Itunes Match

[1KW]

I am thinking of signing up for itunes match however I have a question for those who done this already. From what I have a read this service provides a 256 k back up of your original itunes library that can be synced to up to 10 devices. Will my original AIFF ie lossless cd quality itunes library be affected ie will the quality of my files on my music server remain untouched ? Some may wonder why I would want to do this ? From what I have read you can stream music to your iphone or ipad without actually downloading and using storage space on your device or you can download whenever you want as long as you have internet access. I can see this being useful when driving in the car, traveling or at work, you have your whole music library anytime you want .

[Jerome W]

Originally Posted by 1KW

I am thinking of signing up for itunes match however I have a question for those who done this already. From what I have a read this service provides a 256 k back up of your original itunes library that can be synced to up to 10 devices. Will my original AIFF ie lossless cd quality itunes library be affected ie will the quality of my files on my music server remain untouched ? Some may wonder why I would want to do this ? From what I have read you can stream music to your iphone or ipad without actually downloading and using storage space on your device or you can download whenever you want as long as you have internet access. I can see this being useful when driving in the car, traveling or at work, you have your whole music library anytime you want .

David : Cloud computing !
great feature.
Same thing with Spotify.
I suppose that the library will be saved on Apple servers in 256k but your personal lib on your computer will remain lossless.
You should ask the question to Apple support to be sure.

[1KW]

I signed up today and so far it works great having access to my library in the car and on my computers at the office. If apple ever offered this service with hd quality music ..... Ok I know it's not likely But it's fun to hope

[Poppyhome]

I took about 500 albums which were saved as FLAC and converted them to MP3 files saved at 320 Kbps. I uploaded them to the cloud in iTunes which stores them at 256 Kbps. It works great with music on the go when traveling around using your iPhone or iPad.

Ron

[1KW]

Originally Posted by Poppyhome

I took about 500 albums which were saved as FLAC and converted them to MP3 files saved at 320 Kbps. I uploaded them to the cloud in iTunes which stores them at 256 Kbps. It works great with music on the go when traveling around using your iPhone or iPad.

Ron

Exactly it is for portable devices on the go . Surprisingly it sounds excellent in the car when the top is down ie not critical listening . I like being able to update/refresh my genre genius mixes on the go, kind of like making you own pandora mix

[JohnK]

Originally Posted by 1KW

Exactly it is for portable devices on the go . Surprisingly it sounds excellent in the car when the top is down ie not critical listening . I like being able to update/refresh my genre genius mixes on the go, kind of like making you own pandora mix

That's interesting that it works for the CDs you've ripped yourself, and not just what was purchased from iTunes. For some reason, I thought this service from Apple was only for what they sold you, not your own rips.

I will have to check this out!

[rscotth]

The match works well. My iTunes library is 10,000+ songs, all uncompressed. Some albums are purchased from iTunes, some are regular red-book cd's and some are bootleg recordings. When I initiated the match, iTunes uploads ALL music that they don't offer in the store. Purchased and ripped red-books in their store are just MATCHED and not uploaded. They only upload titles they don't sell. It took almost a full day to set it up and upload the music, but once done, it's done. As you add more music to your library you can add that to the cloud. If you have more than one computer with multiple libraries, it will combine them all. The files STAY on your machine. Plus you can turn the MATCH on or off. Pretty cool service for $25.

Scott

[1KW]

I did not know you could combine libraries from more than one computer

[rscotth]

Originally Posted by 1KW

I did not know you could combine libraries from more than one computer

I have two machines with two separate libraries. Some of the music is duplicates. I've done the "match" with both machines, and it take everything from both libraries and makes them available on either machine. I think you can do this up to five libraries.

[JohnK]

So it looks like iTunes Match streams if you are listening on a computer, but streams and stores if you are listening on an iPhone, iPad...

From the Apple site:

"Does iTunes Match stream or download songs?
On a computer, any songs stored in iCloud will stream over the air when played, though you can download them at any time by clicking the iCloud download button. iOS devices will start playing tracks from iCloud as they download and will store them so that you can listen to them later even if you don’t have a network connection. Apple TV only streams songs."

Apple - iTunes - Match