Apple releases iTunes 10.5.1 with public launch of iTunes Match - Page 2

What happens if you share an iTunes Store account with multiple family members? How would this work in relation to iTunes Match? Would each iTunes library get stored online? How do you manage this?

Can you elaborate on that? Is it that they won't be matched because: A) They were purchased through iTunes from another country's store and the service refuses to upload them; B) They were purchased from another country and you won't upload them in an effort to conform to laws; C) You have oodles of music and this is somehow throwing you over the 25,000 limit; or D) Something else?

Even if iTunes didn't actually match my music, I would be perfectly content to go through the uploading process if it allowed me to do so. I'm at the uploading stage right now and it looks like iTunes successfully matched about 60% of my 11,000+ songs.

This might be a pain- but why not merge them all on one? Then you'd have access on the other one through match anyway?



Playlists?

Its just my wife and I (kids are too young). I have "Andy's Music". She has "Elisabeth's Music". You can diversify from there- and just play from the playlist. I used to feel that pain.... when I'd be listening to Leeland and then "Rockabye Baby! Coldplay" comes on... nothing is worse.

We have 12,221 songs on our Mini Media Library (more on several iMacs).

Did the iTunes Match yesterday (beta) and it found about 19,500 and needed to upload the remaining 2,700, or so.

The upload took several hours -- I wasn't paying attention.

But I was able to use the iCloud and local versions during the process on the iMacs, iPhones, AppleTV and iPads.

Well, I am sure glad to hear about the metadata being retained, thank you for creating this list

As someone who has for years painstaking entered in the names of my friends and types of activities (i.e. "Nigel" and "Exercise" and "CarPick") so that whenever I add one of those text strings to a comments field, the song would instantly be automatically added to a Smart Playlist...this is a huge relief that I can keep doing that!

They do not. They show up as matched. So, it is clear which songs are purchased and which are matched.

If you have over 25,000 songs like I do and do itunes match nothing will happen but a window that says you have too many songs. You need to hold down the option key and launch itunes. You will be prompted to create a new library. Choose the option to create a new library. Move to the Store menu and choose Turn on itunes match. Open itunes preferences, click the advanced preferences and uncheck the copy files to itunes media floder when adding to library option and click ok. This will prevent duplicates from generating. The next step is to choose file add to library and browse for tracks you want itunes to match. When you are finished choose store update itunes match. Voila!

Yeah, I am pretty happy with how it functions and that it matched most of my songs. My only real frustration is with it not matching songs that it really should. For example, I have the album "Ten Thousand Fists" by Disturbed. It matched all the songs except "Ten Thousand Fists" and "Land of Confusion" which were the most popular titles off the album. And it is a CD rip so, I don't see any reason it should have not worked. But not a big deal for me since I ripped it as lossless. So both the matched tracks and uploaded tracks are 256k. Now, there might be one or two albums that I don't remember where I got them from that are lower than 256K. Those frustrate me a little because some are 256k AAC and some are 128k MP3. Not a biggie, but I like things to be consistent.

Is there a way to stream to Apple TV but access your iTunes Match content listing without a television? I know I could stream to iPhone and then send to ATV with Airplay, but that costs battery and for me cuts out too often. I just want to use the iPhone as a remote and send content straight from cloud to ATV without leaving the TV on to see song menus.

Edit: I can't read.

What happens when I want to delete a local music that has been uploaded to the cloud? Will the file that's been uploaded to the cloud also be deleted? There are a few songs I want to delete that I simply haven't gotten around to deleting.

While I think you could since the ATV has audio out ... You'd need to activate the unit which does require a display.. Other options include.

Airport Express does a great job with audio and is regularly found on the apple refurb store and it's one product I never mind getting a refurb for a few bucks less... OR shop amazon and click on the price where it will list all the new refurb AND used offerings sometimes you get one at a really good price.

Also... If you have an iPod dock with audio out ... I think most Apple branded ones do. Then dock and old iPod and I think (might need to confirm this be just old iPod touches and iPhones) anyway that too mould act as a good airplay / iCloud node.

Also since its just gonna be sitting in the dock you really don't need a shiny new unit.. Just so long as it powers even with a damaged screen you'd likely be good to go.

Still I really like the airport express for this since it's just as cheap or cheaper than an ATV and you can use it to extend your wifi network ... Tho you may need an airport extreme for that if you do tho it's stupid easy to setup.

Well I suppose I was being a bit vague. The majority of the stuff I have from other countries than the one my account is in are actually movies and TV shows which aren't anything to do with iTunes match but conceivably will be soon so the problem will come up again and be many times compounded when we are allowed to match videos and TV shows.

To a lesser degree the same thing happens with my music. I have a lot of music from European sources that isn't even on iTunes in Europe, let alone in North America. Living in Canada, I also have a lot of music that won't show up on the Canadian iTunes store because for the most part, the Canadian iTunes store is a copy of the US but with (some) Canadian content. This means that obscure Canadian content won't be there at all. I also have some stuff that was only available in the USA at first so that's where I got it from. That also won't be matched.

Basically, it's the same issue as I had back in the 80's when I had a vinyl record collection. A lot of the cool stuff you can only get as "imports" (or today from other over-seas digital sources besides iTunes). Even if in the interim, the album has become available in your jurisdiction, it's not actually the same album. The cover art is different always, the songs are often in a different order on the album, tracks are added and subtracted. Additionally, sometimes the album just isn't available anymore and something else is sold in it's place with extra tracks or whatever. Many older artists and older recordings from the 70's and 80's are only available as "best of" albums now.

So ... for any serious collector, absolutely large amounts of stuff won't match at all and large amounts of the remainder will "match" but only by linking you to what is essentially a different album. If you go with that, you might as well delete your old albums.

In my case, with music this is (conservatively) about 15-20% of my collection (although I haven't tried yet so who knows). When it comes the time to do the same with videos, at least 70-80% of my movies and about half the TV shows I have won't match either.

Most have never been available for sale in my country at all.

I think I know the answer, but am looking for someone who has been using this to confirm for me. Can I use Match on my various computers to sync their libraries, but NOT turn on the Match function on my various iTunes devices, which inlude a iPad 1 and two iPod Touches? That way I could match away on the Toshiba, old MacBook and MacBoon Pro while maintaining the ability to manually manage my music and playlists on the iPods/iPad? I am not interested in streaming at this point, as I am wi-fi only and will be somewhere for the next few months were wi-fi will be hit or miss.

If I can match on the computers, leave the function off on my iOS gizmo's and still manually manage the newly upgraded and matched tunes, this is hand's down a winner for me.

I get the message that iTunes match is not accepting new subscribers at this time. Smart on Apples part I guess.

Are previously 128-Kbps iTunes purchases upgraded to 256-Kbps DRM-Free? Thanks.

I haven't yet used iTunes Match (I suppose my computer downstairs is just about finished with the upload process) but I would definitely be at least a little frustrated if it started changing around a lot of my more obscure music. I read earlier, though, that it honors your metadata so I wasn't expecting to run into any problems there.

As for your music not matching, I was just curious what the problem was? It still gets to upload, so it seems to me the only real drawbacks there, under most circumstances, would be a greater delay in initial setup and perhaps a loss of the ability to up convert some low bitrate music (though that wouldn't be a loss; more of a lost opportunity). The only other problem I was able to imagine would be if someone had, say, 30,000 songs, much of which was purchased through iTunes from another country, and thus some of it was not successfully matched through another country's iTunes Match service, thus reducing the amount of music someone could use through the service. (This would be a greater concern if all music purchased from a foreign iTunes store was counted toward the 25,000). At face value the service seems pretty flexible to me. Of course I'm quite picky about my music so I could be grumbling here tomorrow.

I'm not yet speaking from experience, but it is my understanding that you can indeed selectively use iTunes Match on one device to the next. I'm not completely certain why you would want to accomplish the goal you've outlined above, though, because (again based on my interpretation) you can use iTunes Match on your other devices and choose music to actually download from the iTunes Match service, thus making it available when offline (getting the best of both worlds).

And Apple's website has a plethora of information about the products they make.



Seems silly that you'd ask that when

1. It's on the website.

and

2. It's in the story around which this thread is based.

Reason I was wondering was that I had read that once you turn on Match on an iOS device you can no longer sync that device with a computer. Yes, you can sync it over the air, including playlists, etc, but I do like to "drag and drop" manually. Since I have two iPods that should work with it, maybe I'll just try it all on one of them before I take the plunge on all machines.

Thank you!

Neither of your sources specifically address his question. Nowhere does it say if iTunes Match is able to match DRMd files. It is my understanding is that iTunes Match does not, in fact, match *any* iTunes purchases.

No problem. It does make sense that features such as drag-and-drop would be disabled, though you should still be able to sync for non-music features and content. An alternative approach to music management might allow you to enjoy iTunes Match. For example, use playlists, or use Genius. Playlists might be great as it gives you a central point from which you can selectively download larger quantities of content directly to a device.

It just pulls iTunes purchases normally, I thought. Like if you've purchased it from iTunes, it doesn't count against your upload number, isn't uploaded (obviously), and is playable in the same fashion as anything else.

If it's from a CD or other source and in iTunes, it's matched and a 256k version is made playable.

If it's from a CD or other source and not in iTunes, it's uploaded as is and made playable.

Where am I wrong? I'm probably wrong somewhere in there.

I don't think you are wrong. He's asking about the old style 128kbps DRMd iTunes purchases though. I have not seen anything either way as to whether they would get upgraded. On the one hand why wouldn't they? On the other hand it's kinda shitty for the users Apple made pay to upgrade to the higher bitrate non-DRMd versions.

I have the same question as Manny and KazKam. I have some esoteric stuff in my iTunes library, mostly from lesser-known European bands, although all are ripped from CDs that I physically own. All of the stuff that I ripped from CD reliably pulled accurate metadata from CDDB or Gracenote. So I'm not worried about the metadata. But I guess if it's not available on the US iTunes Store, accurate metadata won't do me any good.

What I'm also curious to find out is whether Apple is using technology comparable to DropBox, which apparently bit-matches users' files to reduce the number of data storage used on its servers, even without the benefit of MP3 metadata. In other words, it would be insanely cool -- or "magical," to use Steve's favorite word -- if iTunes match could somehow substitute somebody's higher-quality rip of my same CDs for my own lower bit-rate rips. iTunes already relies on CDDB or Gracenote (can't remember which it is these days) when ripping CDs. So it would make sense if Apple used those same (IME reliable) references for iTunes Match.

Bottom line: I really would like to get a sense for how well the matching will work before embarking on potentially uploading a large part of my music collection over a slow (asymmetric) DSL connection.

With the way Apple has dropped support for iWeb, and changed the way iWork auto saves a million versions with no "save as" option. Not to mention distorting Final cut pro, address book and iCal, I no longer trust them. I will not pay a yearly fee, give them all my music so in five years they change their mind i find myself having to choose loosing my music or buy the full download or whatever they change.

Oh, no! It's a different name! Must be completely different!


Apple isn't Wal-Mart.

Of course not, TS!

But some of the regression of features in the move from MobileMe to iCloud reminds me of Apple's screw-ups with some of the earlier versions of dot.Mac. The fact that iCloud doesn't offer functionality comparable to Apple's own iDisk, or DropBox -- which Apple tried and failed to buy -- is patently embarrassing. I'm on the same page as jawporta at this stage.

This is coming from a fanboy who's been loyal to Apple for two decades, and has bought a dozen Macs and even more i-devices over the years. I've never hesitated to pay Apple's high prices, because the products have generally been worth the money. But I sure as heck am worried about the reliability of iTunes Match.

And it's not a question of price at all. $25 a year is surprisingly low. In fact, it's so low that I have to wonder whether Apple doubted that its iTunes Match service would be worth any more than that. I'd gladly pay $100 for a bomb-proof matching service. But right now, I'm afraid it's going to be a so-so service that will be worth a try as an impulse buy for the low price, but may not fully live up to its promise. Meh.

People REALLY need to take the time to read how this works.


It is different (and not implemented particularly well).

Seriously... Apple insider- this isn't some member or somebody belittling another forum member, this is a moderator! I beg you- please don't let this kind of attitude "moderate" the forum! Was it a stupid question- maybe- But his response is ridiculous and condescending- in fact, 80% of his posts are. I can't believe it... I really can't.

Not an issue...

1 Burn drm'd tracks to a cd
2 rip cd

I had an old album that was 128k DRM'd from iTunes. Just deleted it from my library and redownloaded it fom iCloud as a 256k DRM free version.

Exactly how was he belittling, how was his response ridiculous, and in what way was it condescending?

The article answered the question. Apple's website answered the question. I think you have a beef with Tallest Skil which makes me think you are a previously banned poster.

I do see bloodstains's point but Apple does say "ALL THE MUSIC" without any disclaimer that will exclude iTunes Store music that was previously 128Kbps and DRMed. From that we can deduce that Apple has struck deals to include that music as well (probably a very small segment of their total user base and pointless to keep nearly double the number of songs on file) and if not, would very easily end up in a class action lawsuit that I think Apple will unquestionably lose.

Don't faint.... for heaven's sake.

And, get a grip while you're at it.

How by having a beef with tallest skil would that make me previously banned? He just became a moderator.

Secondly- he's rude. Period. I dislike bullies/know it alls on the Internet. I know that's what you get, but he is extreme. His posts are always condescending. If you make a post, he takes it line by like with snarky remarks like "nope" "sorry, wrong", etc. Hes rude, plain and simple. It irks me. I'll just put him on ignore- problem solved.

I think that your instant beef with a very vanilla post of his and you being new to the forum makes me think you are were previously banned regular.

It has nothing to do with him now being a moderator, nor does him being a moderator mean that he should curtail his postings to only response in sage, cryptic, fortune cookie-esque comments that that make you think his comment was profound should it ever be understood. He was made a moderator as the poster he has been over the past year and I see nothing outside of abusing his additional controls as a vBulletin moderator that will make him lose them.

He can be abrasive — but can't we all — and I too dislike any post starting with abrupt "Wrong!", "No!", or what have you without a solid argument, but he broke no forum rules, unless you want to claim that "silly" is a personal attack. Once again, this is what makes me think you had a previous beef with him in a form iteration. I could be wrong, it does happen from time to tim.

I did consider trying that out, though.

I suppose a direct image link (and quote) to the sources in my previous comment minus the extra commentary would have been better warranted. I'll try to take care to do just that from now on in this situation unless the offense (which here is "not bothering to read") is particularly egregious.

on the one hand, i couldn't agree more, and on the other hand, i never get snippy at the New York Times (a notable news publication based in the North Eastern United States) for not reporting on news in LA (a common abbreviation for Los Angeles, a large city in the south western continental United States).

I guess I don't see the appeal of this service. I always have my phone with me and it has all my music. I can play in my car, at work or with headphones. What is the point of paying to have it on all my devices?

Not seeing a lot of value here. Nor much profit for Apple.

Well, here's a hint. Not everybody in the whole world has the same small music library you do. Not everybody in the world wants to use up a lot of space on their phones with music. I know it's a stretch.