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iTunes Match 'Streaming' question.

M

mtnDewFTW

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
905
198
San Francisco, CA
Hello laides and gents. I'm pretty sure you're all pretty sick and tired of this same question being asked over and over again. I was pretty clear on this subject up until I watched the oct. 4th keynote.

During the keynote, Eddie Cue pointed out that the music will be streamed to your device. When I clearly remember him saying that iCloud/iTunes Match is not a streaming service. I do not have a dev account, nor have I ever gotten the chance to play around with iTunes Match or iOS 5, so I'm asking the people who have.

Are you now able to steam songs to your device, or are you only able to download them?

Thanks! And sorry if just annoyed a ton of people with this question :(
 
I was wondering the same. The contradictory statements confused me.

Can you stream without downloading? Can you download specific songs to always be "cached"? How many are automatically cached and when does the cache erase?
 
Last edited:
Yumunum said:
I was wondering the same. The contradictory statements confused me.

Can you stream without downloading? Can you download specific songs? How many are automatically cached and when does the cache erase?
Click to expand...

I really hope there's a streaming option. Sometimes I'd rather download the album or song, but other times streaming it would be nice, just so a song I barely ever listen to doesn't take up space on my phone/eat up my data cap.
 
There is no streaming music on an iPhone.

Match just means they take CD's you have burned and give you their version of the same song.

And it will be on iCloud where you can then download it to all your devices.
 
Rat-Boy said:
There is no streaming music on an iPhone.

Match just means they take CD's you have burned and give you their version of the same song.

And it will be on iCloud where you can then download it to all your devices.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought too, until Eddy said the words 'immediate streaming' like three times. I wonder if they changed it or something, because in the beginning people were able to just stream songs without having to permanently store them on their device.
 
The songs are downloaded to a temporary cache. They can start playing as soon as the download starts, just like how you can start watching a movie when the download starts. The file is stored for a short period on the phone and then cleared. You also have the option to permanently download the song.
 
I took it as meaning that as soon as you start to download the song to your phone it can start playing.
 
mikethebigo said:
The songs are downloaded to a temporary cache. They can start playing as soon as the download starts, just like how you can start watching a movie when the download starts. The file is stored for a short period on the phone and then cleared. You also have the option to permanently download the song.
Click to expand...

So, what point is there in paying for a second year of match, once you've downloaded all the upgraded songs?
 
protobiont said:
So, what point is there in paying for a second year of match, once you've downloaded all the upgraded songs?
Click to expand...

There isn't much of one. Many have pointed this out.

Biggest use year two is access to your non iTunes music from the cloud if you don't have enough storage to hold it all.
 
mikethebigo said:
There isn't much of one. Many have pointed this out.

Biggest use year two is access to your non iTunes music from the cloud if you don't have enough storage to hold it all.
Click to expand...

So, I guess this means that Apple will somehow "mark" the songs that it upgrades, and these will not be available via the cloud without paying for the match service?

However, any song originally purchased via iTunes and not upgraded is available via the cloud without the match service?
 
protobiont said:
So, I guess this means that Apple will somehow "mark" the songs that it upgrades, and these will not be available via the cloud without paying for the match service?

However, any song originally purchased via iTunes and not upgraded is available via the cloud without the match service?
Click to expand...

Yeah. "iTunes in the cloud" only refers to being able to redownload songs you actually bought from iTunes. The ones you get from match don't apply, you didn't actually purchase them through iTunes.
 
protobiont said:
So, what point is there in paying for a second year of match, once you've downloaded all the upgraded songs?
Click to expand...
Many of us have large MP3 libraries -- libraries too large to fit on an iOS device. For this case, we're paying for the convenience of library storage and wireless access, and I think the $25/year is a lot better than the $120/year for services like spotify or rdio (I spend a lot less than $120/year on music, and so these services don't make sense for me).

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mtnDewFTW said:
Even on their website they refer it to as streaming.
Click to expand...
That sounds like the right hand is not talking to the left hand. This was hashed and rehashed a while back:There's more, but I don't feel like reposting even more old news.
 
TLewis said:
Many of us have large MP3 libraries -- libraries too large to fit on an iOS device. For this case, we're paying for the convenience of library storage and wireless access, and I think the $25/year is a lot better than the $120/year for services like spotify or rdio (I spend a lot less than $120/year on music, and so these services don't make sense for me).

----------


That sounds like the right hand is not talking to the left hand. This was hashed and rehashed a while back:There's more, but I don't feel like reposting even more old news.
Click to expand...


It's pretty confusing to me. I mean.. from what it looks like, Apple called downloading streaming. I guess no one really had the definite answer to this right now since it's still not fully out yet until late this month, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. I just think that streaming would be a killer feature.
 
mtnDewFTW said:
It's pretty confusing to me. I mean.. from what it looks like, Apple called downloading streaming. I guess no one really had the definite answer to this right now since it's still not fully out yet until late this month, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. I just think that streaming would be a killer feature.
Click to expand...
Sigh.

OK, "friendly answer": it looks, smells, and tastes like "streaming".

Unfriendly, sciencey, scary-hard-to-understand answer: it's not true streaming in the technical sense. However, the iPhone has two ways of accessing songs in the cloud:

  1. "Streaming" the song actually downloads the entire song into a cache, but with the feature of being able to start playing the song while the download is still ongoing. You can even move the scrubber while the song is playing/downloading. If you re-play the song, the iPhone does not "re-stream" or re-download the song, but instead plays the song from the cache. However, it's unclear as to just how big this cache is.
  2. Downloading the song. While downloading, you can't play the song.
For more info, see: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=11965
 
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