Thank you carriers, for making iTunes Match Useless!

[bob24]

Yes mobile carriers are annoying with some the limitations they are imposing.

On the other hand, I don't think it is reasonable to want to stream hours of music through cellular data everyday for quite many reasons:
- if everybody started to do that, it would kill the networks and make them painfully slow (sure they can be upgraded but that would be major and some of the cost would have to be passed to the customer)
- having the 3G/4G radio active all the time would kill battery life (and reduce the lifetime of the battery), and your phone would be running pretty hot
- to maintain a strong data connection the phone's radio would constantly transmit at close to maximum power instead of being on standby - due to health reasons, I certainly wouldn't like that over a long period and everyday with the phone in my pocket

LTE partly addresses some of these concerns, but still I don't think mobile phones and networks are yet ready to handle streaming music constantly.

I believe iTunes Match does cache the streamed content so that if you listen to the same song twice it only downloads it the first time though, which should help.

 

[Born Again]

Get a spotify account.

iTunes Match was dead on arrival

 

[bob24]

Can't believe how expensive phone contracts are in the USA and they still won't give you unlimited data.
Here in the UK it only cost me an extra £3 a month to increase my 1GB data to unlimited.

Is it really unlimited though?

Here in Ireland they are pretty good at writing unlimited on the website and the marketing documentation, but also writing in small prints in the contract that there is a "fair-use" policy of maximum 5GB or so per month - so unlimited is just a lie. I know that in France the common thing for them to do is to give unlimited access but to aggressively throttle the speed once a certain monthly quota has been reached by the user.

 

[acarney]

Get a spotify account.

iTunes Match was dead on arrival

How many Apple devices do you have? Someone that hardly turns on the MacBook Air but instead constantly uses his iPad 3 and iPhone 5, Match was NOT DOA. I love not having to sync them or knowing one only have half my music or what not. It's just all there, doesn't care where I buy it or when, just there, everything. (Except Audio Books I found out the hard way...)

Helps to have 100Mbits at home so everything is lightning fast, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to restore a device; exchange at an Apple store, unlocking a phone, buying a new device, etc and it's wonderful knowing once it does it's stuff my picture, music, apps, text message, etc are ALL still there. Can't wait till you can buy a new computer and turn it on at home, connect to WiFi and everything is right where it was on your old computer!

(Yes I know you can restore from an old backup and stuff, but I'm not sure if you can do that if the old backup is an older OS, and it's not just as simple as it being there. The only better thing would be if Apple came out with a massive 4 or 6Tb TimeCapsule that iPhone and iPad and Mac could recognize when you're at home and check THAT first before the outside cloud. Would be nice to sync stuff at 300Mbits or more locally and then let the TimeCapsule back that up to the outside cloud off-peak hours or something. Then restores would be even faster and massive space.... man, have AppleTV record and store purchases to that and then the last 5 shows to air got uploaded to the cloud for viewing outside the home or something, automated digital world right there)

 

[bob24]

Get a spotify account.

iTunes Match was dead on arrival

I think there are still people who prefer to buy their music instead of renting it (at least I am one of them). This does not limit the choice to what Spotify can licence (I listen to some obscure things from various counties), and also it is more of a long term investment (instead of always streaming different things, I like the idea of buying an album and appreciating it - so I prefer buying one album per month and spending the same price as Spotify - except that at the end of the day I own my music instead of renting it - so if I stop paying I still have it).

Having said that - yeah iTunes Match has not been I great experience. I was expecting a lot from it, but both the high-leel design of it and implementation bugs have kind of ruined the experience.

 

[penajmz]

I agree witht the OP. When I first got my iPhone 5 I downloaded an album and a playlist with 12 songs over LTE and that was about 300 MBs. I still have unlimited with AT&T but I don't want to get throttle to those horrible speeds so I'm forced to sync my music from iTunes.

 

[peeaanuut]

is there some sort of aversion to syncing? Apparently it is bad for the phone by some peoples comments. I do a sync almost every morning. Wake up, hit wifi sync and boom, smart play lists take care of the rest. Takes mere moments.

It seems to be more of an attitude of I want everything and I dont want to pay for it.

 

[penajmz]

is there some sort of aversion to syncing? Apparently it is bad for the phone by some peoples comments. I do a sync almost every morning. Wake up, hit wifi sync and boom, smart play lists take care of the rest. Takes mere moments.

It seems to be more of an attitude of I want everything and I dont want to pay for it.

Is not about having it all, I presonally just love the way iTunes Match works. I add a song to a playlist on my iPad, is automatically added on my iPhone and Mac. I add it on my Mac, is automatically on my iPhone and iPad almost instantly.

I'm also not a fan of having 20+ GBs of music synced to my iPhone but I do because I know at one point or another I'm going to want to listen to an specific song and I'm not gonna have it.

 

[Michael CM1]

OP might want to try Spotify. It works better at streaming music, syncing chosen music on the fly with a Wi-Fi only option, and giving you quality options to manage data.

I have about 2GB in Spotify playlists synced on my iPhone. I can easily turn these on an off in the app instead of the download and delete functions of the Music app. I can also set the quality to about 128k when streaming and up to 320k for synced music.

Apple really needs to modify the Music app like this. I nearly gagged by data plan in my first month of using Spotify by streaming all my music at 256k. I changed the settings a bit, synced some stuff and now I usually don't get much past 1 GB.

 

[Dartanian]

Any service that requires a persistent connection to access media you own is bound to fail. Period. It doesn't matter how many people who don't understand the underlying drawbacks try and promote it, it's a bad idea.

I disagree.

Music on a phone is usually not considered important information and most of us could do without it if there ever were to be a problem accessing it. That being said, using off-device storage for large amounts of media is a great idea and really good concept -- especially for those of us with large, ever-increasing music collections.

I have never used iTunes Match, but I do have a Synology NAS hard drive at my house that has held ALL of my music for over two years now. Since shortly after I purchased my iPhone 4 (the week after its release) I have always used the free DS Audio app to play music through my phone. It works perfectly and I only remember maybe 2-3 times where my connection was a little low to cause the songs to buffer. It works so well that I have never loaded ANY music on my iP4 or my iP5.

The set-up I use has many advantages.

• My wife can use the same app on her phone and access all of the same music… for that matter, anybody that knows the dynamic DNS address and the user name/password could access the same collection also.
• I now can use my old iP4 (over wifi) while I work out in the yard or my shop and have access to the same music.
• To add music to my library, I only have to copy the files to the hard drive; at that point, it is instantly available on ANY of our devices.
• I don’t pay any fees for the storage. After the initial investment (around $400 for 1.5TB of storage in a RAID back in 2010), everything is free.
• As songs are played, they are stored on the phone in order to reduce additional data for the same songs. You can adjust the maximum amount of songs that are stored in cache via the app settings.

Other than cellular data usage and possible low-signal areas, the only real drawback is if the drive at my house goes off-line. However, all of my network equipment is on a UPS with a 2-hour runtime, so the power would have to be off for a while before I’d lose any connectivity. Also, it’s a RAID array, so drive failure would likely not be a problem either. I’m on an unlimited AT&T plan, but I still rarely go above 4GB per month.

For anyone that is interested in cloud storage for their music library, I would highly recommend a Synology NAS. I believe that it’s the best electronics investment I have made ever.

 

[Dwalls90]

70gb for songs!

Sorry but I am GLAD they will throttle you! This is not YOUR network to clog up with you overgrown music collection! Cull out your Joan Baez collection and give us all a break!

You really sound more like you are bragging!

As many have pointed out, you failed to comprehend the topic post. I don't want to, or need to, download/stream the entire library of 70Gb. My point is that, iTunes Match is not the solution for anyone with a library over 2Gb (250 songs) of music, really.

spotify > itunes match
worth ever penny.

Can you explain how Spotify magically bypasses the usage of data that iTunes Match requires? Everyone keeps suggesting spotify, but it's no better at conserving data ... and that's the issue here. Low and behold, I already own my music, so why would I pay a monthly subscription to access that music on a third party app?

 

[peeaanuut]

as far as spotify, they generally stream at a lower bit rate so the actual file is smaller for the same song than a full version of the song you would get via match. it doesnt cut out the data but it can certainly reduce it by half if not more at times.

 

[Dwalls90]

as far as spotify, they generally stream at a lower bit rate so the actual file is smaller for the same song than a full version of the song you would get via match. it doesnt cut out the data but it can certainly reduce it by half if not more at times.

I would prefer not streaming, actually, as I listen to a song more than once, especially at the gym or in my car. I would assume their bittrate of Spotify is 128kbps, and Apple's is 256kbps (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% those facts are correct). So if I listen to a song on Spotify twice or more times, I'm in the same position, if not worse, right?

 

[DarwinOSX]

Playlists are your friend. Smart playlists are your best friend. Download most of what you want over wi-fi to either type of playlist. Most people will only stream download the occasional song after that.
I paid full price for my iPhone 5 so I don't have to deal with tiered data. Unlimited LTE!, or whatever Verizon considers unlimited these days..

 

[2IS]

I'm on a 4GB plan and my iTunes match works exactly as I'd expect it to.

 

[Zimmy68]

Here is how iTunes Match should work (and used to).

Let me download the music I want to my phone.
Let me have a base of 2-3000 songs that I always want local.
Then let me turn on Match to go beyond that.

Now, as soon as I turn on Match, it wipes out all my music.
What is the purpose of that?

My workaround is turning on Match and letting it download my playlists over night.

Makes no sense.

 

[Dwalls90]

Playlists are your friend. Smart playlists are your best friend. Download most of what you want over wi-fi to either type of playlist. Most people will only stream download the occasional song after that.
I paid full price for my iPhone 5 so I don't have to deal with tiered data. Unlimited LTE!, or whatever Verizon considers unlimited these days..

I do use them. But I don't want to be confined to a limited number of songs. Makes iTunes Match useless.

I'm on a 4GB plan and my iTunes match works exactly as I'd expect it to.

Ok, that's not the point of the argument.

Here is how iTunes Match should work (and used to).

Let me download the music I want to my phone.
Let me have a base of 2-3000 songs that I always want local.
Then let me turn on Match to go beyond that.

Now, as soon as I turn on Match, it wipes out all my music.
What is the purpose of that?

My workaround is turning on Match and letting it download my playlists over night.

Makes no sense.

Yea, iOS 6 made it worse I think.

 

[alent1234]

As many have pointed out, you failed to comprehend the topic post. I don't want to, or need to, download/stream the entire library of 70Gb. My point is that, iTunes Match is not the solution for anyone with a library over 2Gb (250 songs) of music, really.



Can you explain how Spotify magically bypasses the usage of data that iTunes Match requires? Everyone keeps suggesting spotify, but it's no better at conserving data ... and that's the issue here. Low and behold, I already own my music, so why would I pay a monthly subscription to access that music on a third party app?

Spotify premium has offline caching as well

 

[peeaanuut]

Here is how iTunes Match should work (and used to).

Let me download the music I want to my phone.
Let me have a base of 2-3000 songs that I always want local.
Then let me turn on Match to go beyond that.

Now, as soon as I turn on Match, it wipes out all my music.
What is the purpose of that?

My workaround is turning on Match and letting it download my playlists over night.

Makes no sense.

never bothering to use Match, am I missing something here? If I were to turn on match on my 2TB+ library, you are saying that iTunes would wipe all that data?

----------

I would prefer not streaming, actually, as I listen to a song more than once, especially at the gym or in my car. I would assume their bittrate of Spotify is 128kbps, and Apple's is 256kbps (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% those facts are correct). So if I listen to a song on Spotify twice or more times, I'm in the same position, if not worse, right?

I was just explaning how it could save over using match.

----------

ok, now seeing that you cant have local AND cloud if you use match, why would ANYONE choose to use the service?

 

[Dwalls90]

Spotify premium has offline caching as well

Is this any different from downloading a song over Match and having it stay on the iPhone?

never bothering to use Match, am I missing something here? If I were to turn on match on my 2TB+ library, you are saying that iTunes would wipe all that data?

If you enable Match on your iDevice, it will wipe the existing music content.

----------



I was just explaning how it could save over using match.

I guess slightly, since it downloads in a lower bitrate.

 

[Mliii]

Now, as soon as I turn on Match, it wipes out all my music.
What is the purpose of that?
...Makes no sense.

I've never understood this! It seems absolutely counter-intuitive that a service which is supposed to allow you maximum access to ALL of your music erases that portion of your music that you store locally... Makes no sense to me!

 

[emaja]

As many have pointed out, you failed to comprehend the topic post. I don't want to, or need to, download/stream the entire library of 70Gb. My point is that, iTunes Match is not the solution for anyone with a library over 2Gb (250 songs) of music, really.

Since I have 500+GB of music and it works fine for me, I guess I must be using it wrong.

Is it really so hard to download the stuff you listen to frequently and then use ITM to fill in the blanks on a day where you have to hear a certain song? That's how I thought it was really meant to be used anyway.

 

[Dwalls90]

Since I have 500+GB of music and it works fine for me, I guess I must be using it wrong.

Is it really so hard to download the stuff you listen to frequently and then use ITM to fill in the blanks on a day where you have to hear a certain song? That's how I thought it was really meant to be used anyway.

The fact I still need to download it all, even over WiFi, is stupid by design.

It should allow you to fill in the blanks, by syncing first from iTunes through USB, then by using iTM afterwards.

I guess you could create a smart playlist with the songs you wanted in iTunes, and then download that entire playlist, but you still gotta do it all over WiFi. WiFi is fast, but realistically USB is still faster.

 

[emaja]

The fact I still need to download it all, even over WiFi, is stupid by design.

But you don't download it all. You choose what to download by tapping the cloud icon.

 

[djransom]

Get a spotify account.

iTunes Match was dead on arrival

Spotify fills up your cache. This has been an ongoing issue for a while and can be verified here http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-iOS-iPhone-iPad-iPod/Clear-Cache-Button-Needed/td-p/2329