Poor iTunes Match quality when streaming over cellular

[MacintoshMan]

I've noticed that whenever my phone streams music via iTunes match over cellular the audio quality is terrible; like 96kb terrible. If I connect my phone to WiFi, the quality returns to the 256kb bitrate.

Is there any way to fix this? I'm seriously considering switching to Spotify because of it.

 

[Yun0]

consider ur throughput &/or latency is too bad on ur cell network..

 

[MacintoshMan]

consider ur throughput &/or latency is too bad on ur cell network..

It's LTE. I can stream HD video just fine.

 

[MacintoshMan]

Still haven't been able to find a solution for this. Wish there was a switch to make sure it streamed in top quality

 

[Woochifer]

Where are you picking up the bitrate data?

Just looking at data usage logs, I estimate iTunes Radio and iTunes Match both streaming at 128 kbps using cellular data. Downloading the music files from iTunes Match has a data usage closer to 256 kbps, no matter if you use wi-fi or cellular. It does seem that going over to wi-fi does double the data usage for streaming.

 

[Woochifer]

Actually, another thing that I noticed is that the data usage also remains high (around 256 kbps) when I stream songs that I encoded myself and that do not have a match on iTunes.

With iTunes Match and Radio, the songs do not stream like they would on a live feed. Rather, they are downloaded as song files. It seems that the files for iTunes Radio are 128 kbps, while the iTunes Match downloads will download 128 kbps on celluar data, and 256 kbps on wi-fi. For songs not matched on iTunes, it seems like they are 256 kbps regardless of cellular or wi-fi.

 

[Lloydbm41]

I've noticed that whenever my phone streams music via iTunes match over cellular the audio quality is terrible; like 96kb terrible. If I connect my phone to WiFi, the quality returns to the 256kb bitrate.

Is there any way to fix this? I'm seriously considering switching to Spotify because of it.

iTunes Radio just plain sucks. I dumped it and use Spotify and Google All Access exclusively. Both are 10x better.