I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
This is a real problem, and it's why I will never get involved with any other (than Apple) company's services for anything important. Because a company that treats their users as the product like Amazon or Google can, will, and do simply turn off services that users depend on, after they are no longer any use to the company.
If Apple simply canceled iTunes Match tomorrow and said you have a year to deal with it, it would be an atomic bomb.
"Clever" of Amazon to make the cutoff date January 2019 instead of December 2018 since it make it sound like it's "years" away.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
I have several old vinyl LPs that I digitized and when I listen to them in Apple Music streaming they are of the recordings I made, scratches and all. And I don't think they were available for download/streaming from Apple Music when I uploaded them, although that may have changed.
This is a real problem, and it's why I will never get involved with any other (than Apple) company's services for anything important. Because a company that treats their users as the product like Amazon or Google can, will, and do simply turn off services that users depend on, after they are no longer any use to the company.
If Apple simply canceled iTunes Match tomorrow and said you have a year to deal with it, it would be an atomic bomb.
Tho they've so far denied it they may well discontinue iTunes within the next 24 months. Atomic bomb if they do? I doubt it. We'll all say it was for sensical business reasons and it will be, just like the fingerprint sensor disappearing or Personal Shopper going away. Things like this are always replaced by something "better".
All companies make services decisions based on what's best for their bottom-line. At the end of the day we're all just wallets, companies just go about different ways of getting in them.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
I subscribed to iTunes Match right when it came out because it's a relatively inexpensive and convenient way to have my music accessible everywhere. When Apple Music first came out, the "matching" feature of AM was not particularly implemented well. I recall some issues about DRM getting applied even to one's own uploaded/matched music, so that scared me off of Apple Music. I don't really stream that often, so I just listen to the free ad-supported versions of Pandora and Spotify, etc.
I just now looked into this again though...
According to Apple and the very helpful iMore article, Apple Music includes "all the benefits of iTunes Match", and it seems without attaching DRM:
Now I'm seriously considering the AM $99 annual subscription and cancelling iTunes Match, now that I found out that Apple Music switched to using iTunes Match's algorithm.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
On the side I teach group exercise classes. For those I have gotten about 25 songs per quarter supplied to me as the classes come pre-choreographed and with their “own” music. Some of the songs are covers, others are the originals and some are the originals but modified, for example, maybe the last 90 seconds of a song gets repeated.
When Apple Music first rolled out I signed up for the free trial and turned on iCloud Music Library as I wrongly believed that it would perform the same function as iTunes Match. From what I can tell, iCML just tried to closely match what was in my library. If there was an exact duplicate that was matched, but if there was a non-exact but kind-of-close file that one would be used.
So, at the time one of the songs I was using was “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim. The version I had been supplied was a modified original, so it was longer than the actual version. What iCML “matched” to that was a weird remix of that song. The name was basically the same and the length of the song was close to what I had. But what was in my library was VERY different from what iCML handed back. This was really bad for me, considering I had the approximately 100 songs per year for 7 years that were potentially being incorrectly matched.
So, I turned off iCML and was able to not have any “damage” done. Just a few months ago I decided to try iTunes Match (I still use Apple Music) and it’s working exactly as expected. Those songs that iTunes does not have an exact match of are uploaded and available to me on all my devices. And, I could turn iCloud Music Library back on and everything is working as I need it to.
So, in my experience, no, Apple Music does not match songs in the same manner that iTunes Match does.
I won’t miss the atrocious, barely usable Amazon Music app. It’s slow, unresponsive, complicated and borderline useless. Now that Apple Music Match supports a large number of tracks, I no longer have any use for it.
Seems more like Google to offer a service, wait until lots of people use it / depend on it, then announce their dropping it.
Not trying to be obtuse, so getting that out of the way, but what Google service that "lots of people depended on" has been abandoned? Serious question. There's always going to be experimental features that some small number of folks might use and like that Google doesn't decide to stick with. I can't think of anything important off the top of my head.
Amazon dropping this seems a bit surprising IMO. I guess Amazon is in the process of changing some of their market strategies, with stuff like the Whole Foods purchase and their new plans for an online drug store? Perhaps the "free services" are being phased out?
Well first let me apologize for mistyping 'they're as 'their' /slaps head.
Back to Google ... I'd go as far as to say it's pretty much Google 's MO ... to throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks, that is. Far more than most companies, so I stand by my comment's intended meaning, that this unlike Amazon for the most part and more like Google.
Personally couldn't live with out Apple (hyperbole ... but you know what I mean) nor Amazon these days. I could certainly live without Google so they can shut down as much as they want, the more the better . I would have thrown Microsoft in the second group too except this last year I have become quite fond of Windows 10 I am embarrassed to say.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
The article specifically says otherwise:
"Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming."
I need to take time out and research if I still need iTunes Match. I collect a lot of <ahem!> concerts and have them on my iCloud Music Library.
If my Apple Music subscription supports iCloud Music Library without the need for iTunes Match, I may opt out of Match next year.
Then again, if I opt out of Match and I buy a CD and try to upload it onto my iCloud Music Library, would it get the right tags and save it, or would it not recognise it as an album in it's database and simply store it as a different album? Does it even matter?
Anyway, I'm paid up till next December, but I need to sort this out!
Amazon shot themselves in the foot on this one. Why would someone continue purchasing Amazon digital music (or movies) after the carpet has been yanked out from under them or others once? It gives no credibility as to the company to support or continue services like this.
Amazon shot themselves in the foot on this one. Why would someone continue purchasing Amazon digital music (or movies) after the carpet has been yanked out from under them or others once? It gives no credibility as to the company to support or continue services like this.
This doesn't affect digital music purchased from Amazon does it? It's not being yanked. My completely uneducated guess is that relatively few Amazon cusomers used the song match service so no great loss anyway.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
The article specifically says otherwise:
"Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming."
The article is wrong. Apple Music may include some sort of similar matching (DRM matching) but if you had the actual iTunes Match service before Apple Music, you still pay for it.
Seems more like Google to offer a service, wait until lots of people use it / depend on it, then announce their dropping it.
Not trying to be obtuse, so getting that out of the way, but what Google service that "lots of people depended on" has been abandoned? Serious question. There's always going to be experimental features that some small number of folks might use and like that Google doesn't decide to stick with. I can't think of anything important off the top of my head.
Amazon dropping this seems a bit surprising IMO. I guess Amazon is in the process of changing some of their market strategies, with stuff like the Whole Foods purchase and their new plans for an online drug store? Perhaps the "free services" are being phased out?
Off the top of my head: Google Wave Google Buzz Google Knol
There was also a good rather interesting Quicksilver clone that they took over and then canned.
On the development side side it can also get rather annoying because they went from Angular1 to Angular2 and the new version was so incompatible that developers reckoned that Angular had been discontinued and then a new product was given the same name to avoid the backlash. The new version was much better, but it should have been renamed.
To be honest though, you get what you pay for, and Google has never hidden the fact that everything they do is considered beta and so could be dropped at any moment.
This is is why I tend not to rely on any of their services (that, and the raiding of customer data, oh and the whole “tracking when I asked you not to” thing.)
Neither Wave nor Buzz was anything terribly popular nor depended on were they? And those morphed into Google Now. I'm not familiar with the third one you mentioned so I'd guess it was the same with that, simply a trial service, perhaps rolled up in something else now if it had any worth? FWIW the Amazon song match may not have had much interest either. Even Apple for all intents discontinued theirs and rolled it up as simply a minor included feature of Apple Music if I'm understanding correctly ( I tried Apple music and don't recall now what some of the features were)? Is anyone even buying songs anymore?
Apple didn't discontinue iTunes Match. You can still sign up for it and extend your subscription. I've had mine since day one and it works great!
This very scenario is what makes me a bit leery about buying movies from online services. I have purchased movies from iTunes, Amazon, and VuDu over the last few years. What happens if one of these companies decides to get out of the movie business for whatever reason? What happens to my ‘purchased’ products?
I think the answer is that you can no longer access them. I also think this is in their terms of service, but I can't remember, as I've read so many of them lately.
My recollection of movie "purchase" sites like VUDU and Amazon is that you don't actually download a local copy. iTunes offers that option.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog. So, if you subscribe to Apple Music, then drop that subscription for any reason, it deletes what was uploaded? Admittedly a very esoteric point.
I saw you can get an 8TB drive for $150. Seems like maybe there is a homegrown solution to this. Plex likely does it, but I saw subscription fees and moved on. Maybe there is a free version.
If you stop paying for Apple Music, you only lose the songs you didn't previously own. But you do lose streaming access to them on your other devices (unless you downloaded them to the device).
Plex is a good service, but only works with media you own, not services like these.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
I did not know the Apple Music subscription included the iTunes match service. I suppose this makes intuitive sense, but my recollection of the iTunes Match service was that it uploaded anything it couldn't find in it's existing Apple catalog.
I’m not so sure an Apple Music subscription includes iTunes Match services. Serenity Caldwell wrote a really good article about this and she seemed to indicate otherwise. Apple Music will match songs in your library but will not upload them if no match is found. So if you have a number of CDs ripped that aren’t found in the store you will need iTunes Match to get them uploaded.
It definitely does not. I pay for Apple Music every month and still pay for iTunes Match annually.
The article specifically says otherwise:
"Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming."
The article is wrong. Apple Music may include some sort of similar matching (DRM matching) but if you had the actual iTunes Match service before Apple Music, you still pay for it.
You're misinterpreting it. The article is saying that Apple added the matching feature of iTunes Match into Apple Music, which is true. But iTunes Match is still a separate service. So yes, you don't need both services.
Comments
All companies make services decisions based on what's best for their bottom-line. At the end of the day we're all just wallets, companies just go about different ways of getting in them.
I just now looked into this again though...
According to Apple and the very helpful iMore article, Apple Music includes "all the benefits of iTunes Match", and it seems without attaching DRM:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146
https://www.imore.com/do-i-still-need-itunes-match-if-i-have-apple-music
Now I'm seriously considering the AM $99 annual subscription and cancelling iTunes Match, now that I found out that Apple Music switched to using iTunes Match's algorithm.
When Apple Music first rolled out I signed up for the free trial and turned on iCloud Music Library as I wrongly believed that it would perform the same function as iTunes Match. From what I can tell, iCML just tried to closely match what was in my library. If there was an exact duplicate that was matched, but if there was a non-exact but kind-of-close file that one would be used.
So, at the time one of the songs I was using was “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim. The version I had been supplied was a modified original, so it was longer than the actual version. What iCML “matched” to that was a weird remix of that song. The name was basically the same and the length of the song was close to what I had. But what was in my library was VERY different from what iCML handed back. This was really bad for me, considering I had the approximately 100 songs per year for 7 years that were potentially being incorrectly matched.
So, I turned off iCML and was able to not have any “damage” done. Just a few months ago I decided to try iTunes Match (I still use Apple Music) and it’s working exactly as expected. Those songs that iTunes does not have an exact match of are uploaded and available to me on all my devices. And, I could turn iCloud Music Library back on and everything is working as I need it to.
So, in my experience, no, Apple Music does not match songs in the same manner that iTunes Match does.
Back to Google ... I'd go as far as to say it's pretty much Google 's MO ... to throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks, that is. Far more than most companies, so I stand by my comment's intended meaning, that this unlike Amazon for the most part and more like Google.
Personally couldn't live with out Apple (hyperbole ... but you know what I mean) nor Amazon these days. I could certainly live without Google so they can shut down as much as they want, the more the better
"Though Apple still offers iTunes Match subscriptions separately, it has also rolled the matching functionality into its $9.99-per-month Apple Music service, which also includes unlimited streaming."
I need to take time out and research if I still need iTunes Match. I collect a lot of <ahem!> concerts and have them on my iCloud Music Library.
If my Apple Music subscription supports iCloud Music Library without the need for iTunes Match, I may opt out of Match next year.
Then again, if I opt out of Match and I buy a CD and try to upload it onto my iCloud Music Library, would it get the right tags and save it, or would it not recognise it as an album in it's database and simply store it as a different album? Does it even matter?
Anyway, I'm paid up till next December, but I need to sort this out!
If you stop paying for Apple Music, you only lose the songs you didn't previously own. But you do lose streaming access to them on your other devices (unless you downloaded them to the device).
Plex is a good service, but only works with media you own, not services like these.
Serenity is incorrect. Apple Music DOES include matching: https://www.imore.com/apple-music-vs-itunes-match-whats-difference
You're misinterpreting it. The article is saying that Apple added the matching feature of iTunes Match into Apple Music, which is true. But iTunes Match is still a separate service. So yes, you don't need both services.