iTunes Match

Anyone using?

wondering if this is worth it... might as well pay for spotify premium to get things i DONT have on my iphone

I'm going back and forth on getting this - on one hand, it would standardize my music library, but on the other hand I would worry that the majority of my iTunes library is NOT available on iTunes and not make this worth it.

I thought it uploads what it can't find on itunes?

  On 11/15/2011 at 6:49 PM, Joyrex said:

on the other hand I would worry that the majority of my iTunes library is NOT available on iTunes and not make this worth it.

I wonder if there is a tool to check it beforehand

  Quote

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch.

http://lifehacker.com/5859343/what-is-itunes-match-and-should-i-subscribe

  Quote

Should I Buy iTunes Match?

 

Whether or not you should bother purchasing an iTunes Match subscription is going to depend on your needs. To get a better idea of what's best for you, here's a look at the upsides and downsides to help you make the right choice.

 

The Upsides

 

The obvious benefits of iTunes Match are easy synchronization, a backup of your music collection, and access to music files encoded at a high bit rate—a bit rate likely higher than most of your existing collection. The service is pretty cheap, as $25 isn't much money at all on a yearly basis. If you like and use iTunes, plus have an iDevice or two, it's one of your best options for cloud-based music services.

 

The Downsides

 

While it's great that iTunes Match can keep your music in sync across devices, that same feature is also one of its limitations. Because you're not able to stream your music in the same way you can with Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player (or a streaming music service like Spotify), you only retrieve as much of your matched collection as your computer or mobile device can accommodate. This does not mean iTunes Match is incapable of streaming, but while doing so it downloads the file to your device. You don't have the option of streaming only. (One exception appears to be that can stream unsync'd music if your device is too full to accommodate any additional downloads.) This can get a little frustrating if you don't want to download a song to your device simply because you've chosen to listen to it. Additionally, there is no option to stream via a web browser so your listening options are limited to your computers (of which you can have a maximum of five) and iDevices.

The Bottom Line

 

If you're into all things Apple, iTunes Match is likely the best service for you. It's cheap, it keeps your music backed up and synced without the need to upload your entire collection (or possibly any of it), and it'll work with all of your devices.

If you're not fully entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, iTunes Match might not be your ideal service. If you need your music on an Android device, for example, you're out of luck. If you're simply dealing with a mix of Mac and Windows PCs, plus an iPhone or iPad here and there, it should work just fine. Plus, if you do have an Android device you will have physical copies of the music files you can transfer over and play without issue. You could even subscribe to an additional service like Google Music or Amazon Cloud Player and use both in conjunction. Because iTunes Match match provides cloud music storage rather than streaming, these services can work well together. But if you find yourself wanting to use both you might be better off with Spotify, which offers a hybrid of the two via its premium service.

If you loathe iTunes, then iTunes Match is clearly not for you. Even if you really like the service, it requires the use of the iTunes software to manage your collection. If you can't buy into that you should definitely look for something else.

I'm enjoying it thus far. I just got a new Mac so my iTunes was empty and I got Match and it added about the 500 songs or so I've bought from iTunes to the cloud and now I've been streaming it in my car. Gonna add my actual library later and see what gets matched and what doesn't. I like that my iPhone is free of music now, but I have virtually 70 GBs of music at my disposal wherever

  Quote

The obvious benefits of iTunes Match are easy synchronization, a backup of your music collection, and access to music files encoded at a high bit rate—a bit rate likely higher than most of your existing collection. The service is pretty cheap, as $25 isn't much money at all on a yearly basis. If you like and use iTunes, plus have an iDevice or two, it's one of your best options for cloud-based music services.

256 kbps, fucking lol.

I hate humanity.

  On 11/15/2011 at 7:16 PM, baph said:

  Quote

The obvious benefits of iTunes Match are easy synchronization, a backup of your music collection, and access to music files encoded at a high bit rate—a bit rate likely higher than most of your existing collection. The service is pretty cheap, as $25 isn't much money at all on a yearly basis. If you like and use iTunes, plus have an iDevice or two, it's one of your best options for cloud-based music services.

 

256 kbps, fucking lol.

I hate humanity.

*resists overwhelming urge to spur bitrate nonsense argument*

I think their point was that the default encoding rate for iTunes (I think) is 128kbps when ripping CDs... perhaps I'm wrong. I personally see nothing wrong with 256kbps.

  On 11/15/2011 at 7:16 PM, YELLOW said:

I'm enjoying it thus far. I just got a new Mac so my iTunes was empty and I got Match and it added about the 500 songs or so I've bought from iTunes to the cloud and now I've been streaming it in my car. Gonna add my actual library later and see what gets matched and what doesn't. I like that my iPhone is free of music now, but I have virtually 70 GBs of music at my disposal wherever

Please report back what the experience is like; I'm curious what happens with the more esoteric selections most of us probably have in our respective libraries...

When you say "streaming it in your car" - you mean via your iPhone? I thought you can't stream the Match library...

  On 11/15/2011 at 9:00 PM, Joyrex said:

  On 11/15/2011 at 7:16 PM, YELLOW said:

I'm enjoying it thus far. I just got a new Mac so my iTunes was empty and I got Match and it added about the 500 songs or so I've bought from iTunes to the cloud and now I've been streaming it in my car. Gonna add my actual library later and see what gets matched and what doesn't. I like that my iPhone is free of music now, but I have virtually 70 GBs of music at my disposal wherever

 

Please report back what the experience is like; I'm curious what happens with the more esoteric selections most of us probably have in our respective libraries...

 

When you say "streaming it in your car" - you mean via your iPhone? I thought you can't stream the Match library...

I'm in the process of uploading all the miscellaneous tracks that iTunes couldn't match and it is taking quite a while so I will let you know how that goes.

I guess I should highlight that there is a difference between streaming and downloading. Basically the process goes like this: on the iPhone, in the iPod, all of your library is shown with clouds next to the songs. You can 'download' any song or album you want, over 3G or WiFi. You can 'stream' the track while it is 'downloading.' So in ways it's kinda like streaming, and kinda like downloading. Then you have access to that song or album whenever you want, or delete it if you want too.

I dunno about you guys, but 3G internet plans in Australia aren't nearly good enough to be able to stream on the go. I have a 750mb quota every month and the speed/reliability isn't exactly streaming quality. Lame. This would be quite good to load my phone with songs using my work's wifi connection though, if I really want to listen to something on the way home and it's not in my phone's library..

I stream my 250+ gigs of music through audiogalaxy on my android phone for free. My ears tune out at about 192 on the bitrate side of things. I would hate to split my music library into MP3 and AAC files. Alot of my collection is local music and I know it would not be available on Itunes. If I had a CHOICE <-(a word Apple doesn't like) to redownload files as 256 MP3s I would be all over this. Unfortunately, Apple.

http://audiogalaxy.com/

Let it scan your files and make your life a bit easier.

  On 11/20/2011 at 12:13 AM, MadnessR said:

I stream my 250+ gigs of music through audiogalaxy on my android phone for free. My ears tune out at about 192 on the bitrate side of things. I would hate to split my music library into MP3 and AAC files. Alot of my collection is local music and I know it would not be available on Itunes. If I had a CHOICE <-(a word Apple doesn't like) to redownload files as 256 MP3s I would be all over this. Unfortunately, Apple.

Audiogalaxy plays my AAC/ALAC files fine, alongside my mp3 files.

Again, though, everything is fucking moot with the way data plans are. If I streamed Audiogalaxy outside of a wifi access point, I'd run through my monthly 2 gigs in short order.

Local downloading of a select few files for when you're on the go but forgot Chiastic Slide and really need Chiastic Slide seems like a nice compromise, though.

:cipaters the fuck out:

  On 11/15/2011 at 8:57 PM, Joyrex said:

  On 11/15/2011 at 7:16 PM, baph said:

  Quote

The obvious benefits of iTunes Match are easy synchronization, a backup of your music collection, and access to music files encoded at a high bit rate—a bit rate likely higher than most of your existing collection. The service is pretty cheap, as $25 isn't much money at all on a yearly basis. If you like and use iTunes, plus have an iDevice or two, it's one of your best options for cloud-based music services.

 

256 kbps, fucking lol.

I hate humanity.

 

*resists overwhelming urge to spur bitrate nonsense argument*

 

I think their point was that the default encoding rate for iTunes (I think) is 128kbps when ripping CDs... perhaps I'm wrong. I personally see nothing wrong with 256kbps.

My issue with lossy formats is you're buying a product that's artificially limited in what you can do with it. 256 kbps isn't terrible audio quality, especially for portable use with portable quality audio components, but if I'm paying for it, I want something as versatile for transcoding/burning/archiving as is possible.

Basically, if iTunes lifted the 256 k limit and gave an option for (a) archive quality or (b) space maximization/data download size, iTunes would be a lot more attractive to me.

It was great when Steve used the leverage iTunes had to pull labels in with DRM and then remove the DRM from iTunes, and I'd happily cut down on physical packaging by buying digital more, if the files weren't still limited in usefulness by being lossy off the bat.

I don't want to get into audiophile snake oil BS, because I'm a huge fucking skeptic, but I don't think it's odd to want to be able to transcode from lossless to small footprint lossy for portable use and keep lossless on my external drive for archiving and home listening.

320kbps and ALAC/FLAC are close enough, but I have been able to distinguish 256kbps from FLAC on really good, resolving, studio grade equipment, particularly with respect to imaging/spacial cues/soundstaging, which depends on high resolution of high frequencies and low artifact introduction. Probably .2 percent of the population would even care about that, and that's probably a healthy position, but I fucking care and I will not pay for lossy if I can help it, primarily because it's not quite the best choice and the price differential between pretty good and perfect is minimal, with perfect having the main attraction of letting me be free to do what the fuck I want to the file I purchased.

Gah, I missed the edit window. Sorry for triple posting.

I think the default rip rate from CD to lossy in iTunes is 256. But the thing is, it's a simple matter of checking a box to select 320kbps, 128, or lossless. iTunes is nicely versatile if you've purchased a CD. I just wish iTunes was nicely versatile if you purchased from iTunes, is all.

edit: and I meant to imply that 256kbps is a nice compromise size for downloading from the cloud to a portable. I just wish it wasn't the only size available for local storage with iTunes Music Store files. That point probably got a bit muddied by my seething disappointment at Apple's implication that converting to 256kbps would be a super huge audio quality increase, zomg.

how bout google music? anybody use it, I've been using audiogalaxy on android but I heard that google music is the shit.

I really love itunes match. My library keeps growing and growing without wasting so much space on my laptop / iphone or the need of external harddrives

  On 11/23/2011 at 7:55 PM, Bubba69 said:

how bout google music? anybody use it, I've been using audiogalaxy on android but I heard that google music is the shit.

i use it, it's p good.

the android software is okayish, id prefer more things but it works for what it does.

ive never used audiogalaxy though so i have no frame of reference

I purchased iTunes Match and regret it. It's insanely slow, is not customizeable, and refuses to recognize some mainstream widely available music (Kanye West, for example) for no apparent reason.

Audiogalaxy is way better.