iTunes Match

Crimson · « **on:** 21 Nov 2011, 10:56 am »

Anyone else try it yet? Pretty nifty. My entire music collection (or at least about 98% of it) is now available on my iPhone and iPad, not to mention any of my Macs. I set it up off my main machine with about 17000 tracks and they are now available anytime, anywhere.

mnilan · « **Reply #1 on:** 22 Nov 2011, 02:11 pm »

Crimson:
How expensive is this service?

jtwrace · « **Reply #2 on:** 22 Nov 2011, 02:14 pm »

Quote from: mnilan on 22 Nov 2011, 02:11 pm

Crimson:
How expensive is this service?

$24.99 year

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

Tubo · « **Reply #3 on:** 22 Nov 2011, 04:16 pm »

Quality is 256 Kbps AAC which is a plus if you use lower quality rips and a minus if, like me, you use lossless codecs. Nevertheless, 256 Kbps is a lot better than MP3!

srb · « **Reply #4 on:** 22 Nov 2011, 04:33 pm »

Quote from: Tubo on 22 Nov 2011, 04:16 pm

Nevertheless, 256 Kbps is a lot better than MP3!

MP3 (MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a compressed format than can be encoded at bit rates anywhere from 32kbps to 320kbps.

iTunes now has an option to covert all higher bit rates to 128kbps (in AAC format, a bit better than MP3 encoding) when synchronizing to the iPod. It would be nice if they provided a drop down selector for this option so that I could choose 320kbps.

Steve

Crimson · « **Reply #5 on:** 22 Nov 2011, 04:43 pm »

The big plus for me is never having to sync my idevices with iTunes anymore for music. It's all there. At 256 Kbps, I have no qualms. I never put full resolution tracks on my portable devices anyway.

lextek · « **Reply #6 on:** 27 Nov 2011, 04:20 pm »

I was getting ready to buy a iPod Classis to replave my failing iPod Photo. Now with Match I just use my iPhone

jmag999 · « **Reply #7 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 02:27 am »

What happens if you don't re-up your subscription at the end of the year? Are you able to download the library to your hard drive from itunes?

Crimson · « **Reply #8 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 01:05 pm »

Quote from: jmag999 on 28 Nov 2011, 02:27 am

What happens if you don't re-up your subscription at the end of the year? Are you able to download the library to your hard drive from itunes?

Hello, and welcome to AC!

The idea of iTunes Match is to make your music collection available 'in the cloud' for listening on other computers and iDevices. Whether the music is already available in the iTunes library or not (if not, iTunes uploads those tracks from your library), it's only available at 256 Kb AAC lossy. iTunes Match should not be considered an online backup service. As such, if your subscription were to expire...........poof.

kenreau · « **Reply #9 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 07:26 pm »

I really like this 'cloud' access concept, but was a little leary of the lossy file compression. I have all my music files in AIFF, plus some hirez files. I want to keep all my music library files in this lossless format for dedicated 2 channel listening.

I would love to have access to my library with my family's iphones, ipad and assorted imacs around the house. For these devices the lossy format(s) are perfect. When you go with this iTunes Match cloud service, does it tamper with your original music files on your hard drive? or is it just in the virtual cloud where the compression / file conversion takes place?

Thanks
Kenreau

Crimson · « **Reply #10 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 07:46 pm »

No. No tampering of any kind. It does not perform any write operations to your library drives(s).

Crimson · « **Reply #11 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 09:31 pm »

Here's a timely description and comparison of iTunes Match against google and amazon.

kenreau · « **Reply #12 on:** 28 Nov 2011, 09:57 pm »

Thanks, Crimson. Looks like the iTunes Match may save me a lot of time & headaches with being the geek squad for my family music service.

Thanks again,
Ken

jmag999 · « **Reply #13 on:** 29 Nov 2011, 01:03 am »

Can anyone comment on how good it is at matching songs that are not well tagged? Does it do any kind of song recognition first?

Crimson · « **Reply #14 on:** 29 Nov 2011, 08:56 am »

If, for whatever reason, it can't match the tune, it will upload it to the cloud. Either way, it will be in the cloud.

lextek · « **Reply #15 on:** 3 Dec 2011, 09:00 pm »

Just enabled Match on both AppleTVs. It's awesome. I don't need to have my Macbook/server up and running all the time. Well for movies.

timlmd · « **Reply #16 on:** 19 Mar 2012, 10:06 pm »

Quote from: srb on 22 Nov 2011, 04:33 pm

MP3 (MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a compressed format than can be encoded at bit rates anywhere from 32kbps to 320kbps.

iTunes now has an option to covert all higher bit rates to 128kbps (in AAC format, a bit better than MP3 encoding) when synchronizing to the iPod. It would be nice if they provided a drop down selector for this option so that I could choose 320kbps.

Steve

Steve, the latest version of iTunes now has the drop down selector you were looking for. It only goes to 256kbps, but that's still better than 128!
-tim

timlmd · « **Reply #17 on:** 19 Mar 2012, 10:10 pm »

Quote from: jmag999 on 29 Nov 2011, 01:03 am

Can anyone comment on how good it is at matching songs that are not well tagged? Does it do any kind of song recognition first?

As far as I can tell, it doesn't use tags at all. I made up some fake tags to print out a CD cover for a school project, and iTunes matched the original songs with the new (fake) tags and graphics!
-tim

srb · « **Reply #18 on:** 20 Mar 2012, 12:02 am »

Quote from: timlmd on 19 Mar 2012, 10:06 pm

Steve, the latest version of iTunes now has the drop down selector you were looking for. It only goes to 256kbps, but that's still better than 128!

Sweet! Thanks, Tim! Thanks, Apple!

Steve

jarcher · « **Reply #19 on:** 21 Jan 2013, 01:53 am »

Thought I'd chime in here vs starting a new thread even though this one is old.

I've recently tried out Itunes Match as well. I started first by trying the competing free Google Play Music service. Unfortunately that one doesn't recognize Apple Lossless, which is half my collection, so whereas it's nice that it's free - and gives you the ability to access your uploaded music via any web browser (feature not available w/ itunes match), ultimately passing by half my collection wasn't really that compelling for me. If none of your music is Apple Lossless though, I think it's hard to beat this service.

My main reason though for trying itunes match was to "upgrade" my digital music collection, which I subsequently realized consisted of some 4K+ mp3s, almost all of which were below the 256kbps threshold at which you can "upgrade" via itunes match. This was mostly music that had been passed on to me over the last decade or so, a lot of it good, but honestly I didn't listen to much because it was low-rez. For the $25 it seemed well worth it just to upgrade these 4K+ songs.

Another advantage of using itunes match / itunes is that there is a well documented way that you can filter out your sub 256kbs files, delete them, then upgrade with the itunes 256kbs AAC (m4a) ones. Be aware that there is a minimum quality, which I think is 96kbps, for the upgrade. Anything at or below that will be considered "inelegible" and not uploaded / matched, and therefore not "upgradeable".

There are many places on the web that describe the basic process, but's here's a more detailed one that I liked:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57326759-285/how-to-use-itunes-match-to-upgrade-audio-quality/

The process for me was mostly smooth, though I will admit that I was puzzled that more often than not itunes match wouldn't recognize one or more tracks on an album as upgradeable, even though they were otherwise the same format as the other available upgradeable tracks. Sometimes I would resort to trying to upgrade these from the Google Play Music web locker, as that service also does 256kbps "upgrades" - though these are mp3s vs AAC, and the Google match catalog seems much smaller than itunes. This is another reason that if your primary goal is to upgrade the quality of your tracks, itunes match was the larger itunes catalog is probably the better way to go vs the Google or Amazon service.

On a couple occasions I also experienced that the itunes track was the "clean / edited" version of a track that might otherwise have profanity - e.g. some tracks off an Enimen album. You know the kind - where zip effects obscure the offending words. So if you have a lot of foul mouthed rap tracks - which I doubt many on AC do - be aware before you delete / upgrade to the itunes matched song.

Otherwise the service was commendable in being able to correctly identify tracks - sometimes oddly enough when even artist or album names were missing. Don't know how. It was a little less good about being able to automatically download the correct album cover artwork. That took up some time adding that to many albums.

Anyway - if you use itunes & have a lot of sub 256kbps music files and your collection is under 25K songs, I think itunes match is well worth the $25 for one year. That's a lot of "if's", but it ended up being my case & worth it. Most likely though I won't renew as I don't have much use for the other features, but for the file upgrade benefit along, it was worth it for me for the initial $25.