Very likely streaming only but however it makes for a wonderful solution if you are out on the road, vacation, or biking in the woods and have a hankering for some obscure half-forgotten track that's just sitting back at home all 1's and 0's like. I'll be plunking my $25/year down in a heartbeat.
Much questions about iTunes Match. Copied from the eMu board (via Mac Rumors):
iCloud will attempt to ease the burden of syncing -- at least for songs purchased through iTunes. Previously-purchased songs will show up in a purchase history and any music purchased can be re-downloaded to any device at no additional charge. According to Steve Jobs, this is the "first time we've seen this in the music industry."
Using the new Automatic Downloads feature, content purchased via iTunes is pushed (not streamed) to mobile devices and vice versa. Users will consequently have all of their songs, automatically, wherever they are, on up to ten devices. The service is free for songs through the iTunes Store.
As far as ripped music, iTunes has 18 million songs in the music store and Apple will use a feature called iTunes Match to give users the same benefits on ripped songs matched to iTunes songs, as with purchased tracks. A user's library is scanned and matched and any songs that remain unmatched can be uploaded for syncing. Songs that are matched are upgraded to 256KBps, AAC, DRM-free, with all the benefits above, including push syncing and all the rest.
I guess it depends on what the definition of "Push syncing" is! Does it mean that iTunes Match would re-write the files on your hard drive to 256 AAC, which then get synced to your iPod? If so, that would be great for 128 AAC files ripped from CD long ago; not so much for 320 mp3s bought elsewhere (or ripped more recently).
Or am I missing the point? I do understand that they are trying to get me to listen to my music via Cloud on my "mobile device," which I do not have. Just trying to suss out the implications/poss benefits for those of us still using iPods.
According to Steve Jobs, this is the "first time we've seen this in the music industry."
RDF in full effect I see.
I've got my Google Music beta going. So far the big downside is the lack of Lala's matching technology - all 50k+ songs have to be uploaded. After the first few went up, I noticed problems with the tags which made me finally address the problem that much of my collection had ID3v2.4 tags that were incompatible with most players/services. I'm now trying to correct most of those tags before resuming the whole upload process.
@Doofy - I was going to suggest that it would only upgrade lower bitrate songs, but now I'm not sure. Especially since it's 256kbps AAC, they might feel that is better than 320kbps mp3s. Either way, I suggest full backups before letting something "automagically" touch your collection.
Yeah, I actually assume they're going to try to auto-convert everybody/thing to AAC. If I were an Amazon marketer, I'd be jumping all over that. "iTunes wants to take away your mp3s!"
...And yet it's still unclear to me if iTunes Match is actually going to alter anything on my hard drive. Though I'd be interested in playing with this, I ain't going first!
What's the over/under on when the eMu "cloud" is ready? Based on past performance, it will be right after the moment when people aren't interested anymore.
So, a couple of weeks ago I made my first experimental attempts at ripping vinyl to mp3. I have two computers, an old one and an older one. I recorded the vinyl (Van Halen, Van Halen, which I had just gotten for a buck at Record Store Day) onto the older one, recorded and saved as wave files on a cdr. When I put the CDR in my old computer, which is where I sync my ipods, itunes recognized the cd as Van Halen, Van Halen, which I was surprised about.
So what I'm wondering is, will I be able to trade that vinyl rip through mp3 match for shiny new 256 AAC's? It's in my library after all.
But then what I wonder is, can anybody with an mp3 tag editor "create" any album they want by mimicing titles and song lengths? And if that is possible how long before it brings the whole idea crashing down?
@amclark2 - That's one of the main reasons streaming makes sense, but downloading... excuse me, pushing... doesn't. Up until recently I had a number of mp3s ripped by a friend in my collection. Heck, it would take nothing for me to hit some torrent sites for every album I wanted and then hook into the iCloud and effectively launder them.
I realize that any cloud service that lets you upload songs without confirming purchase is going to have that problem, but this seems like it's actually going a step further.
@amclark2 "So what I'm wondering is, will I be able to trade that vinyl rip through mp3 match for shiny new 256 AAC's? It's in my library after all."
I cannot see why this would not be a problem in the iCloud format since they are checking what you have and then streaming their files. When I read the announcement and analysis yesterday that is the first thing I thought of, since I have a few old low-bit rate files still around. I am not sure the process of ripping vinyl is the best idea since I assume there is a cross check between the timing of a track and the tags. I could tag any ten songs in my library as "Led Zeppelin IV," but I doubt the iCloud will let me listen to Stairway if my mp3 file is only 3 minutes long. I could see a re-tagging app, tell it what album you want, the app retags files and then you "get" the album in the cloud.
I have "obtained" mp3's of alot of albums I own on on vinyl, I always thought that if jack-booted thugs from the RAIA kicked in the door to my listening room and searched for illegal MP3's, I would point them to the boxes of old records and tell them to do the inventory. Perhaps my views have been overly effected by reading 1984 or watching Brazil.
Seriously, does this not raise the possibility that the RIAA (via the labels) gets access to your library data, makes some judgments about how much of it is "legally" obtained, and starts sending out bills? Just sayin'.
Perhaps my views have been overly effected by reading 1984 or watching Brazil.
LOL
the possibility that the RIAA (via the labels) gets access to your library data, makes some judgments about how much of it is "legally" obtained, and starts sending out bills?
Not so amusing. Not that I have been collecting illegal MP3s - it's that "makes some judgments" piece...
That is a fascinating article Doofy. For once I get the impression that those of us this side of the Atlantic are getting this too fairly soon. Am I reading it correctly? Is it implying that I can listen to anything in the itunes catalogue for our equivalent of $2 per month? It will be the end of all the streaming services like Spotify. Still only having an ipod it won't be quite so useful to me,but maybe as long as I pay my money each year I can have music on my ipod that I can play in my car or wherever??? I think I'll follow amclark and upload my old LPs digitally, if I only had a turntable...
For me one benefit will be that I can, for example, stream to my work laptop. I'm not allowed to have any music on it unless I can justify it, for example, as background to a PowerPoint. Also it means we can stream to my wife's iphone and given that my itunes has many more times the music in memory terms than her iphone can hold it'll give much more choice.
@thom ...problems with the tags which made me finally address the problem that much of my collection had ID3v2.4 tags that were incompatible with most players/services
It's weird, isn't it? Usually the highest version number is the best to pick, but definitely NOT with ID3 tags.
Can't you just use itunes to convert them? Maybe you don't use itunes, though. However. I have let itunes change tag versions and then double-checked them with another program, namely MP3 Tag, and itunes seems to do it properly.
Is it implying that I can listen to anything in the itunes catalogue for our equivalent of $2 per month?
@greg, No, only those items in the iTunes catalog that are also already on your own hard drive. The fuzzy area is how you got them on your hard drive.
This is the future of music -- a future in which music will be like water: ubiquitous and free flowing.
And who actually pays attention to water? Those for whom it is not ubiquitous and free flowing. (Oh, and these technological utopia piece writers always forget that there are a lot of people like that on planet earth). Where it is ubiquitous it is also transparent. This does not sound an entirely attractive future to me - it could just as easily accelerate the devaluing of music into muzak. Read the description of this ideal future geek's listening habits in the article Doofy linked and ask yourself, when is he actually paying attention? He's like a walking advert for ADD. If that's the future we'll all need medication.
@greg: My understanding is that you can't stream music.
From Cult of Mac:
"What people expected from iCloud was a streaming cloud locker for your media collection: iCloud would scan your iTunes library and automatically mirror them on a central server, allowing you to stream any song you owned to any device you owned without being bothered with local storage.
"What people got? iTunes Match. It scans and matches your iTunes library in the cloud, sure, but there is no streaming: any time you want to listen to an album thats not on your iPhone or iPad, youve got to download it from the cloud onto your device."
A major letdown for me. For now, I'm using Google's cloud, because it's free, but I prefer Amazon's, because it lets you stream and download from the cloud (Google doesn't let users download yet).
Perhaps more than "sustains". An aspect that immediately struck me as troublesome in the talk of any purchase automatically being "pushed" to all your devices so that the user could remove the hassle of actually syncing things is that it could take away some control over what gets synced and why. I do not actually want everything I buy automatically and instantly "pushed" to my ipod. I want the buffer of my hard drive and the selectivity of what goes on the ipod. If this is the new norm, it seems as if it will put pressure on anyone with an older ipod with less storage capacity to get a new one so that iTunes can keep pushing things to it...
Wow, really? No streaming at all? So they actually took Lala's tech, crippled it, and then charged for it? PROFIT!
@Katrina - ID3 tagging is such a mess that way. I use foobar2000 as my primary player and I forget when they switched the default to v2.4. It took me awhile to realize that it caused problems with certain other programs and, once I did, quickly checked off the compatibility function. That got me back to 2.3, unfortunately that left thousands of files I had worked on with 2.4. Since I actually mirror the files between 2 drives, I didn't want to mass convert them (which is easy enough with foobar2000 or Mp3tag) until I was ready to deal with re-syncing 1000s of files. Even now I'm looking into any other edits I wanted to make to most of the files before I start re-syncing again.
GP - While I agree that I want control over what is on my iPod, the problem with your argument is that Apple seems to have been phasing out the large capacity iPods. Based on that, I don't think you would lose control, but who knows?
I think push is just a bad term for downloadable. I doubt that they're going to push anything that you don't want. My whole collection won't fit on my phone. My whole collection won't fit on my phone, 3 shuffles and two computers combined. They can't just push everything onto it every time I turn it on.
I wonder about things that are in my library, but are really gone. I lost a backup hard drive when I plugged a 9-volt power cable into a 5-volt drive. Most of the stuff on there was emusic, and I got most of it back, but some things had disappeared. They are still in my library, they just have exclamation points next to them. Will I be able to match them I wonder?
I think I like the sound of the imatch, but I'm going to wait for elwoodicious to get it and report back. he'll probably get it as a fathers' day gift anyway, the lucky bastard.
Interesting - there seems to be a lot of 'misinformation' out there about this in the media - I certainly heard a discussion on the radio that suggested it would enable you to stream just like Spotify - maybe some things are different over here?? I'll have to wait and see...
If you don't renew the yearly $25 subscription, your iCloud store goes away. iTunes purchases will still be available to all devices, and anything that you have downloaded from iCloud to you devices you keep. This includes iTunes Plus versions you have chosen to replace older, lower quality rips in your main iTunes library. Apple explained that replacing those lower-quality rips is optional.
Comments
I guess it depends on what the definition of "Push syncing" is! Does it mean that iTunes Match would re-write the files on your hard drive to 256 AAC, which then get synced to your iPod? If so, that would be great for 128 AAC files ripped from CD long ago; not so much for 320 mp3s bought elsewhere (or ripped more recently).
Or am I missing the point? I do understand that they are trying to get me to listen to my music via Cloud on my "mobile device," which I do not have. Just trying to suss out the implications/poss benefits for those of us still using iPods.
I've got my Google Music beta going. So far the big downside is the lack of Lala's matching technology - all 50k+ songs have to be uploaded. After the first few went up, I noticed problems with the tags which made me finally address the problem that much of my collection had ID3v2.4 tags that were incompatible with most players/services. I'm now trying to correct most of those tags before resuming the whole upload process.
@Doofy - I was going to suggest that it would only upgrade lower bitrate songs, but now I'm not sure. Especially since it's 256kbps AAC, they might feel that is better than 320kbps mp3s. Either way, I suggest full backups before letting something "automagically" touch your collection.
...And yet it's still unclear to me if iTunes Match is actually going to alter anything on my hard drive. Though I'd be interested in playing with this, I ain't going first!
What's the over/under on when the eMu "cloud" is ready? Based on past performance, it will be right after the moment when people aren't interested anymore.
So what I'm wondering is, will I be able to trade that vinyl rip through mp3 match for shiny new 256 AAC's? It's in my library after all.
But then what I wonder is, can anybody with an mp3 tag editor "create" any album they want by mimicing titles and song lengths? And if that is possible how long before it brings the whole idea crashing down?
I realize that any cloud service that lets you upload songs without confirming purchase is going to have that problem, but this seems like it's actually going a step further.
I cannot see why this would not be a problem in the iCloud format since they are checking what you have and then streaming their files. When I read the announcement and analysis yesterday that is the first thing I thought of, since I have a few old low-bit rate files still around. I am not sure the process of ripping vinyl is the best idea since I assume there is a cross check between the timing of a track and the tags. I could tag any ten songs in my library as "Led Zeppelin IV," but I doubt the iCloud will let me listen to Stairway if my mp3 file is only 3 minutes long. I could see a re-tagging app, tell it what album you want, the app retags files and then you "get" the album in the cloud.
I have "obtained" mp3's of alot of albums I own on on vinyl, I always thought that if jack-booted thugs from the RAIA kicked in the door to my listening room and searched for illegal MP3's, I would point them to the boxes of old records and tell them to do the inventory. Perhaps my views have been overly effected by reading 1984 or watching Brazil.
...problems with the tags which made me finally address the problem that much of my collection had ID3v2.4 tags that were incompatible with most players/services
It's weird, isn't it? Usually the highest version number is the best to pick, but definitely NOT with ID3 tags.
Can't you just use itunes to convert them? Maybe you don't use itunes, though. However. I have let itunes change tag versions and then double-checked them with another program, namely MP3 Tag, and itunes seems to do it properly.
If David Bowie accurately predicts the future, I hope Ziggy Startdust and the Spiders from Mars is next.
Craig
And who actually pays attention to water? Those for whom it is not ubiquitous and free flowing. (Oh, and these technological utopia piece writers always forget that there are a lot of people like that on planet earth). Where it is ubiquitous it is also transparent. This does not sound an entirely attractive future to me - it could just as easily accelerate the devaluing of music into muzak. Read the description of this ideal future geek's listening habits in the article Doofy linked and ask yourself, when is he actually paying attention? He's like a walking advert for ADD. If that's the future we'll all need medication.
From Cult of Mac:
"What people expected from iCloud was a streaming cloud locker for your media collection: iCloud would scan your iTunes library and automatically mirror them on a central server, allowing you to stream any song you owned to any device you owned without being bothered with local storage.
"What people got? iTunes Match. It scans and matches your iTunes library in the cloud, sure, but there is no streaming: any time you want to listen to an album thats not on your iPhone or iPad, youve got to download it from the cloud onto your device."
A major letdown for me. For now, I'm using Google's cloud, because it's free, but I prefer Amazon's, because it lets you stream and download from the cloud (Google doesn't let users download yet).
Oh wow, I get it now. That's crazy. And sustains the demand for devices.
Perhaps more than "sustains". An aspect that immediately struck me as troublesome in the talk of any purchase automatically being "pushed" to all your devices so that the user could remove the hassle of actually syncing things is that it could take away some control over what gets synced and why. I do not actually want everything I buy automatically and instantly "pushed" to my ipod. I want the buffer of my hard drive and the selectivity of what goes on the ipod. If this is the new norm, it seems as if it will put pressure on anyone with an older ipod with less storage capacity to get a new one so that iTunes can keep pushing things to it...
@Katrina - ID3 tagging is such a mess that way. I use foobar2000 as my primary player and I forget when they switched the default to v2.4. It took me awhile to realize that it caused problems with certain other programs and, once I did, quickly checked off the compatibility function. That got me back to 2.3, unfortunately that left thousands of files I had worked on with 2.4. Since I actually mirror the files between 2 drives, I didn't want to mass convert them (which is easy enough with foobar2000 or Mp3tag) until I was ready to deal with re-syncing 1000s of files. Even now I'm looking into any other edits I wanted to make to most of the files before I start re-syncing again.
Craig
I wonder about things that are in my library, but are really gone. I lost a backup hard drive when I plugged a 9-volt power cable into a 5-volt drive. Most of the stuff on there was emusic, and I got most of it back, but some things had disappeared. They are still in my library, they just have exclamation points next to them. Will I be able to match them I wonder?
I think I like the sound of the imatch, but I'm going to wait for elwoodicious to get it and report back. he'll probably get it as a fathers' day gift anyway, the lucky bastard.