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Who here has subscribed to iTunes Match?
- Thread starter SRLMJ23
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Me when I get paid
Me when I get paid
Me, it's still processing. Even though I don't fully understand it and what it does to the current songs in my iPhone.
Me. I followed the advice on a site and deleted all my matched songs, and redownloaded them onto my MacBook Air. This gave me 256kbps clean copies. I had some really old copies I ripped years ago when MP3 rippers were not as good as today. So far so good. I am digging this.
Noooooo. For $29 Apple will match songs in your personal collection with 256kbps versions in their cloud, which you can listen on your iOS devices. And, if you delete a matched song off your hard drive, you can replace it with the matched version by downloading it. Very slick. It's great if you have a large OLD collection of MP3s encoded at lower bit rates.
I would like to and had every intention to do so, but now I'm not sure if I'll really need it or how often I'll use it. Excited to watch it develop and hear everyones feedback, regardless. 
As a musician, I'm happy that it's potentially saving the industry.
As a musician, I'm happy that it's potentially saving the industry.
I got it. It was actually pretty cool having a crappy quality song in my iTunes on my Macbook but a high quality version when downloading/streaming it to my iPhone.
Made me realize I probably didn't need all that space on my 64GB 4s lol.
I do wish it has some better organizing features. Such as better view options on iOS devices. You can view your entire iCloud library, which will have icons next to songs that are only on the cloud or saved on the phone also. Clicking on a song will start playing it and simultaneously downloading it locally. Any song you press on will start downloading locally onto your device unless you hit the stop button. I kind of wish there were two different options so you could choose to just stream the song.
Oh and all this iClouding isn't too pretty for the battery either, but I'm sure everyone knew that.
Made me realize I probably didn't need all that space on my 64GB 4s lol.
I do wish it has some better organizing features. Such as better view options on iOS devices. You can view your entire iCloud library, which will have icons next to songs that are only on the cloud or saved on the phone also. Clicking on a song will start playing it and simultaneously downloading it locally. Any song you press on will start downloading locally onto your device unless you hit the stop button. I kind of wish there were two different options so you could choose to just stream the song.
Oh and all this iClouding isn't too pretty for the battery either, but I'm sure everyone knew that.
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Do your matched albums and songs get coinciding album artwork? When I moved to my MBA, all my artwork got messed up but it would be really awesome if iTunes Match handled the artwork for anything that they match.
Also just the general organization of file names and data. There are some instances where I have duplicate albums because the album artist is different or something random that throws off iTunes.
Also just the general organization of file names and data. There are some instances where I have duplicate albums because the album artist is different or something random that throws off iTunes.
I just opted in. Waiting for it to process my collection before I can really dig into it a little bit.
You can delete the original low quality ones, then download the higher quality from the cloud.
iTunes Match makes absolutely no changes to your meta-data. It will take whatever you have filled or not filled on your iTunes. Some people believe that the match is affected by proper meta-data input but I really believe it does a sound check.
So if you're an meta-data nazi who spent hours filling in everything, it's a blessing.
For people with an unorganized iTunes library, you're going to to have an unorganized iCloud library
Is there an easy way to do this or do you have to do every song manually?
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iTunes Match makes absolutely no changes to your meta-data. It will take whatever you have filled or not filled on your iTunes. Some people believe that the match is affected by proper meta-data input but I really believe it does a sound check.
So if you're an meta-data nazi who spent hours filling in everything, it's a blessing.
For people with an unorganized iTunes library, you're going to to have an unorganized iCloud library
Lol I spend hours trying to clean up my meta data and it always manages to mess itself up again. So even if I dl the iTunes version it will fill in the meta data that I inputted for my original file?
I'm pretty sure Apple said that it's done through sound checking btw. But I want them to fix my meta data afterwards which I'm sure would anger just as many people as it would please.
After you've matched your songes, delete them from your iTunes library. It will ask you if you want to delete them from iCloud. Obviously, say know. The song names stay will a little cloud next to them. Select them all, and click download.
Be prepared to wait. I matched 2200 songs and its going on 2 hours downloading, and its half way there....
I just did. It's only done ~500 of 10,000 songs. There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to how the songs are matched. It doesn't appear to be matching by album or even alphabetically. Also, it is tagging all the songs from greatest hits albums as duplicates.
It doesn't replace it automatically. It keeps your old stuff by default and matches it with high quality files on the cloud.
You can manually delete your old stuff and redownload the new stuff to replace your old stuff.
Once you download the new stuff, it's yours, legal, and DRM free. You can use it on any MP3 player that plays AAC files. (That's a catch). iTunes will let you convert them to MP3 if you need to.
The over the cloud thing is overhyped. With metered data plans who is going to be streaming music? I guess you could, if you watched your data usage or are lucky enough to have an unlimited data plan. But if you can you can, and this seems to work very nice. I personally just plan to sync my iOS devices the old fashioned way.
I've been using it for the past two months or so. I used it mainly to upgrade songs that were never available as iTunes + upgrades such as the Complete Depeche Mode.
I can't see using it for anything else. I've tried it on my iPhone and was not happy. The songs would download OK but they would be missing the artwork. Because of this, I just used my computer to upgrade the tracks, turned off match and then synced my iPhone the regular way.
I can't see using it for anything else. I've tried it on my iPhone and was not happy. The songs would download OK but they would be missing the artwork. Because of this, I just used my computer to upgrade the tracks, turned off match and then synced my iPhone the regular way.