iTunes Match

Anyone use iTunes Match? What are your thoughts? We have an iMac at home and I’ve now got a MacBook Air and would like access to my playlists etc. I see it is a subscription service, but looks like it would give me what I’m after. But some real world experiences would be good to hear.

Been using it for a couple of years now. Originally signed up to upscale some old MP3s but have stuck with it as a great way of sharing my lib on idevices with limited mem. The £20ish cost pa is more than offset by not needing more men in the idevice.

Being Apple its not entirely without the odd issue but nothing insurmountable and I’m happy to renew for another year.

I refuse to use it, it won’t take my entire library, and it compromises the quality, as it standardises the bitrate at 260Kb, whereas I rip everything at 320Kb, with other stuff at Lossless, and a bit at 260, and I will not let that be changed.
Fine, though, if you have a smaller library, and everything has been bought as downloads or ripped at 260Kb.

Interesting, how large is your library?

I use it and like it. I’d only just be able to squeeze my music library on a 128GB iPhone, I went for a smaller one instead and sync a bit to it but everything else is streamable.

Have an iPad around the house for music streaming (to bluetooth speaker, or plugged straight in), it can get it all nicely too. Likewise I have it all accessible on the Macbook Air (very tight on local storage) I tend to use for work away from home, as long as I’m on wifi I have all my music.

I guess the other route is a Spotify sub and just stream it all (saving offline anything you want to have for flights, etc) but there are a few gaps in their catalogue and artists pulling their stuff over money & rights issues.

I’ve been using it for a couple of years, I like it. I’ve got around 15k songs up there, use it on mac, PC, iPad, also Apple TV running through Sonos. I’d recommend for the £20 per year.

Does it actually replace your library? I thought it just scanned your library and made it available from iTunes? So any CD’s you’ve ripped at lossless or higher bitrate will remain as-is but just be available via iTunes/the cloud?

I’ve just checked up on a couple of things, and the maximum capacity of iTunes Match is a bit higher than I thought it actually was, at 25,000 tracks; I thought it was 20,000, and my library currently has around 19,000 items in it, 170Gb, so I could use it.
The problem is that 25,000 is the maximum available, and I keep adding music, sometimes several hundred tracks at a time from a mate who just keeps buying new albums. (Far more disposable income than I have).
It wouldn’t take me too much time to get up to the limit, at which point wierd things start to happen, apparently.
While Match may not actually replace my library on my computer, I can’t see the point in having access to my music from other locations that’s poorer quality than what I have at home, that’s just daft. I’ve got nearly 160Gb on my Classic, at 320Kb, and at some point I’ll replace that with a Fiio player that takes SDXC cards, with a theoretical maximimum capacity of around 1Tb, two 512Gb cards.
If Match upped its game, with more capacity, and higher quality, at least 320Kb, even better Lossless, then I might entertain it, however, it costs money, and I’m already paying for extra capacity for photo storage, so something has to give.

Used it since the beginning. Very handy. Great if you’ve a bunch of DRM protected iTunes purchases as you can delete them locally and download the matched DRM-free files.

The ability to play anything from your iTunes match content on an iPhone or other computer you’re signed in to without needing to sync is great. Useful if you’ve bought a new machine, want the iTunes library but not necessarily all the content.

Being able to stream music via AppleTV is handy.

Since getting a Synology I’ve been tempted to get rid of iTunes match as all my music is available wherever via DS Audio. However, the integration of the native Music app with the iPhone just makes Music + iTunes Match sufficiently easy to justify the modest annual cost. + it acts as yet another backup.

When I started with it it was NOT problem free though. I was glad to have a couple of backups as the problems I had included:
some music files not being available via iTunes match despite being of sufficient bitrate
Files going ‘missing’
‘clean’ versions of some tracks replacing ‘explicit’ versions

All in all though it’s been good enough.

The bitrate discussion has probably been dealt with elsewhere. 256kbps VBR is sufficient for many uses.

Despite its age, this might help: http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/getting-the-most-out-of-itunes-match–cms-21336

Or use Google Music to have 25k 320kbps tracks in the cloud for nowt.

https://play.google.com/music/listen#/signup/welcome

Is it just me that doesn’t sync their entire music collection to their phone?