iTunes Match: how to tell if song is cached locally?

[Ripcord]

So in ios 5 I had a lot of problems getting songs in the cloud to play reliably, or would want to play when I didn't have network access. In many cases I'd want to make sure I had copies of files locally - or at least know if they were or not so I could tell why they weren't playing.

At the same time, I have limited space so sometimes would want to remove songs I rarely listened to.

iOS 5 handled this great. I could easily tell if a song was stored locally or only in the cloud. I could delete locally easily to free space. And I could download individual songs at will.

In its 6 I see how to download an entire album/playlist, but not any of the three things above. Am I missing something?

 

[Ripcord]

Specifically I'm talking about the iPhone/iPod interface; not sure about iPad.

 

[Surf Monkey]

Specifically I'm talking about the iPhone/iPod interface; not sure about iPad.

I'm curious about this too. I get that Apple wants to push the cloud, but obfuscating the physical locations of the files seems a bit much... if that's what they're doing.

 

[Kurwenal]

iOS 5 handled this great. I could easily tell if a song was stored locally or only in the cloud. I could delete locally easily to free space. And I could download individual songs at will.

In its 6 I see how to download an entire album/playlist, but not any of the three things above. Am I missing something?

To see what has been downloaded, turn on Airplane mode and the non-downloaded songs are greyed out (or, there is a switch in Settings to display only what is on your phone).

Supposedly you don't need to delete songs any more. iTunes will do that for you as you do things that require space.

 

[Surf Monkey]

I prefer to manage my space manually. I'll try that Airplane Mode work around...

 

[quigleybc]

this kind of sucks..

 

[570934]

I must admit I was a little pissed to see the cloud icons gone, but I think you have to see iTunes Match as more a streaming service now, even though files are stored locally too. I believe that's what has happened.

 

[Pagemakers]

I thought iOS 6 allowed you to stream music as well as download it. It doesn't it just downloads like before but worse than that you can't delete individual tracks once downloaded.

I have 0 music on my iPad. I listen to a track from iTunes Match.

In settings change it to only show downloaded music and there is the track I just listened to plus the next one on the album.

I try to delete the music and I can't.

I go to settings/about. It confirms I have 2 tracks on my device when a few seconds ago I had zero.

Why oh why can't I just stream my music!!!

 

[Ripcord]

I must admit I was a little pissed to see the cloud icons gone, but I think you have to see iTunes Match as more a streaming service now, even though files are stored locally too. I believe that's what has happened.

If you have to basically assume that it's a streaming service, then I guess it's not something that can be used by mobile people who have either reasonably limited data plans or non-consistent service. Heck, I don't have either of those two problems and to date streaming on 3G networks has been unreliable to the point of being useless. Access to my music from anywhere is why I paid for the service, but if I can't stream properly over 3G, and I can't properly deal with offline situations, it's not worth much to me.

 

[MFreud]

I am extremely disappointed in how Apple has implemented iTunes Match into iOS6. If they want to offer streaming, I want to be able to choose to either stream or download. If I choose streaming I don't want it to be stored on the device. I want to be able to download and delete individual tracks. I want to know without messing with settings what is and is not stored on my device. In iOS 5 it wasn't perfect, but at least it worked relatively well. Now it's a mess. This needs to be fixed.

 

[Tha Professor]

With my data limited to 300 MB a month it is crucial for me to know what's on my iPhone... This way I will have to turn off the "Show all" toggle or I will always choose to listened to album that is not on the device, making me disgusted... On the other hand I understand that if I had unlimited data I would just not worry about the storage anymore and just "stream" the music... In iOS 5 I wouldn't listen to much music marked with the cloud icon anyway since I was always so tight on free space....

If only they had put the "Show All" toggle inside music app, I guess no one would be really complaining... But we yet have to see how proficient will the automatic cache cleaning be....

GoodLuck everyone with your big music collections!!

 

[570934]

After a field test yesterday I must admit its a big cock up from Apple. What the hell are thinking ?