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eroxx

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 27, 2010
801
1
I have been excited for iTunes match since Jobs announced it quite some time ago. I have a large library, and can't use it as of now. Any idea if that restriction will be lifted?
 

Menel

Suspended
Aug 4, 2011
6,351
1,356
I have been excited for iTunes match since Jobs announced it quite some time ago. I have a large library, and can't use it as of now. Any idea if that restriction will be lifted?
It has barely just launched in it's current iteration.

I want to see higher rate of match first.

I wouldn't expect an extension of library size for a year at least, probably not several years.
 

xraytech

macrumors 68030
Mar 24, 2010
2,518
214
I have 15,828 files in my iTunes Music Directory. So iTunes Match was unable to find 2656 files and these 2656 files will be uploaded into the cloud. Started at around 6pm took a nap and forgot about it. Woke up at about 12am and it was done. So I'm guessing for 15,828 files, it took between 4 maybe 6 hours?

I don't see why iTunes Match cannot handle 25000+ songs. I'm more concerned about getting higher Match Percentage.
 

gentlefury

macrumors 68030
Jul 21, 2011
2,889
67
Los Angeles, CA
25,000 songs is about 70 days straight of music....it is 1666 HOURS!!! How are people so damned entitled that they can even find a way to complain about a 25,000 song limit?????????? You people are amazing!

How about complaining about the obvious problems....like, you can just stream music to a desktop (the device with the most space) but have to download every track to a phone (HELLO, the whole point was to get the music OFF THE DEVICE!!!)

Or how about, in my library I have over 600 songs that are missing and it says are unauthorized! What's that about??

On a positive note, I had a few tracks that were glitchy and since they were catalog items they are now good...so I can actually delete them off my original library and re-download them.

I think iTunes match is a step in the right direction, but required download to portable devices is kinda like FaceTime only being allowed on wifi....pretty useless!
 

HazyCloud

macrumors 68030
Jun 30, 2010
2,779
37
I think iTunes match is a step in the right direction, but required download to portable devices is kinda like FaceTime only being allowed on wifi....pretty useless!

I just downloaded an album from within Music while on 3G. Wi-Fi is not required.

EDIT* It seems Wi-Fi IS required for songs that are over 10 MBs. Just tried to download 2112 and got an error.

I was pleasantly surprised last night when iTunes Match matched roughly 11,000 songs out of my 12,600+. The thing that gets me is that it will match an entire album but miss one song. If all of the metadata is the same, why didn't it match? I guess this is why it's still in beta.
 
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eroxx

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 27, 2010
801
1
It's not a question of entitlement. It's a dissapointment that I am utterly unable to use the service, unless I want to create a separate library with just a portion of my songs, which takes away the whole point of itunes match in the first place.
 

HazyCloud

macrumors 68030
Jun 30, 2010
2,779
37
It's not a question of entitlement. It's a dissapointment that I am utterly unable to use the service, unless I want to create a separate library with just a portion of my songs, which takes away the whole point of itunes match in the first place.

You can try taking the songs you don't care about and marking them as podcasts. That way Match will overlook them and possibly get you within the limit.
 

AgentElliot007

macrumors 6502a
Mar 22, 2010
579
363
You can try taking the songs you don't care about and marking them as podcasts. That way Match will overlook them and possibly get you within the limit.

A combination of the Podcast thing and then backup of thousands of tracks followed by deletion from iTunes Library worked for me, but I'm really hoping that they add a way to opt out tracks from Match so I can keep a local library in one place without having to use tricks with categorizing to make it work. I have no issues whatsoever with the generous (in my opinion) 25,000 song limit that iTunes Match allows you to access from their system, but they need to allow you to opt out songs in your library so you don't have to keep your music list under 25,000.

I'm a professional musician and producer who also went to music school. Subsequently, I have tons of reference music that I picked up via anthologies while in music school and then thousands, thousands of my own demo tracks and then all the demo tracks from other artists I work with. If I had to guess how much music I have that's directly related to my profession, I'd guess the number to be somewhere between 12,000-15,000. Then you just take the fact that I'm obviously a huge music fan who has been buying CD's for years and years (I have well over 1,000 CD's in my collection) and you can tack on about 20,000 more tracks.

I love using the iTunes Library (despite it's flaws) to manage all of this, and again I totally understand the 25,000 limit to iTunes Match, but the way in which that hinders ones ability to have a local library of more than 25,000 songs is rather frustrating at this moment. Hopefully iTunes 10.5.2 will address this matter.
 

Invincibilizer

macrumors 6502a
Aug 18, 2011
769
2
Nope, raising the limit doesn't seem necessary.

Most consumers does not have days of music, I have less than 500 songs, unless Apple raises the annual price to $50 or 100$ I do not see a change in the 25,000 song limit.
 

gentlefury

macrumors 68030
Jul 21, 2011
2,889
67
Los Angeles, CA
It's not a question of entitlement. It's a dissapointment that I am utterly unable to use the service, unless I want to create a separate library with just a portion of my songs, which takes away the whole point of itunes match in the first place.

To say the service is useless to you because you can't have more music than you could listen to in a lifetime is a bit short sited.

----------

I just downloaded an album from within Music while on 3G. Wi-Fi is not required.

EDIT* It seems Wi-Fi IS required for songs that are over 10 MBs. Just tried to download 2112 and got an error.

I was pleasantly surprised last night when iTunes Match matched roughly 11,000 songs out of my 12,600+. The thing that gets me is that it will match an entire album but miss one song. If all of the metadata is the same, why didn't it match? I guess this is why it's still in beta.

I never said wifi was required...I said requiring a download of songs on iCloud makes it about as useless as FaceTime requirings wifi....since the thing I would want to use FaceTime for would be to share an experience with someone...hey look where I am....well unless you have wifi that isn't happening...so that means you can only use it at home or at a place with wifi....which is typically inside...so its basically useless. I got iTunes Match because I figured, hey, get the music in the cloud....play it back like google music....not have to waste space on my phone! WRONG.....bad move....hopefully its corrected.
 

squarelover

macrumors newbie
Aug 18, 2006
2
0
iCloud is useless to me for now

To say the service is useless to you because you can't have more music than you could listen to in a lifetime is a bit short sited.

It's useless if you DO have a large collection because the feature is entirely turned off for Users with more than 25,000 tracks in their collection.

Screen%20Shot%202011-11-16%20at%2011.43.45%20AM.png


I have over 40,000 tracks and it is definitely not more than a lifetime of songs (126.7 days).

So it is useless to people who have large collections, because the service is entirely unavailable to them. And I really don't want to spend hours pruning through my collection to make it fit with Apple. I'll just use another service instead.
 

gentlefury

macrumors 68030
Jul 21, 2011
2,889
67
Los Angeles, CA
It's useless if you DO have a large collection because the feature is entirely turned off for Users with more than 25,000 tracks in their collection.

Image

I have over 40,000 tracks and it is definitely not more than a lifetime of songs (126.7 days).

So it is useless to people who have large collections, because the service is entirely unavailable to them. And I really don't want to spend hours pruning through my collection to make it fit with Apple. I'll just use another service instead.



Well, I guess it is entirely turned off if you happen to disregard the 25,000 SONGS!!! Also remember, any songs you actually purchased on iTunes does no count towards that limit...so its 25,000 external sourced songs! So if you are a big iTunes user you could easily add thousands to that limit.

Let me know the next time you spend 4.5 months straight listening to music and never skipping a single track because you listen to all of it. Sounds to me like you are just a hoarder. There is no way you have 40,000 songs you listen to on a regular basis! I have less than 4,000 and I probably listen to 2/3 of that.
 

Menel

Suspended
Aug 4, 2011
6,351
1,356
I'm mocked in my circles for my 13,000 track collection, for having more music than sense.

If only they knew...
 

Thetonyk123

macrumors 68000
Aug 14, 2011
1,627
1
Earth
How does anybody have more then 25,000 songs :confused: . I only have about 350 so I back mine up on a external HDD.

If they support more songs (Which they should) you would probably have to pay more.
 

JohnDoe98

macrumors 68020
May 1, 2009
2,488
99
So it is useless to people who have large collections, because the service is entirely unavailable to them. And I really don't want to spend hours pruning through my collection to make it fit with Apple. I'll just use another service instead.

No need to prune, there are plenty of solutions.
 

randmar

macrumors newbie
Aug 27, 2006
1
0
165,000 songs

I'm not sure why people are putting people down who have more than 25,000 songs...ok i have 165,000 songs...its not about listening to them all...its access. I want to know the easiest way to create a library to work within the limits
 

Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,847
5,441
Atlanta
...I have over 40,000 tracks and it is definitely not more than a lifetime of songs (126.7 days)...

Depends on how you measure it. The average life from birth to death is about 28,000 days. So you have almost 2 different songs a day for every day of your life.:eek::D
 

chulsupark

macrumors newbie
Jul 4, 2009
9
0
Ithaca, NY
I too have more than 30k songs in my library; I'm wondering if I can use multiple iTunes accounts (I have two accounts) to overcome current 25k limitation? I mean if I subscribe both accounts with iTunes match, then can I use two libraries from two different accounts on my iPhone (and laptop/PC)? Will it wipe out one of the other music downloads when I switch accounts? Has anyone tried this? (I guess iCloud sync could be another problems?)
 

jeffharris

macrumors newbie
Mar 29, 2008
4
0
I have about 80,000 songs. My best solution was this.

I deleted my whole iTunes library, and, only added back My most favorite tracks (actually by artists, as I have them separated into sub folders anyway - much easier) which I was pretty sure iTunes didn't have, plus my favorite 128kb mp3s that i thought would be matched, and I would be glad to have on my iPhone re-encoded at the higher bit rate. As I am a subscriber to Rhapsody and Spotify, I also kept in mind that certain popular artists with big catalogs, like for example Eagles, Dead, Elton,, etc... All of those are accessible to me from those services anyway. So, no need to clutter Match up with them, unless you want to make sure you can stream them at the 256 AAC bitrate.

So, I now have 22,900 songs in iTunes match (9900 which weren't matched, but uploaded).

As for my entire "music" folder? I use (and have used for the last year) the Audiogalaxy app, which when you install on your Mac, and the iOS app, gives you complete streaming and downloading access to your whole library remotely, no matter how big it is. And it works great. You just have to leave your Mac on to access.
 
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lydiasracket

macrumors newbie
Jun 16, 2009
2
0
85,000+ songs

I think that the real problem with iTunes Match is the fact that they do not allow you to exclude songs that will be matched. If anything iTunes should be able to utilize it's check-box to exclude songs that are not checked from iTunes Match.

This is not a great solution but it is a start. Personally I still wouldn't use it because it would be too limiting on my full library. Unlike gentlefury who thinks we have silver spoons up our asses for amassing a music collection over the last thirty years and that we must be entitled as he puts it...I don't feel that way at all. I would however like to use this service for my iDevices and between my home and office computers rather than copying music between hard-drives weekly or ripping CD's at both locations every few days.

Even if we could identify which songs we wanted matched by adding them to a playlist much like Spotify it would be grand. Until then, it seems that for anyone with a library of over 25,000 songs must either keep a second library of their favorite songs or just not use the service.
 

JohnDoe98

macrumors 68020
May 1, 2009
2,488
99
I think that the real problem with iTunes Match is the fact that they do not allow you to exclude songs that will be matched. If anything iTunes should be able to utilize it's check-box to exclude songs that are not checked from iTunes Match.]

Even if we could identify which songs we wanted matched by adding them to a playlist much like Spotify it would be grand. Until then, it seems that for anyone with a library of over 25,000 songs must either keep a second library of their favorite songs or just not use the service.

But you can already do this so I'm not sure why you are complaining. The solution is simple. Remove songs from your library but do not delete them until you have 25k library or smaller. Then turn on iTunes match. Once iTunes match is finished matching and uploading that 25k library, and only once it is done, re-add all your songs, up to whatever crazy amount you have, and the first 25k will work with iTunes match, the rest added after the 25k songs are synced will be excluded from iTunes Match. You should inform yourself first before you complain about things.
 

Mabus51

Suspended
Aug 16, 2007
1,366
847
You really need to complain to the RIAA for the limitation. It was part of their requirement/deal with Apple and allowing what they call pirated music as acceptable. Even if your mp3 collection is from ripped CDs the RIAA still sees that as pirated.
 

ShamanRawb

macrumors newbie
Sep 8, 2010
26
0
But you can already do this so I'm not sure why you are complaining. The solution is simple. Remove songs from your library but do not delete them until you have 25k library or smaller. Then turn on iTunes match. Once iTunes match is finished matching and uploading that 25k library, and only once it is done, re-add all your songs, up to whatever crazy amount you have, and the first 25k will work with iTunes match, the rest added after the 25k songs are synced will be excluded from iTunes Match. You should inform yourself first before you complain about things.

The problem with this is the next song you add (unless you purchase it) will not be added to iCloud. Makes sense to leave some sort of buffer.. I have 35k so I am in the same boat FYI.
 
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