Apple Music itunes match, anyone?

[rwh63]

i'm looking for an alternative way to download the music i own that's on my laptop. came across itunes match. sort of a cloud account for music. costs $25/year. might be the solution i am looking for.

question, does my entire library transfer, as it is on my computer, then when i sync a device, only the items i have checked will dowload onto that device. and not sure what happens to the music files if i do not renew for a second year. erased?

 

[Bigwaff]

i'm looking for an alternative way to download the music i own that's on my laptop.

If you purchased music from iTunes, you will always be able to download your purchased content from iTunes and don't need iTunes Match. iTunes Match is for when you have content imported, downloaded, burned etc from outside sources other then iTunes Store or Apple Music and want to make this content available to other devices where you're signed in w/ your Apple Id. It basically avoids you from having to manually sync this outside content to your other devices. Depending on your settings, this outside content will automatically appear on your other devices. If you don't have other devices then you don't need iTunes Match.

what happens to the music files if i do not renew for a second year. erased?

The files belong to you and once downloaded to a device they remain on the device. Just be sure to download all your content from iTunes Match before the subscription ends.

 

[rwh63]

yes, 99% of my music is my own. i don't stream. my usb ports are dead, so looking for an alternative to tranfering music to devices from my laptop. plus, it stores my library in case something happens to my computer.

 

[okkibs]

The big limitation to consider is that Apple will not sync your original files to the other devices if it already has a copy of that song on their servers. That version can differ from what you have in various way, each pretty bad.

Take for example basically any Pink Floyd album. It will have more than a dozen different versions which not only have been put together by different sound engineers, but it might also have different source material. The band might have recorded a track twice where one release of the album uses one recording and a later release then uses the other. In the worst case you can end up with an entirely different song. Same track and length and everything, but perhaps different lyrics for one verse. Maybe it's merely a remaster version that cranks up the volume so you lose quality (this is called the loudness war).

You might also find an explicit version of a song has been replaced with a clean one, or a live version that you recorded yourself switched out for the studio version. And the tags might be replaced with the ones from the iTunes store so if you tagged everything meticulously that could be hosed.

Another example is classical music. Apple might replace this with an entirely different recording featuring different musicians.

Better make a full backup of the library before you enable this feature and store it for years. You won't know if Apple matched correctly until you have listened to every single song.

 

[rwh63]

i've contacted apple. they will get back to me next week on questions about whether my music and any other audio will be copied from my library, or will be getting a best "match" (which in theory could be a superior version).

btw, i have 717 albums/15+ days of music/85 gb, so it will take awhile to do any transfer.

 

[enchefitri]

I have been using Apple Match for a while, and from what I could see, the bar of Matching it is quite high. I have two accounts, one from the US and the other one from my country. Bought a lot of music from the US account, and when Apple iTunes became official in my country, downloaded everything from the US account and used my country account.

Even using downloaded from US account .aac files, I would say that 15% of the music got uploaded, signalling that Match didn't actually match the music to the ones in their server. And this using actual .aac that was downloaded from the US iTunes account.

That said, I do have a lot of success with ripped mp3 files from my old cd collection. Still have some that was uploaded since it wasn't Matched.

 

[rwh63]

can i log in to my match account to see what was loaded onto it?

 

[Bigwaff]

There is no login portal for iTunes Match. You subscribe and your iTunes library becomes enabled for iTunes Match. If you want to see which files have been “matched” or uploaded, you can search your library for the “cloud” status of files.

If songs are missing from your music library after you turn on Sync Library - Apple Support

Make sure that all of your devices have Sync Library turned on and signed in with the same Apple ID that you use with Apple Music. If your music library is stored on your computer, check the cloud status of songs to find missing music and resolve issues.

support.apple.com