Want iTunes Match but have questions

[whsbuss]

Really interested in subscribing to iTunes Match. Most important reason is I want to stop having to keep over 400 songs on my iPhone (to free up some space).

1. I have songs downloaded from a variety of places in which I have manually added album art, artist name. Will iTunes Match be able to find matches based on just the artist name and song title?

2. When I enable iTunes Match on the iPhone, does it automatically download the songs (that would defeat the purpose of having them stored in the cloud)?

3. I assume my library on the Mac will not be impacted.

 

[pmontanarella]

Really interested in subscribing to iTunes Match. Most important reason is I want to stop having to keep over 400 songs on my iPhone (to free up some space).

1. I have songs downloaded from a variety of places in which I have manually added album art, artist name. Will iTunes Match be able to find matches based on just the artist name and song title?

2. When I enable iTunes Match on the iPhone, does it automatically download the songs (that would defeat the purpose of having them stored in the cloud)?

3. I assume my library on the Mac will not be impacted.

1. Yes; from my understanding it uses a bunch of data (metadata) including song title, album name, artist name, as well as length of the song (could be a problem for downloaded songs from Youtube for example).

2. It does not, you can choose to stream or download certain songs whenever you'd like.

3. It should not be.

 

[Rigby]

1. I have songs downloaded from a variety of places in which I have manually added album art, artist name. Will iTunes Match be able to find matches based on just the artist name and song title?

No, as far as we know, iTunes Match completely ignores the metadata when matching. It just runs an identification algorithm on the actual audio data. But even if it does not find a match, it will upload your original file to the cloud, so it will be available for download/streaming on your phone in any case.

 

[whsbuss]

Thanks all.

 

[Demon Hunter]

2. It does not, you can choose to stream or download certain songs whenever you'd like.

I think I also read that iOS intelligently manages your downloaded/cached music by deleting songs that aren't listened to often and retaining those which are.

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3. I assume my library on the Mac will not be impacted.

It should not be, but iTunes Match has not been known for its... assuredness. You should make a backup of your library before subscribing.

That said I think it's one of the coolest services Apple has offered yet. You can also listen to iTunes Radio with no ads, a very nice bonus! 🙂