I thought iTunes Match is just for mobile devices. Since that's no use to me (limited online access during the day) I just put it out of my mind. If it's also suitable for syncing multiple Macs, I should probably give it a look!
EDIT: Just looked, and yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer. It still makes me nervous for some reason though. I *REALLY* don't like some of Apple's approaches to file management, like the irritating naming convention iTunes uses -- "Track Number Song Title" with no Artist and with every album requiring its own folder -- and the absence of any user-accessible file structure in iOS. I'm a control freak when it comes to my audio files, so letting an invisible third-party manage my library doesn't come easily to me! I'd still kinda prefer an online sync system that just makes sure whatever files are in Library A also appear in Library B and Library C, but Match obviously does a lot more than just that, and at the price I'd be an idiot not to at least try it.
I've found it to be phenomenal.
I use my new Mac Pro as the sole iTunes Library with actual real data. I have about 100 GIGs of music on an external TB drive (and backed up else where). Anything I purchase or add manually I do to that library only. Every other Mac, iPad and iPhone in the entire family can log in using the Apple ID I set it up with and have access anywhere anytime. They can all have their own Apple ID for their own Mail and everything else obviously. The neat thing is even the new Mac Pro has access to the cloud version when the external hard drive is off line. There is no storage or file structure on a mobile device to worry about so you can relax. They simply access the iCloud version. The only actual, physical library is on my new Mac Pro's drive and it is totally accessible with the finder in the only sensible filing structure I can imagine, by Artists' name and that folder containing any separate albums. 98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links. The rest of the material is original recordings or a few English CDs I own that iTunes seems to have not recognized. In these cases the actual files were uploaded and accessible to all devices from the cloud too. To paraphrase Steve, 'It just works'.
EDIT: Just looked, and yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer. It still makes me nervous for some reason though. I *REALLY* don't like some of Apple's approaches to file management, like the irritating naming convention iTunes uses -- "Track Number Song Title" with no Artist and with every album requiring its own folder -- and the absence of any user-accessible file structure in iOS. I'm a control freak when it comes to my audio files, so letting an invisible third-party manage my library doesn't come easily to me! I'd still kinda prefer an online sync system that just makes sure whatever files are in Library A also appear in Library B and Library C, but Match obviously does a lot more than just that, and at the price I'd be an idiot not to at least try it.
er, you do realize that you dont have to use itunes' file management for your music folders, right? just uncheck the box, dude.
er, you do realize that you dont have to use itunes' file management for your music folders, right? just uncheck the box, dude.
I am puzzled what he dislikes about the way it is organized with the box checked. It seems pretty logical. Exact same way I used to store my LPs (damn giving my age away there). By artist and of course all of each artists' albums grouped. I am trying to think of what would be preferable especially when you can search for anything too anyway. Here of course I am talking about the one and only library required, on a Mac, I can't see why anyone needs to fill up mobile devices now we have iCloud. Of course if traveling where there is no internet I can see a need for actual data, for that I have a second 1 TB drive in my MBP with a replica of my main Library. If all else fails I still have two 60 GB iPods from the year dot that still work fine.
er, you do realize that you dont have to use itunes' file management for your music folders, right? just uncheck the box, dude.
Uh, yeah. Now buy a song from the iTunes store and see what the file is called and how it's filed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
I am puzzled what he dislikes about the way it is organized with the box checked. It seems pretty logical.
I'm surprised that you guys care so much about how I manage my music library! I'm grateful for the input, though!
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
I am trying to think of what would be preferable especially when you can search for anything too anyway.
A file called "02 Spirit In The Sky.m4a" does not immediately tell me whether it's the original Norman Greenbaum version or the cover by Doctor and the Medics. I have to open an app that reads the metadata to found out. I don't need that extra step -- I can read.
Further, having all the tracks split out into individual album folders contained within individual artist folders is not only slower to search but completely unnecessary. I won't bore you with the details of my workflow, but suffice to say that it's quicker and easier to drag out well-named files from a single folder than it is do a Spotlight search and navigate to one of a thousand locations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips
I can't see why anyone needs to fill up mobile devices now we have iCloud.
Spend a day with me and I'll show you. No internet on the subway for starters, and besides, the cost of data consumption to stream everything will quickly add up to more than the cost of buying storage up front.
Apparently you've never owned a Mac that still works but is old enough to be dropped from the list of supported hardware for a new OS. My wife replaced her laptop in part because she couldn't install Mavericks (or maybe it was Mountain Lion… whatever).
Snow Leopard is where I got caught, stuck with the non-functional MobileMe control panel and no access to any iCloud service. I wouldn't mind that so much, my Mac was old, but some of the iCloud services were available on Windows XP, an 8 year older OS. I could Boot Camp into Windows and get access to Apple services that weren't available on my Mac OS!
98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links.
As soon as I have time to set up iTM I'll know the answer to this, but I wonder what it does when I have a custom version of a popular song, which I've ripped from CD so there's no unique identifier metadata, just artist and song title. Will iTM recognize that it's not the version sitting on the server and upload it, or will it be "fooled" into substituting the standard version? I'll know soon enough, I guess!
Speaking of which, is there a way to force an upload (and override the substitution) if iTM ever does become confused?
98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links.
As soon as I have time to set up iTM I'll know the answer to this, but I wonder what it does when I have a custom version of a popular song, which I've ripped from CD so there's no unique identifier metadata, just artist and song title. Will iTM recognize that it's not the version sitting on the server and upload it, or will it be "fooled" into substituting the standard version? I'll know soon enough, I guess!
Speaking of which, is there a way to force an upload (and override the substitution) if iTM ever does become confused?
I have iTunes Match.
Others probably know more, but I think that it relies on the metadata mostly, so a custom version will probably get uploaded, not matched. I don't think you can force an upload; it's all automatic. Sometimes, you will be given a choice of album titles when matching; I don't think that affects the actual music, though, just the metadata.
One thing to be aware of is this: if you have CD quality albums, they obviously remain that quality presuming you've ripped them to your Mac as such - say, Apple Lossless. As long as you don't delete those files from your Mac, they will always play back at that quality on your Mac. However, they will play back at 256 AAC on other devices (unless you use Home Sharing). Also, were you to delete the CD quality files from your Mac, you would still be able to play them from iCloud, but they would only be 256 AAC. That applies to both matched and unmatched files.
Yesterday I discovered just how determined Apple is to impose their own naming convention.
I had to cut a promo for a concert ticket giveaway, so I grabbed a song by the band from my music folder. The filename was "This Love - Maroon 5.m4a." Pro Tools won't open an aac file so I dragged it into iTunes to convert it to wav. The file it spit out was called "02 This Love.wav."
Obviously iTunes ignoring my filename is not the end of the world, but it is a little annoying.
If you have Apple Lossless files ripped from CD, they will play back as Apple Lossless. But if you delete them from your Mac, you could then either stream them from iCloud or download them again to your Mac. But they will always only be 256 AAC from thereon. Apple sell it the other way, by saying that lower bitrate files automatically get upgraded to 256 AAC, which is fine if you've got a load of pirated 128 MP3s, I guess. But if you're honest, it seems to me you're more likely to have better quality files.
Comments
I've found it to be phenomenal.
I use my new Mac Pro as the sole iTunes Library with actual real data. I have about 100 GIGs of music on an external TB drive (and backed up else where). Anything I purchase or add manually I do to that library only. Every other Mac, iPad and iPhone in the entire family can log in using the Apple ID I set it up with and have access anywhere anytime. They can all have their own Apple ID for their own Mail and everything else obviously. The neat thing is even the new Mac Pro has access to the cloud version when the external hard drive is off line. There is no storage or file structure on a mobile device to worry about so you can relax. They simply access the iCloud version. The only actual, physical library is on my new Mac Pro's drive and it is totally accessible with the finder in the only sensible filing structure I can imagine, by Artists' name and that folder containing any separate albums. 98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links. The rest of the material is original recordings or a few English CDs I own that iTunes seems to have not recognized. In these cases the actual files were uploaded and accessible to all devices from the cloud too. To paraphrase Steve, 'It just works'.
EDIT: Just looked, and yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer. It still makes me nervous for some reason though. I *REALLY* don't like some of Apple's approaches to file management, like the irritating naming convention iTunes uses -- "Track Number Song Title" with no Artist and with every album requiring its own folder -- and the absence of any user-accessible file structure in iOS. I'm a control freak when it comes to my audio files, so letting an invisible third-party manage my library doesn't come easily to me! I'd still kinda prefer an online sync system that just makes sure whatever files are in Library A also appear in Library B and Library C, but Match obviously does a lot more than just that, and at the price I'd be an idiot not to at least try it.
er, you do realize that you dont have to use itunes' file management for your music folders, right? just uncheck the box, dude.
I am puzzled what he dislikes about the way it is organized with the box checked. It seems pretty logical. Exact same way I used to store my LPs (damn giving my age away there). By artist and of course all of each artists' albums grouped. I am trying to think of what would be preferable especially when you can search for anything too anyway. Here of course I am talking about the one and only library required, on a Mac, I can't see why anyone needs to fill up mobile devices now we have iCloud. Of course if traveling where there is no internet I can see a need for actual data, for that I have a second 1 TB drive in my MBP with a replica of my main Library. If all else fails I still have two 60 GB iPods from the year dot that still work fine.
er, you do realize that you dont have to use itunes' file management for your music folders, right? just uncheck the box, dude.
Uh, yeah. Now buy a song from the iTunes store and see what the file is called and how it's filed.
I am puzzled what he dislikes about the way it is organized with the box checked. It seems pretty logical.
I'm surprised that you guys care so much about how I manage my music library! I'm grateful for the input, though!
I am trying to think of what would be preferable especially when you can search for anything too anyway.
A file called "02 Spirit In The Sky.m4a" does not immediately tell me whether it's the original Norman Greenbaum version or the cover by Doctor and the Medics. I have to open an app that reads the metadata to found out. I don't need that extra step -- I can read.
Further, having all the tracks split out into individual album folders contained within individual artist folders is not only slower to search but completely unnecessary. I won't bore you with the details of my workflow, but suffice to say that it's quicker and easier to drag out well-named files from a single folder than it is do a Spotlight search and navigate to one of a thousand locations.
I can't see why anyone needs to fill up mobile devices now we have iCloud.
Spend a day with me and I'll show you. No internet on the subway for starters, and besides, the cost of data consumption to stream everything will quickly add up to more than the cost of buying storage up front.
Yep; your old Mac.
Buy a new one. Problem solved.
98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links.
As soon as I have time to set up iTM I'll know the answer to this, but I wonder what it does when I have a custom version of a popular song, which I've ripped from CD so there's no unique identifier metadata, just artist and song title. Will iTM recognize that it's not the version sitting on the server and upload it, or will it be "fooled" into substituting the standard version? I'll know soon enough, I guess!
Speaking of which, is there a way to force an upload (and override the substitution) if iTM ever does become confused?
98% of the music was never really uploaded since Apple have the files already, they are just links.
As soon as I have time to set up iTM I'll know the answer to this, but I wonder what it does when I have a custom version of a popular song, which I've ripped from CD so there's no unique identifier metadata, just artist and song title. Will iTM recognize that it's not the version sitting on the server and upload it, or will it be "fooled" into substituting the standard version? I'll know soon enough, I guess!
Speaking of which, is there a way to force an upload (and override the substitution) if iTM ever does become confused?
I have iTunes Match.
Others probably know more, but I think that it relies on the metadata mostly, so a custom version will probably get uploaded, not matched. I don't think you can force an upload; it's all automatic. Sometimes, you will be given a choice of album titles when matching; I don't think that affects the actual music, though, just the metadata.
One thing to be aware of is this: if you have CD quality albums, they obviously remain that quality presuming you've ripped them to your Mac as such - say, Apple Lossless. As long as you don't delete those files from your Mac, they will always play back at that quality on your Mac. However, they will play back at 256 AAC on other devices (unless you use Home Sharing). Also, were you to delete the CD quality files from your Mac, you would still be able to play them from iCloud, but they would only be 256 AAC. That applies to both matched and unmatched files.
Yesterday I discovered just how determined Apple is to impose their own naming convention.
I had to cut a promo for a concert ticket giveaway, so I grabbed a song by the band from my music folder. The filename was "This Love - Maroon 5.m4a." Pro Tools won't open an aac file so I dragged it into iTunes to convert it to wav. The file it spit out was called "02 This Love.wav."
Obviously iTunes ignoring my filename is not the end of the world, but it is a little annoying.
Edit to my last post:
If you have Apple Lossless files ripped from CD, they will play back as Apple Lossless. But if you delete them from your Mac, you could then either stream them from iCloud or download them again to your Mac. But they will always only be 256 AAC from thereon. Apple sell it the other way, by saying that lower bitrate files automatically get upgraded to 256 AAC, which is fine if you've got a load of pirated 128 MP3s, I guess. But if you're honest, it seems to me you're more likely to have better quality files.
If iTunes Match plays up, the most common way I sort it out is by signing out of iTunes and back in again. There are a few other tricks.
Match is great when it works, frustrating when it doesn't (can mess up synchronising playlists) but is better than most other options