AppleInsider Staff
Throughout the beta period, which began in late August, Apple has periodically warned of data resets for the service. But, given the public release of iOS 5 and iCloud earlier this month, Apple's decision to delete "all current iCloud libraries" of iTunes Match beta testers on Thursday is believed to indicate its imminent launch.
Developers are told to turn off iTunes Match on their computers and iOS devices to prepare for the wipe. Apple also reminded them to backup all information they have stored in iCloud.
iTunes Match will cost $24.99 per year and provides a convenient scan and match service that will determine which songs on a user's hard drive are also available on the iTunes Music Store. Those songs will then be added accessible from iCloud.
Apple touts the fact that the scan will take just minutes, compared to weeks of upload time for rival music services from Amazon and Google. The service will also offer increased quality by providing 256 Kbps AAC downloads even when the matched files have a lower bitrate.
"If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes, for just $24.99 a year," Apple says of the upcoming service.
A switch to activate iTunes Match has already appeared within iOS 5, but after activating it, users are prompted to enter the Apple ID associated with an iTunes Match subscription. Apple has yet to begin offering public subscriptions for the service; the company has said that it will go live by the end of October.
The service will initially be available only in the U.S., but Apple is working to bring it to other markets.
Though he initial iTunes Match beta appeared to instantly stream music, Apple has clarified that the service does not technically support streaming. Music files must first be "stored" on an iOS device before being played.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
31 Comments
Maybe I will find my perfect match some day. For now I will have to depend on iTunes Match and SIRI to be my perfect match. Lol.
Maybe iTunes Match won't be so schizophrenic about which songs on an album it matches and which songs it won't. I have several albums where only a few songs were matched at the 256k rate and the rest were still at 128k. I noticed if the album was "Remastered", the length of the songs are slightly different, and that might be why they didn't match up.
Case in point: Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album. I have the original CD when it first came out on CD, but iTunes has the Remastered version. Some of the songs converted, some didn't. Also because Dark Side is a gapless album, you can hear when the bit rate changes between songs. If the consecutive songs are of the same bit rate, you don't notice anything and it plays as it should. Rather annoying.
When I used to upgrade from iTunes 128k to iTunes Plus, it sometimes got the wrong track (different language once, different version another time), and that was with their own metadata! If iTunes Match uses the same tech I'm not sure how it will fare in the world of arbitrary metadata.
I asked these in a standalone thread, but little response... Can anyone answer them?
With iTunes Match coming very soon, will Apple phase out the iTunes Plus service along with it? Are early DRM-enabled, iTunes songs that I purchased from the iTunes Music Store not eligible of the iTunes Match service?
Thank in advance.
Dave
I asked these in a standalone thread, but little response... Can anyone answer them?
With iTunes Match coming very soon, will Apple phase out the iTunes Plus service along with it? Are early DRM-enabled, iTunes songs that I purchased from the iTunes Music Store not eligible of the iTunes Match service?
Thank in advance.
Dave
If you purchased the music on iTunes previously, you won't need to match it, as iTunes keeps track of what you have already purchased. It will be part of iTunes in the Cloud (hate that name) automatically.
What I would do is go through the iTunes Match process, and then actually delete the earlier albums that had the DRM. The album will still be available to re-download from the cloud (you'll see the cloud-download icon next to the names of the songs), and it should force it to give you the higher bit-rate DRM-free songs to replace the old ones. At least that's how I've seen it work so far...
As far as phasing out the iTunes Plus service, only Apple can answer that one.