With iOS 5 Beta 7, Apple is Right: iTunes Match is Not Streaming in iOS

[SirHaakon]

plus, i don't like in some streaming apps, like di.fm, it always stutter in an area with bad reception.

That's not the app's fault, that's the fact that you're in an area with bad reception. Blame AT&T (or whoever you have) if your signal sucks. And guess what... if your signal sucks, you won't be able to download the song any faster, either.

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the data cap card is being over played. you still want streaming capability when you have access to wi-fi.

Not to mention I use other streaming services daily and I've never gone over 2GB in a month.

 

[mrklaw]

probably just legal semantics. Apple gets charged less for redownloading - thats basically just a purchase history integrated into your library right?

By downloading, only the first play is accessing the servers, subsequent plays are local. That means for the user they can listen when out of coverage, and for Apple its only one download, which is less bandwidth for them, and possibly less money to pay the labels.

All that matters to me (although irrelevant as I'm in the UK) is that I can click anywhere in my library and start playing, so it continues to the next track just like a streaming service. Needs to work if I'm shuffling a all songs, playing a playlist, whatever. Don't care if I'm downloading or not - its not going to eat your storage space that quickly.

they should take it a step further and if I'm at home and connected to my wifi, it should just stream from my home server

 

[SirHaakon]

I think people are forgetting that the iTunes Match service costs $25 per year, that's about $2 per month and even then most of it goes back to the music industry.

Can you imagine the bandwidth Apple would need to support an entire world of iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches constantly streaming their music from Apple's servers? No way they could do it on that budget without introducing ads etc.

I pay $5 a month for Digitally Imported's 256kbps, ad-free streaming service which is unlimited listening. Pandora's annual fee is $36. I'd gladly pay the $1-$3 difference if Apple allowed streaming. I think a download-only service is next to pointless.

 

[MacBoobsPro]

Wow this is already a mess!

 

[Michael Scrip]

I pay $5 a month for Digitally Imported's 256kbps, ad-free streaming service which is unlimited listening. Pandora's annual fee is $36. I'd gladly pay the $1-$3 difference if Apple allowed streaming. I think a download-only service is next to pointless.

iCloud is not trying to be Pandora or Spotify.

iCloud is a syncing service that extends even further than music. You can save a document on your Mac, and it's transferred to your iPhone. It keeps your files in-sync across devices... including your music that you currently have saved on those devices.

You're right... it would be easier to scrap on-board storage altogether and just rely on streaming. But that's not what Apple is going for.

Thankfully... you can still subscribe to any streaming service you want.

 

[richman555]

I think this is a great solution as 'streaming' does have some inherent issues.

This may make things work better for devices with slow connections. You won't have to worry as much having a single bar on your phone.

It also saves on bandwidth. Since your data plans are capped, you probably want to use as little bandwidth as possible.

This may come in to play even more for things such as movies where the amount of data is much higher.

 

[zedsdead]

This is not good news. Apple better switch this back to the way it was.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

This is not good news. Apple better switch this back to the way it was.

This is how it was always advertised, which leads me to the stupid title of this article. Apple is right? No, Apple told you how it was going to work, people just didn't listen and assumed on the basis of a BETA that they were getting something that wasn't advertised.

Apple said no streaming, not that hard a concept to grasp.

 

[Sedrick]

It cost $25 a year to play music I already bought and own. GTFO

For the .0003% of people who have 20,000 songs, they can download one song at a time, listen to it and then delete it. Genius!

I'm sure a jailbreak tweak can make it stream.

It's not for everybody. To me, the $2 a month is worth it for the convenience of having all my music synced up and ready to play on whatever, whenever.

How long does it take to download a song? How about 4 or 5 songs?

Just download a few songs at breakfast before you get in the car. It will be fast over your home WIFI.

Remember when you had to use a USB cable to get songs into your iPhone?

This is so much easier!

Some people will swallow anything Apple sells. Sad, really.

You are so right, It is a streaming + caching aka download for smoother playback. You can easily delete the cached downloads, so whats the big issue?

See first comment above ^

iCloud allows you to have 20,000 of your songs in the cloud and available on all your iOS devices... while a 16GB iPhone could only hold 3,000 songs.

If you're out somewhere, and you suddenly wanna listen to some Jimi Hendrix, you can download your Hendrix songs to your iPhone.

Whether it's pure streaming, or playing while downloading or whatever you wanna call it... iCloud gives access to all your songs anywhere you have a data connection.

Otherwise... you gotta wait to get home to add new songs to your phone.

Well, that's it in a nutshell. All these millions in development Apple spent on this so once or twice a week I can down load a Jimi Hendrix song I already own, then delete it when I'm done. Brilliant.

 

[179202]

For the .0003% of people who have 20,000 songs, they can download one song at a time, listen to it and then delete it. Genius!





Some people will swallow anything Apple sells. Sad, really.


See first comment above ^



Well, that's it in a nutshell. All these millions in development Apple spent on this so once or twice a week I can down load a Jimi Hendrix song I already own, then delete it when I'm done. Brilliant.

Wow. Sounds like you're part of the hate brigade. Don't like it, don't buy it. Simple.

Personally, I like the idea that I don't need to remember sync an album to my iPhone. I can just get it whenever I want. I'll gladly pay for that convenience.
Let's remember song catalogues too...there are countless songs that I listen to that just aren't available on Spotify or any of the other streaming apps, so they would be useless to me. Different users, different needs. Again, simple.

 

[bushido]

Yes you have to buy music you'd like to own.
Edit: Sorry you don't have to, but you should.

Oh now u call me a pirate? Every other real streaming service lets u play ANY song from the catalogue without having to own it. Thats the point of streaming imo, play a random track u dont have whenever u want for a small monthly fee.

Ur basically paying for rdownloading songs u already own lol makes no sense to me, even if its just 2$ a month. I guess pirates will love the opportunity to download hq of their rips tho ...

 

[Canubis]

It's most probably a legal problem

I am quite sure it's a legal problem - again.
Apple got contracts with labels that allow them to let users download music and then play this. Technically, there is not so much difference anymore to stream music (as it basically is downloading and playing shortly after each other - not of the whole file but always a few bit after each other). However, legally it is something completely else. And labels as well as collecting companies around the world (which makes this a big hassle all over the world) want to be paid additional money for this "feature". And they will try to rip off Apple as much as somehow possible for a simple feature like this.

Personally, iTunes match would make total sense for me as a streaming service. I think they should include an option in iTunes to remove songs that have only been downloaded and played but not manually downloaded. This would add a similar streaming-like feature. But in my opinion doesn't match the legal definition of streaming.

 

[realmike15]

That's fine, I just won't be purchasing the iTunes match service and continue using Spotify instead. This reminds me of the MobileME service, which people told them from the very beginning wasn't worth the cost. But they being the arrogant company they are didn't listen to consumers, and look what happened to the paid Mobileme subscription model. For a company so vested in delivering what the customer wants, you'd think they would look around and take notice of all the other streaming services out there... and realize it's the future of multimedia delivery.

Maybe next year they'll get it right.

edit: Just to clarify, I'm not asking for access to the entire iTunes Store library. What I want is to be able to stream my catalog via WiFi/3G off iTunes servers, based on my iTunes Match list.

 

[Dcuellar]

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This is actually great news, folks. The fact that you can delete a song whenever makes the download of a song ideal for those who have data caps.

I'm interested in seeing what happens when the device is full. Will it resort to deleted older played songs automatically? If it doesn't will it still play the song as a stream?

 

[Sedrick]

This is actually great news, folks. The fact that you can delete a song whenever makes the download of a song ideal for those who have data caps.

Great, so you're spending all your time playing one song at a time and then deleting it...

That's fine, I just won't be purchasing the iTunes match service and continue using Spotify instead. This reminds me of the MobileME service, which people told them from the very beginning wasn't worth the cost. But they being the arrogant company they are didn't listen to consumers, and look what happened to the paid Mobileme subscription model. For a company so vested in delivering what the customer wants, you'd think they would look around and take notice of all the other streaming services out there... and realize it's the future of multimedia delivery.

Maybe next year they'll get it right.

edit: Just to clarify, I'm not asking for access to the entire iTunes Store library. What I want is to be able to stream my catalog via WiFi/3G off iTunes servers, based on my iTunes Match list.

Not a popular thought, but what could happen here is iTunes Match falls flat and a disappointing release this year of a simple iPhone 4 refresh and the shine will definitely be gone from that golden apple.

I think iTunes Match will fail, but I'm hoping Apple knocks it out of the park with the iPhone 5 at least.

 

[c-Row]

Oh my God! I will have to manually delete the songs I don't listen to anymore! That's the end of the world for sure!

 

[Jayse]

It cost $25 a year to play music I already bought and own. GTFO

It costs you thousands of dollars per year to eat food you've already eaten...

 

[frozencarbonite]

A question I have is, will you be able to "Swipe to Delete" a song once you don't want it on your iPhone anymore?

I really like the "On Demand" downloads that the iPhone has now for iTunes purchased music, but it's a bummer having to go to my computer to delete one song.

 

[CosmoPilot]

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I really liked the last version which allowed 'streaming' As a family which shared an Apple ID, it would be nice to 'preview' a song without actually adding it to my iTunes library. If I liked it, then I could download it then.

Not sure this 'new' way is as user friendly for my needs.

 

[SirHaakon]

iCloud is not trying to be Pandora or Spotify.

Did you even read the post I quoted and what my post was responding to? I never said I wanted iCloud to be like Pandora or Spotify... not in the slightest. Those services provide a la carte access to content you don't own - it's a completely different offering.

What the poster before me said was that if they opened it up to streaming potential, the bandwidth costs would be staggering. I pointed out that I use other streaming services on a very regular basis which cost a few dollars a month at the most - debunking his assertion. I also pointed out a few posts earlier that I have never come close to a 2GB bandwidth cap even though I use these services regularly. Both the data usage and the cost involved is very low.

I know what iCloud is (at least in this week's beta), and I'm not asking for it to be a replacement for Pandora (a web radio station) or Spotify (a subscription-based music service). Please read through the thread before you make rebuttals.

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It also saves on bandwidth.

This is a total fallacy. Every time you listen to a song that isn't on your device (and presumably most of that music is not, or you'd already have it there to begin with) you have to "stream-download" the file. While that particular individual file is then placed on your device, you won't have storage for your entire library. That means that you must continually delete files on your device in order to listen to more content. Every time you play something that isn't already on your device, you're redownloading the entire song, using up the same bandwidth as simply streaming it would. The only way you would be able to avoid this is if your total library of music did not exceed the storage capability of your device, so you could download everything once and never have to make room for new content. However, if that was the case, you could just load your device with all your music and you wouldn't need this service to begin with.

 

[pubwvj]

Fixing Songs?

So this raises the question of will this be useful for "fixing songs"? I have a lot of music (legally downloaded or ripped - every one) with problems (e.g., missing last seconds of song). If I am downloading it from the cloud then I would think I would be getting the full song instead of my broken copy. Over time then I might be able to fix my collection of music. Anyone know if this works?

What would be really nice is if iTunes could scan my library and fix all the broken music. Songs that were replaced could be set aside in a "broken" songs folder and a text report could be saved to that folder detailing what was done to fix the collection.

 

[tdar]

Some more thought is needed here

For all of you that do not see see this as an important news item or see it as eating up space in cyberspace as I saw one poster put it, I have to respectfully summit you are wrong. Wrong for two reasons.

Firstly the method of how iTunes Match is delivered to end users is very important. What we saw in the video of beta 6 (and what is still presently done on the Mac -more about that in a moment) is a very elegant and brilliant solution ,very Apple like. While what we see in the video of beta 7 is crude and inelegant , something I'd expect say from Google. This matters very much. We and other users love Apple for their elegance and yes as some have mentioned over the past days the "it just works". Beta 6 had all of this, beta 7 does not. The level of sophistication we expect from Apple and the reputation one earns from it, must be earned every day. One misstep tarnishes that-think mobile me.

Secondly, lets think about WHY Apple has made this choice. Some have sugested it's due to licensing. Then why does the mac still work in the original way? No the answer is bandwidth. This change was made to benefit ATT, Verizon et al. Here is a clear cut example of something I have been thinking was, and world be, happening for some time now. Software designs are being compromised to protect the loss of unlimited data plan model. Our carrier overlords are compromising the quality of our experience, and the quality of our software. What other price are we going to be expected to pay to maximize their profits? What good is a phone as an ecosystem when you can not afford to use it?

The response I see from many of you, reminds me of your response when the unlimited data plans were being eliminated. You'll take what your given (even though you'r paying for it) and be happy. As customers we must draw the line and not allow for anyone to cross,lest someday we find we have nothing left. This matters. We must insist that Apple remains Apple and not become Google, this matters.

All of this matters.

 

[Razeus]

This is going to be a mess. The downloaded files are on my iDevice? What happens when I sync to my Mac? Will it try to add the track to my already pristine tagged library? Starting to look at my Spotify options...

 

[TraceyS/FL]

I wonder how much access 3rd party music players have to it? Will THEY be able to create an app that downloads and deletes the songs from the device - without a jailbreak?

I'm undecided if it will benefit me at the moment. Technically it would let me get rid of my backup of my backup of my library.... But I'm not sure about using it while out and about.

I'm also more than a few weeks into a MobileMe support case, and I'm not sure on the whole thing.....

 

[bushido]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

This is actually great news, folks. The fact that you can delete a song whenever makes the download of a song ideal for those who have data caps.

I'm interested in seeing what happens when the device is full. Will it resort to deleted older played songs automatically? If it doesn't will it still play the song as a stream?

how on earth does this help people on data caps? u still have to download the song O.O which makes just as much traffic as streaming it