[monoskier]

And just because you won't achieve to get 100% doesn't mean that you should stop trying. The fact that you can get caught would also act as determent to even try to upload pirated songs.

Agreed. And I have a feeling what their approach is "if it doesn't exist in our store then it doesn't exist digitally." As flawed as this approach is, it is a consistent rule that applies to all users. There is no way to validate legitimacy when it comes to digital files. We all agree on this. Apple's approach to validation, though, cannot have a high false positive rate. Their possible mindset I just described above eliminates the false positives.

(There are many legit sites where you can legitimately download tracks that don't carry the same tags and metadata that iTunes uses. I've seen some, um, interesting file names from these legit downloads.)

Yes, in theory, the chance that you might get caught uploading a torrent should be a deterrent. But, you can also get caught downloading them in the first place, and we can all see how well that deterrent works.

In theory Communism works.

Did you mean what Person B (the guy who got the CD from Person A) gained over Person A?

No, as it pertains to iTunes Match, Person A and Person B both receive the same benefits for their $25. When you look at what iTunes Match actually does as a service the origination of the file is irrelevant. If they can't match a track it gets uploaded. Same rules apply for all songs, regardless of origination. Therefore people with pirated songs don't gain anything over people with just legit songs. They both get the same benefit of online storage, possibly upgrading the bit-rate and streaming of their library.

When one creates a scenario that benefits Person A over Person B it is not an apples-to-apples comparison anymore and can just as easily be reversed. The point being, the variables have to be the same for both people in the comparison when trying to determine it's relative value to each person. And when that is done, what iTunes Match actually does for each person is the same.

 

[marksman]

Just tried finding album artwork on another machine, found a bunch but missed some in the iTunes store.

One album had (2001 remaster) after the title, seems like that's a common one that they should be smart enough to work around.

Another was in the store and had the artist/title/album info identical down to the capitalization. Not only did album art not find it, but when I did the little pull down menu, it also said it couldn't find a match in the store. Another came up with the totally wrong artwork, seemed like something completely random and unrelated, but the pulldown menu went to the correct album in the store.

If they can't even match artwork for a file with identical metadata to the store, something is seriously wrong and they need to fix it before iCloud gets a public release.



Should it really be that difficult to do when metadata matches the iTunes store exactly? Yet they seem to be having trouble with it.



If someone has a bunch of music at lower bitrate, the size of the collection doesn't make much difference (unless it's extremely tiny, but a library doesn't have to be that big to be worth spending $25 instead of reripping a bunch of CDs or paying apple to upgrade). And if someone wants the higher quality, the time and effort saved, not to mention the actual feature of cloud access, may be totally worth $25 regardless if it may arguably be "paying twice". I don't see how either of those issues makes the feature only useful to pirates.

I agree. My collection spans back a very long time and I have songs in all kinds of different bitrates. I used to have to recompress some of my songs to get more of them to fit on my tiny rio player where I had like 32 megs of memory on it.

This is of good value. For the price, it is great.

I would say that people who would manipulate this system to steal music are morally bankrupt and can do what they want, but they will have to live with themselves. Only a bad person takes advantage of a situation designed to be of real benefit to steal from all the people doing it.

If Apple gets 10 million people to pay for this each year, given the split, the recording industry would make ~200 million dollars a year on this. It is a win-win for everyone.

Not to mention anyone who is using it has one or more Apple hardware products. It is good for the music industry, good for Apple and good for the consumer.

 

[Tiggs]

Looking forward to trying this service out. Caching the music file definitely a more user-friendly option.

 

[winston1236]

think ill stay with spotify

 

[Ishimaru]

Strange, I can't even get my iPhone 4 to be seen by iTunes Match. I get the prompt to enable, it says it'll delete all my music when I enable it, but it does nothing. I've rebooted, manually deleted the music, everything. When I've deleted the music manually, I do get the iCloud icon and a spinning icon for a second or two, then tells me there's no music. Ironically enough, it works perfect on the iPad 2, but not my iPhone. I've even tried logging out of the store and trying again, nadda. I'm officially stumped with this one.

And yes, I am a paid dev.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Strange, I can't even get my iPhone 4 to be seen by iTunes Match. I get the prompt to enable, it says it'll delete all my music when I enable it, but it does nothing. I've rebooted, manually deleted the music, everything. When I've deleted the music manually, I do get the iCloud icon and a spinning icon for a second or two, then tells me there's no music. Ironically enough, it works perfect on the iPad 2, but not my iPhone. I've even tried logging out of the store and trying again, nadda. I'm officially stumped with this one.

And yes, I am a paid dev.

Then you realize it's a beta and some things may not work as advertised.

 

[Ishimaru]

Then you realize it's a beta and some things may not work as advertised.

Yes I realize that. I'm just curious if anyone else has had issues enabling it. I've also asked on the dev forums too. Console gives me the following:

Aug 30 17:53:26 unknown itunescloudd[572] <Warning>: [HSFairPlayInfo] Requests to sign: (
"default-daap",
databases,
items,
containers,
edit,
update,
"cloud-artwork-info",
"cloud-lyrics-info"
)
Aug 30 17:53:26 unknown itunescloudd[572] <Warning>: NSURLRequest default cookie store will be required for https://p7-buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFastFinance.woa/wa/signSapSetupCert

What the heck that means...no clue.

 

[honeycrisp]

Anyone know if this syncs metadata like ratings and play count?

I echo this. PLEASE, someone answer us if it changes metadata like ratings, genres, play count, etc!

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Case Closed.

I'd recommend double checking your work.

 

[Ishimaru]

And it fixed itself and is currently working. Yay for beta software.

 

[Dcuellar]

Another point about iTunes Match.

If the mean number albums a person owns is 250 (according to a large UK poll), and each album would contain 12 songs, and each song would be 7Mb, that means that the entire collection would be about 20Gb.

Now, there isn't a new audio format coming with would mean larger files, but flash memory is getting cheaper. Which means that, for an average person, storing all your music on every device you own will pretty soon not be a problem and this service will be obsolete.

But if someone would want to be able to store all music ever recorded on their device that's still a problem. Both when it comes to space and to pay for all of it. And that's what services like Spotify and Rdio is for, and I bet that sooner or later, Apple will get a service like those too.

(We are also at a point very soon where a hard drive will be able to, sort of, be the Library of Alexandria, by be able to store the text of every book written. The estimates for how much space is need differs, and according to some estimates we are already there.)

For me the problem is not with space or hardware, but with having it all in sync. With iCloud I know I will always have my music/apps/movies tied to my account name. If I'm running out of room on my laptop I can simply delete files and stream them. Same with the iPhone. If my drive fails they will still be in the cloud.

Think of the iCloud not as a way of saving hard drive space...we all know hard drives are cheap now...but as a way of keeping everything in sync. Saving hard drive space is a side perk along with not having to keep your computer on 24/7 if you are using it as a media server. I use Subsonic now to stream my media from home to my iPhone via the iSub app. It works great now, but my electric bill has taken a hit. Definitely more than 25 bucks a year.

To say the service will be obsolete is not well thought out. I doubt Apple is charging customers 25 bucks a year to make serious money. I think instead they are doing it to complete their ecosystem. I also doubt that Apple went this direction without R&D including taking a close look at trends and what customers want. They seem to be making the right moves lately as more and more people are beginning to buy in to the apple experience.

Point is, if you want to listen to your own collection from home using the apple experience it will cost you 25 bucks for 12 months. That cost includes maintaining the server and streaming all of your content to you from it. If one of their drives fail, you are not responsible for it. If you don't see value in that then at least acknowledge that others will. Just don't say it will become obsolete.

 

[bpaluzzi]

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

And your beliefs are even more misguided if you think any of those numbers reflect the real world. Anyone can put up unsourced numbers. My links say that Spotify pays artists a billion-kajillion dollars per song, and iTunes pays artists a wooden nickel per album. What a ripoff!

I'm on the One Plan, but have never heard of the Spotify option.

Any link?

Cheers.

He won't find any, as he totally made it up. There is a free 1-3 month trial (depending on when you signed up + what plan you have) but there isn't (nor has there ever) been an unlimited Spotify Premium account offered.
http://www.three.co.uk/Help_Support/Terms_and_Conditions?content_aid=1220457100338

 

[benguild]

Can anybody tell me if it's possible to sync playlists with iTunes Match?

 

[SirHaakon]

Which means that, for an average person, storing all your music on every device you own will pretty soon not be a problem and this service will be obsolete.

It's not an issue of being able to store it, it's an issue of convenience. If I rip a CD, I currently have to take the files from my computer's hard drive, copy it to my iPhone, copy it to my iPad, copy it to my iPod, throw it up on the network and distribute it to other computers... what a pain. Now I can rip something directly to my iTunes library, pick up my iPhone, and boom... everything is accessible instantly. I don't see that as going obsolete any time soon.

 

[kiwiboi87]

ahhhhh.

itunes match would be so wicked!!
im only on a 16gb iphone,
and often want a song from my itunes. but cant be assed to sync.

if only NZ was in line to get it.

i guess with everything, will have to wait.


now my little cry is over,
the service looks great. i would be more then happy to pay for it

 

[milo]

Now, there isn't a new audio format coming with would mean larger files, but flash memory is getting cheaper. Which means that, for an average person, storing all your music on every device you own will pretty soon not be a problem and this service will be obsolete.

That's true - capacity is going up faster than most people's music collections. But people are using those same devices to store photos, apps, and particularly video, and those video collections are getting bigger and video files are getting bigger (Apple moved to 720HD and they will likely go higher at some point in the future).

Even if the device can hold all a user's music, it's still handier to have less music on there so more space is available for video and other files.

Can anybody tell me if it's possible to sync playlists with iTunes Match?

People have reported yes. If you create a playlist on your mac it instantly appears on your iPhone. And it looks like all playlists appear on those mobile devices, the ones that aren't synced from your mac can be either downloaded or streamed from the cloud.

 

[benguild]

People have reported yes. If you create a playlist on your mac it instantly appears on your iPhone. And it looks like all playlists appear on those mobile devices, the ones that aren't synced from your mac can be either downloaded or streamed from the cloud.

Great, now if this thing would ever finish! It's been getting to 63 songs remaining (out of 15k+) constantly for the past like 3 days straight... I've left it running over and over.

 

[charlituna]

Not holding my breath. We here in the digital wasteland that the Great White North has become, will be at the mercy of The Big Three mobile internet providers who in the face of this new technology will no doubt rush to lower data caps like they did with the arrival of Netflix to Canada.

You only have to deal with that after you deal with the labels cock blocking the whole thing

 

[Eddieowns]

My iTunes Match only had matches for 255 of my songs out of a library of over 3.5k. Which is odd, because it's not recognizing songs/albums that I purchased from the iTunes store...