Used to be that every song I had in the cloud showed up with a cloud next to them when I had iTunes Match turned on. When I wanted to download a song locally to keep it stored on the phone itself all I had to do was click the cloud button and it would start downloading and use up storage. If you wanted to delete it all you had to do was swipe the way you would an email. Thats gone now. Had an apple rep try to tell me I'm doing something wrong because she can swipe to delete on her iPhone 5 with iOS6. Theres 2 separate "Use Cellular Data" toggles. One in the Music settings and one in iTunes settings. Makes no sense. I can barely tell what songs are downloaded and using up storage on my phone unless i toggle "Show All" off in the settings and go back to the music apps. Terrible
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iTunes Match is awful in iOS6
- Thread starter bueller1
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Yeap I know exactly what you mean, very frustrating. I ended turning off iTunes Match on my iPhone... :/
Used to be like that in iOS 5, but I have to say it's a vast improvement for me, certainly on the iPad, with iOS 6
I agree that downloading an individual song is more difficult than it used to be, as are deleting individual files.
Part of this is by design, however. People seemed to really really want Match to be a streaming service, so that's more what it is in iOS 6. Yes, it still caches a certain number of songs, but it has a limited cache size that recycles old listens for newer plays, and will use only a fixed amount of space. In iOS 5, it would continue to download everything you played until you'd consumed all space (in theory). This meant that you had to manually manage it. This way, if you use it as a streaming service, there is no management required. If you want to have some music stored locally and have access to the rest of it, that will require management. The easiest thing to do is to create a playlist with all the music you want locally, and then download that playlist.
The Cellular setting in iTunes determines whether NEW music PURCHASES are automatically downloaded to the device. The setting in Music determines whether Match uses cellular. (Use this setting with caution if you have a limited data plan and intend to download a large playlist).
You can delete downloaded songs by turning off Show All Music. Delete then works as you expect.
Part of this is by design, however. People seemed to really really want Match to be a streaming service, so that's more what it is in iOS 6. Yes, it still caches a certain number of songs, but it has a limited cache size that recycles old listens for newer plays, and will use only a fixed amount of space. In iOS 5, it would continue to download everything you played until you'd consumed all space (in theory). This meant that you had to manually manage it. This way, if you use it as a streaming service, there is no management required. If you want to have some music stored locally and have access to the rest of it, that will require management. The easiest thing to do is to create a playlist with all the music you want locally, and then download that playlist.
The Cellular setting in iTunes determines whether NEW music PURCHASES are automatically downloaded to the device. The setting in Music determines whether Match uses cellular. (Use this setting with caution if you have a limited data plan and intend to download a large playlist).
You can delete downloaded songs by turning off Show All Music. Delete then works as you expect.
I have to agree. iTunes Match finally works in iOS6. In iOS5, it was a step back from just syncing your phone to your local iTunes, with no real benefits over syncing either. Now with iOS6 (and unlimited LTE 
I can just pretend my iPhone has my entire 200 gig music collection on it. And my 32 gig phone still has something like 23 gigs free.
I can just pretend my iPhone has my entire 200 gig music collection on it. And my 32 gig phone still has something like 23 gigs free.
No you can't. The only way to delete downloaded songs is to turn iTunes Match off. Then the swipe to delete function is available. But if you turn iTunes Match back on again, it wipes all locally stored music.
Why download music when you can stream? For those times you don't have 3G signal. I don't get any 3G on my journey to work, so I prefer to have a selection of downloaded music. I'd like to be able to replace some of these songs from time to time with something fresher, but I can only download. I can't delete without deleting everything.
In fact earlier this week I accidentally added to much to a playlist which I then set off downloading. I managed to fill my phone. Could I remove some of the songs? No I couldn't. So I was unable to download apps or shoot video. I had to delete all the music.
I'll be turning iTunes Match off until this issue is fixed, and going back to regular syncing.
I don't think this will be fixed any time soon. Live updating smart playlist have been broken since ios3.
Yes, you are correct. I did mean turn off iTunes Match to delete songs. Turning off Show All Music is also necessary for me to force it to stop showing me my entire library. At that point you can delete songs/albums/artists/etc.
Turning off Match will remove your CACHED songs, but not your downloaded songs. When you turn on Match, you will keep your downloaded songs.
If you had turned off iTunes Match, you could have deleted songs or albums freeing up space, then turned Match back on, keeping everything else downloaded. I have tested this a number of times and it works repeatably.
Do you use data every time you play the same song? Are there any exact numbers for how many songs it actually caches? I dont like that it's unclear whether you have the song cached or not. I listen to majority of my music on my ride to and from work. I already used up 1.7GB since Monday. Making a playlist with just the few songs I want downloaded locally makes sense I guess.
Not in the short term. At this point I haven't seen any information on what the maximum cache size is or what the algorithm is that exactly determines when a song is purged, but it looks like it basically works as I explained above, and I'd infer that it probably uses somewhere between 300MB and 1GB for cache, but again, I have no real idea. So anyhow, if you play a song frequently, it should play from your cache and only download once.
Now if you turn off Match, it appears to immediately flush that cache and next time it comes on you will have to download the song again.
Anyhow, this is a better method than pure streaming for most people. It balances the need of having everything available vs. instant access vs. minimizing data use, all while using only a finite amount of your limited physical storage.
I'm glad that Apple's also providing unlimited data so that I -- wait, they're not?
What the hell, then?
What the hell, then?
I'll never understand why they just won't let me keep local playlists and have iTunes Match on like it was in iOS5.
Why does it see the need to delete all of my local music if I want to turn on Match?
I spend an hour downloading 1000+ songs and if I want to hear something that is deep in my library, all those songs disappear?
And if I want to play that playlist it now has to hit my cellular data if I'm outside?
I'm surprised the cellular companies didn't fight against that just as much as FaceTime.
Why does it see the need to delete all of my local music if I want to turn on Match?
I spend an hour downloading 1000+ songs and if I want to hear something that is deep in my library, all those songs disappear?
And if I want to play that playlist it now has to hit my cellular data if I'm outside?
I'm surprised the cellular companies didn't fight against that just as much as FaceTime.
Huh? This is a perfectly reasonable balance between managing customer's wants while managing data consumption.
Downloaded music is not wiped when you turn on Match.
My real complaint is that they removed vital music management functionality. Streaming is fine when you've got unlimited data available, but sometimes you just want to have music on your damn phone, and they made it 10x more difficult to actually do that.
I'm not sure how they've made it more difficult to do that? You can still download large playlists, and as I said in the other thread, in iOS5, that process was very, very slow. It would typically take me 1-2 days to download 10 gigs or so of music, even on a 50Mb connection.
So lets say you've got a dozen albums downloaded to your phone. You've got limited data so you download on wifi. Then you decide that one of those albums is rubbish, you want to remove it and download something else. You've got a boatload of apps and you want to save space for photos too. Deleting that album is a must before you download another. Can you do that? No. It's worse. Then you go on vacation, you're not in you're home country, you thus have no data at all. Your iphone decides to wipe all your music because your low of space. Improvement?
Same for me. It was unusable whilst driving on iOS 5 because as soon as the 3G signal dropped, the download never continued when the signal came back. It froze the whole music app as there was something stuck in downloading, and you had to force close the app. Not something you can do at 70mph.
In iOS 6 it just works perfectly whilst on the move. If you drive through a weak signal area, it continues the download afterwards no problem.
I had actually switched off iTunes Match a few months ago and went to Spotify. Now that iTunes Match actually does what it should, Spotify is gone and I'm back in the Apple "family".
You clearly have no idea how Match works in iOS6. It's perfectly feasible to delete an individual album/artist/song whatever.
Me too! I bought iTunes Match, figured out I couldn't sync locally, then disabled iTunes Match straight away.
I have a massive library that I can't on my phone. All I want is to store my "recently added" playlist on my phone and use iTunes Match for the rest. I havent used iTunes Match since ios6 came out, is there still no way to do this?
Enable Match and then download the playlist(s) you want to store locally. Other than the 'download' icon being only at the end of the playlist (which can be a long scroll if it's a big playlist), I'm not sure how much simpler this gets?
Enable Match and then download the playlist(s) you want to store locally. Other than the 'download' icon being only at the end of the playlist (which can be a long scroll if it's a big playlist), I'm not sure how much simpler this gets?
Yes but being a recently added smart playlist it updates regularly, does that mean I have to download each time?
Show me a screenshot of you doing it, because I cannot simply swipe my music away like in iOS 5.