Quote:
Originally Posted by
nunyabinez 
OK. I did a little searching and found some things about ITM that are a little disappointing.
1. ALL music in your library is automatically included in the match. If iTunes identifies it correctly it associates it with a 256k version already stored on Apple's servers. If not, it copies the file as it is to the cloud (I imagine that would be true even of lossless). It appears that for many developers it is only matching a small percentage of their libraries. but again, if it is in your library it gets added, one way or the other.
2. There is no way to delete from the cloud. Example: I have the spooky halloween sounds tracks in my library so that I can burn a CD. I forgot to delete it before scanning. Now it is in my cloud library forever. (this might change, but that's how it is now)
3. Combining 1 and 2 gives you some crappy experiences. Example: I have an album that is on the iTunes store, but I have it tagged wrong so it doesn't get matched. That means my version gets copied. I fix the tags and rescan. Now it matches, but doesn't delete my old one, so now I have the album listed twice. And I can't tell which is which until I download it.
Looking around the Internet I see that there are still LOTS of issues where things either aren't working right, or the design at present is frustrating users. So, I'm guessing that Apple got lots of feedback from developers who don't like some things about the service in addition to bugs. I may actually hold off now seeing how it is implemented.
Thanks for this post, this has me re-thinking whether to use iTunes Match or not. I was hoping you could keep your master library on your computer and when you do a rescan, it would update any changes since the last scan. So if you remove an album, it would remove it from the match. I wouldn't necessarily need to have matched albums removed but in your example, if the match wasn't done initially but is done later because of a tag/rip error, i would want the non-matched copy removed.
Ideally, I would like to see which albums are matched after the initial scan and then be given a choice whether to upload the non-matched ones or not. If we had this option, we could then examine the albums that didn't get matched, try to correct them, and then right click the fixed album(s) and click Match to try again. Looking at the videos of how iTunes match works, it doesn't appear possible. The only way to know if they were matched or not to my knowledge is to re-download them and check the bitrate. I love the simplicity of Apple but in this case, I think we need more options.
Though I was looking forward to ITM and bummed that it hasn't been released on schedule, I'm glad that Apple didn't release it if it's not ready for prime time yet. This is a major project so that's certainly understandable. It would be nice to hear from Apple though as to why the delay happened, i.e. bugs, new features, etc.
