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iTunes Match Expands To Latin America, Netherlands, Baltics
Sir Mal Fet writes "iTunes Match, Apple's service that allows re-downloading all your music, ripped CDs, and other music files across all your libraries using the iCloud service, has been made available in most of Latin America, the Netherlands, and the Baltic states. " Here's one user's review of the service. Is it worth the $25/year? Do you use the service?"
Can /. give me a real world speed report?
On a relatively modern linux desktop at home, google music manager uploads about 100 songs per day at 128 K limited upload (a fraction of my upload pipe, and I like to keep it that way).
Thats 128 kilobits per sec / 8 bytes per bit * 1024 bytes per kilobyte * 60 secs per minute * 60 mins per hour * 24 hours per day / 100 songs per day = 13.5 megabytes per mp3 file. Wait a second, somethings not right there. Hmm. I should be uploading more like 1000 songs per day at 128K upload but I'm only getting about a tenth that.
I can't run itunes (easily) on my linux desktop at home can someone advise me how fast itunes match "matches up"? I can't use it so I don't deeply care, but it is interesting in an abstract sense.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I find it useful, because it basically keeps my phone and my laptop (my main pc) in sync without me ever having to do anything. (such as plug the phone into the laptop and take the sync manually)
Most on /. won't like the idea of living in Apple's ecosystem, but if you're using an iPhone anyway it's convenient.
Apple are as Gods among men if they got the record companies to agree to this, even for $25/yr.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They basically are charging you for the ability to redownload music and the convenience to autodownload all your files onto all your devices (rather then having to manually transfer it).
No, that's basically a description of the free google music system. It works pretty well if you have the patience to upload (it has a cap of 20000 songs and I've calculated that would take me something like 6 months to upload at my current measured real world upload rate)
I thought the advantage of paying for itunes match was you get to automagically upgrade your cruddy 128K rips to 384K or lossless or whatever.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm subscribed. When I subscribed, I had about 3.7k files < 256kbps (I remember the numbers because looked to see if it was worth it). After the matching, I now have ~ 1k files at < 256kbps. Of those, most are non-commercial tracks that have never appeared in any other form (hello http://remix.kwed.org) - I download their quarterly playlists.
So overall, a good job and I'm satisfied it saved me a ton of time upgrading my own rips. However that's the good - time for the bad.
Artwork. Artwork has been a mess. When I initially matched, I noticed a lot of my tracks had poor quality artwork (not due to match, they always had them). I went through and fixed them all - a few moments later, Match came back and blatted everything - right back to poor quality artwork again. Making it accept the newer high quality has been very hit and miss, usually involving deleting the track frmo my library and Match then re-importing - even then it doesn't always work.
That's artwork everywhere. Now to specific problems with the iPhone. I turned off Match due to a bad wi-fi area I was in - I had a connection, but couldn't get anywhere. As soon as I turned Match off, all artwork was wiped from my phone. Turning Match back on again appears to have randomly reinstated some artwork and not others.
Sorting. I had some hassle again and turned Match off on the iPhone. I then put it back on again, and suddenly the sort order of my artists was massively out - I have artists starting with K appearing under the 'I' section. It's not random, the artists are actually sorted in alphabetic order, however if you use your thumb to scroll down directly to letter 'M', for example, the first artist listed is James Newton Howard. Hmm....
The other thing is that I'm not sure I'll stay subscribed next year. As a labour-saving initial hit, the price was worth it for me. Now my files are matched anyway, I'm not sure it's worth it for me any more -I'm just as happy with the wireless syncing.
Cheers,
Ian
I thought the advantage of paying for itunes match was you get to automagically upgrade your cruddy 128K rips to 384K or lossless or whatever.
I actually had one record that was ripped at 56 Kbit/second. Had to manually convert it to 128 KBit/sec because iTunes match doesn't touch anything at less than 100 KBit, but then it was matched and replaced with 256KBit/sec.
It also matched many songs that come straight from LPs. But that is a bit hit and miss; I think the song length must be right, and a separated them by hand. If you are lazy and just record one LP side as one 20 minute song, you obviously won't get any match.
No there's other services. I also have access to my entire music library from my iPad, because it downloads songs directly from Apple if you want to hear it, rather than just the songs that I could fit on the iPad manually. And I have also "upgraded" a lot of my music from crappy mp3's (with bitrates like 128kbit and below) to shiny new 256 AAC files through Match. Overall I'm pretty happy with the service though I'm waiting to see how often I end up downloading songs to my devices over the course of year to see if I'll justify renewing the subscription next year.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
When they announced this, I didn't really see the point.
I'm not buying new music from my iPhone (because I don't have one) and expecting it to show up on my computer ... I'm not buying songs on my computer either. Pretty much all of my music is ripped straight from CDs I've bought, and my music library is currently > 70GB.
So, if I need to update my iPods or my iPad, I just plug them into my computer. My iPod classic holds the entire library anyway, and my smaller iPod and iPad get sync'd with what I tell them. At a certain point, the 16GB or so of music they each have is days worth, so it's not like I run out.
I'm obviously not the target audience for this (not least of which because I'm not willing to pay) ... but I don't know the benefit of having my music "in the cloud". The only cloud stuff I've ever used is DropBox, and even after a few months, I barely used that anymore.
Having said that, I'm sure that for someone this is a highly useful feature ... but I think you'd have to be purchasing content on the go a lot more than I can even conceive of.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No, that's basically a description of the free google music system. It works pretty well if you have the patience to upload (it has a cap of 20000 songs and I've calculated that would take me something like 6 months to upload at my current measured real world upload rate)
6 months to upload? Are you on a 56k upload? Welcome to old-school ...
It also matched many songs that come straight from LPs. But that is a bit hit and miss; I think the song length must be right, and a separated them by hand. If you are lazy and just record one LP side as one 20 minute song, you obviously won't get any match.
Song matching definitely isn't perfect. I have one album for which one half of the files matched and the others didn't. But overall only 15% of my library didn't match which is pretty good considering a big part of that is local bands and demo's that wouldn't be on iTunes anyway (also AC/DC apparently isn't sold through iTunes at least in my part of the world.)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
People talk shit about Steam a lot, but you can always redownload your games and content at 0 charge. The lack of this is one of the things that prevented me from getting an iPod/iPhone and using iTunes at all.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I subscribed, and I was glad I did when I was able to upgrade a bunch of my MP3s to iTunes Store AAC files, with whatever quality improvement there is in going from an amateur's MP3 encoding to a studio's AAC release. Mostly, I find that the music sounds a little louder, which could be the result of other factors like the store using a newer remastering, for example.
It's nice having my entire music collection on my iPad, but I actually have so much music (about 100GB), apparently, that I often crash iTunes on my iPad 1 when I first load it. It comes up on the second launch.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
"To download previously purchased apps, books, music or TV Shows to your computer
Open iTunes 10.4 or later on your computer. (You can download the latest version of iTunes here.)
If you're not already signed in, click Sign In and enter your Apple ID and password.
After you've signed in, click Purchased on the right side in the iTunes Store under the QUICK LINKS the section.
From your Purchased page, click the tab for the content type you're looking for (Music, TV Shows, Apps, or Books).
Click Songs or Albums to change the page view and All or "Not in My Library" to view your purchased content that currently is not downloaded on your computer.
Click the download icon to the right of each item to download that item."
People talk a lot of smack about Apple too. Often based on poor information.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
You can but if you'd rather bitch than look for it then I'm not going to give you the link.
No, that's basically a description of the free google music system. It works pretty well if you have the patience to upload (it has a cap of 20000 songs and I've calculated that would take me something like 6 months to upload at my current measured real world upload rate)
I had similar concerns, but it's not that bad if you do it right. I had about 15,000 tracks to sync (I have diverse musical tastes, and yes, I have actually listened to all of it) and it took me a few nights at max upload and a week or so of minimum during the day while I was using the computer for other things.
Unless you're actively using your internet connection 24 hours a day, or have a lame-ass bandwidth cap, you might as well max out your upload when you're not actively using the internet connection. If you're on shit-tier DSL or dial-up, though, I concede that you will be sitting there for years...
The "iTunes Match" option NEVER disappears from the menu bar at the left.
Even after you've disabled the iTunes store under "parental controls", it's still there. Even after you click "No Thanks" it's still there, asking you to subscribe for $25/year. (this is itunes 10.5.1.42 on windows).
Either shoddy programming, or an insidious attempt to get more money out of you despite the parental controls.
Honestly, I don't have much of a problem with that. Maybe it's because I only use iTunes for syncing my iPod, and it makes sense to me that an external device would need a special client to handle the sync. Also maybe because I buy most of my games through Steam, so I'm used to having a special client for that too...
Apple doesn't have to take over the web to "take over the world". They invented the iPhone. Now you carry iTunes AND the web with you in your pocket.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
First, the match part replaced bunch of crappy rips with their higher-quality stuff, and I'm not just talking about bit rates. A lot of rips out there just sound bad, and the ones I did from vinyl have the obligatory vinyl noise - the match is clean.
Second, I have way more music than fits on my iPhone. Having the stuff in the cloud solves that problem very nicely.
Third, it just works the way it should - stuff I buy or "acquire" on one device is automagically available on all of my other devices. Makes the notion of doing syncs - wirelessly or not - seem quaint.
I think the main thing people worry about with steam is what if the steam authentication servers go down, or Valve goes out of business, or something just plain up and corrupts your account for whatever reason? If you have games on that account that you didn't have downloaded then you're out of luck (If you did have them downloaded then you're fine, just tell Steam that you don't have an internet connection).
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Oh my. I seem to recall a time when this wasn't possible. You think it would have been done with a little more fanfare.
It is a bit convoluted, though. It'd just be easier to list everything in the library and grey out what you don't actually have downloaded like Steam does. Nice that you can actually redownload with iTunes now - I'll have to reconsider my purchasing decisions, then.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Spotify lets you listen to any music they have in their library, from anywhere. It all goes away when you stop paying for Spotify.
iTunes match lets you listen to any of YOUR music, anywhere. That includes rips of CD's no longer sold, live recordings, etc. If you stop paying for iTunes match you still get to keep everything you downloaded (which you should have anyway since you uploaded it to begin with).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh my. I seem to recall a time when this wasn't possible.
Even in very early days of iTunes you were allowed to re-download everything once or twice a year. It was a more manual process then though (I think you had to call).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
$250m for all you can pirate music doesn't seem like a very good deal for the recording industry.
That was just a guess on the OP's part.
In reality since everyone is paying $25/year for the service, you know the music companies are getting some cut.
Even though it seems like a small amount it's a lot of money they were not seeing previously. And most people will be buying tracks anyway.
What I'm curious about is if indie labels get anything from this if iTunes ends up Matching something they own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is a bit convoluted, though. It'd just be easier to list everything in the library and grey out what you don't actually have downloaded like Steam does.
That's the way iTunes Match does it too. To be honest iTunes itself is showing its age (11 years old now), I think Apple has a hard time rebuilding it each to keep up with the times.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
About 60% of my music is cd-ripped, and I don't have the discs anymore, so if anything happened to my hard drive I'd lose the lot. For £21/year, that music is up converted to 256kps (I ripped at 128kps years ago - my bad) and downloadable to my phone too, at any time. Plus, and more importantly for me, it's backed up offline.
As an insurance policy, I think £21 is pretty good value.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
limited it to 128K. If I calculate the numbers its only using about 20K which is weird.
I have I2P and freenet and VOIP and a ton of other things trying to share the same bandwidth.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yesterday, I had something funny happen with iTunes match. I was streaming Weezer's "Perfect Situation," off of their "Make Believe" album. I heard a chorus at the end of the song that I'd never heard before. I then hopped over to my computer with the actual rip of the CD that I made, and low and behold, the chorus at the end of "Perfect Situation" wasn't there!
iTunes match also can't handle pausing while streaming. Often I have to restart the song if I pause it while streaming.
I also found streaming from iTunes match on my iPhone to be somewhat sketchy, so I disabled it and switched to Android.
No, I will not work for your startup