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Freeing myself from iTunes Match

pdaholic

pdaholic

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 22, 2011
2,028
3,096
As I've grown more annoyed with how erratically iTunes Match works (having to log out and log on to get it to work, difficulties getting music into the cloud, not syncing artwork, etc.) I've been searching for new solutions for my music in the cloud. I got so ticked-off a couple of months ago I was even thinking of looking at other OS's to see what's out there. My needs are simple...I just want my music in the cloud, I don't want to have to deal with metadata and I want to make a playlist for when I run (the only time I listen to music). Shouldn't be that hard, right?

I tried Google Music, and while it was syncing well, I felt like the apps on my phone were lacking. Some of the Google Music apps haven't been updated and would crash. Some were having trouble getting/playing the music. I was also having to redo all the metadata.

I then tried Dropbox. Dropbox is good, but only lets you play one song at a time, no way to go forward or backward through the list of songs. Seems like a wasted opportunity on the part of Dropbox. I also tried the various apps out there that let you play music from Dropbox, but I had the same old problems, having to deal with metadata and many of them have not been updated for iOS8/iPhone 6.

Tried Sugarsync before, which had syncing problems. It's now a paid storage model, so I'm not gonna try again.

Lately I've been using Box, and it seems to be working well. I just renamed all my music files to "artist - song title" and drop them in Box. No metadata to worry about. I've got 50 gigs for free. Only issue is sometimes it doesn't want to work with the control center and lock screen music controls. No artwork, but I can live with that.

Anybody else freed themselves of iTunes Match? I'd like to hear what you're using!
 
I've never used iTunes match, but I do use OneDrive for my file storage, including my entire iTunes collection. With the OneDrive app for iOS, I can stream any of the songs directly from OneDrive.

This feature is still being worked on by Microsoft, but may be worth a peek if you want to explore free options.
 
reese2147 said:
I've never used iTunes match, but I do use OneDrive for my file storage, including my entire iTunes collection. With the OneDrive app for iOS, I can stream any of the songs directly from OneDrive.

This feature is still being worked on by Microsoft, but may be worth a peek if you want to explore free options.
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks for the recommendation. I tried OneDrive a long time ago, but not for this application. Downloading now...
 
I should add that you can only stream from mobile devices. If you use OneDrive on a web browser, you are not able to stream songs for some reason. I think this is one of the improvements in the work from Microsoft from an article I read a few months ago.

Let me know how it works out for you.
 
reese2147 said:
I should add that you can only stream from mobile devices. If you use OneDrive on a web browser, you are not able to stream songs for some reason. I think this is one of the improvements in the work from Microsoft from an article I read a few months ago.

Let me know how it works out for you.
Click to expand...

Reese--I played around with OneDrive a little last night. I actually had 30gigs free, which is pretty amazing, although again I have 50gigs free with Box (though I have no where near that many songs). There is one thing in particular I like about Box that you might consider...I can make two separate playlists out of "favorited" and "downloaded" songs. That's really the only benefit I see of Box over OneDrive. I actually prefer the appearance of OneDrive more; Box uses thin gray colored fonts that are really hard to see when I'm running. I will keep using both for a while to see which one comes out on top.

You have to admit, it is sooo much nicer to just drop a song into a folder, rather than having to get iTunes Match working, then adjusting the metadata, then tying to get it to upload, then finding artwork, then trying to get the artwork to sync, etc. Can't believe how much time and money I've wasted with that service.

Thanks again for the rec!
 
So how do you upload to OneDrive? If I select an artist with multiple albums with tracks, I have to create folders on OneDrive. Wow that is terrible.
 
I've been using Google Play Music for a long time.

It's been a solid reliable successful fun way to stream on my iPhones, Android phones, Macs and in my car. It's excellent. With an All Access account I get all the streaming music I want without skip limits or anything.

You won't be disappointed :)


http://www.google.com/mobile/ios/
 
What exactly is the problem you are having with adding meta data? If you use iTunes to maintain your music library, it does most of it automatically. File names alone just don't cut it if your library reaches a certain size. Also, not sure I understand why switching to a service that doesn't support any artwork at all is a solution to iTunes' occasional problems with syncing artwork. :p

Another alternative you might try is Amazon Cloud Player. I haven't tried it myself (being quite happy with iTunes Match), but have heard good things about it from friends.
 
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Rigby said:
What exactly is the problem you are having with adding meta data? If you use iTunes to maintain your music library, it does most of it automatically. File names alone just don't cut it if your library reaches a certain size. Also, not sure I understand why switching to a service that doesn't support any artwork at all is a solution to iTunes' occasional problems with syncing artwork. :p

Another alternative you might try is Amazon Cloud Player. I haven't tried it myself (being quite happy with iTunes Match), but have heard good things about it from friends.
Click to expand...

The problem I have with adding meta data is actually having to do it. It's just another step in a number of steps that are required in iTunes Match each time I want to add a song (or heaven forbid, if I rip one of my CD's and manually add each one). As for the artwork, some songs have artwork already added, some don't. So I go to wikipedia, find the artwork, and add it. No big deal, right? Well sometimes that artwork doesn't show up on my phone. I can restart my phone, turn off match on my phone, turn off match on my computer, restart my computer, re-login to Match, and maybe, just maybe, that artwork will show up on my phone. Or maybe it won't. As for your question: why does switching to a service that doesn't support artwork fix the problem? Cause I don't have to think about it anymore. No more of half my songs having artwork, and half don't. None have it, they are just boring filenames. Out of sight, out of mind.

Bottomline, it's just a lot faster to change a filename and drop it into a folder and have it sync. Granted it's lacking, as I can't really do any sorting other than by artist with my naming scheme. Waaay too much time I've wasted on Match, and I'm sure I could waste a lot more getting my collection up to par. I've only got 687 music files thus far, so that's not too bad.

I'll check out the Amazon service. I appreciate it and all the other recs in this thread, and maybe it will be helpful to others as well (I've seen lots of people over the years complain about Match not working well). I've gone on two runs with my new Box setup, and it worked well, but I am still having a weird issue where sometimes control center/lockscreen music controls don't cooperate; stopping and starting the music suddenly makes them work again. I'm guessing it's a bug on the Box side.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Wow I have a music library of OVER 10,000 songs and don't have any of these issues. Way way back when I first got iTunes Match I had trouble getting the matching to work in itunes , but itunes of course has since been updated and it works great now. I get all my artwork too. Meta data and artwork don't show up for songs that the meta data was screwed up on or weird file names, but I can deal with that. If I wasn't lazy I could fix that one afternoon but it doesn't bother me enough to worry with it. I'm assuming your using iPhone 6? Did it previously work ok on an older phone? Trying to pinpoint of maybe there is a hardware issue or some other kind of technical problem that could be causing your troubles.
 
Jstuts5797 said:
Wow I have a music library of OVER 10,000 songs and don't have any of these issues. Way way back when I first got iTunes Match I had trouble getting the matching to work in itunes , but itunes of course has since been updated and it works great now. I get all my artwork too. Meta data and artwork don't show up for songs that the meta data was screwed up on or weird file names, but I can deal with that. If I wasn't lazy I could fix that one afternoon but it doesn't bother me enough to worry with it. I'm assuming your using iPhone 6? Did it previously work ok on an older phone? Trying to pinpoint of maybe there is a hardware issue or some other kind of technical problem that could be causing your troubles.
Click to expand...

Well, I know there are some people out there who have no problems with iTunes Match. I started using it 3 years ago, and at the beginning my main problem was getting files to upload. It would just stall and not upload anything. Some days it would work, other days it wouldn't. We switched to DSL about 2 years ago, got a new router, and suddenly uploading became more reliable. I actually haven't had an issue uploading songs since. Now my problem is getting Match to actually work. I have to sign out and sign back on every time I want to upload something. Sometimes I have to re-login just to see my music in Match. Is it a hardware problem? Well I've got the latest Mac Retina Pro, and iPhone 6+, all my software is updated, and I've got a relatively new router. These aren't just my problems, you can find lots of Match complaints at the Apple Support forums and other forums on the web. I also just feel it's more of a hassle, fixing the metadata, finding artwork, trying to get the artwork to sync, etc. I just downloaded about 20 songs I've been meaning to find (but didn't bother because I didn't want to fight with iTunes) and dropped them in Box. They are now on my phone. Super easy and fast, though admittedly inelegant.
 
Primejimbo said:
I have iTunes Match and it works fine. I had one issue a few months back, but been treat ever since.
Click to expand...

Posts like these are always interesting...A person posts that they are having problems, and someone replies not to help, but rather to say that they aren't having any problems. Anyhow, just for you, I'm going to post what happened when I opened iTunes tonight...
IMG_0206.JPG
Note that this is a new error, one I've never seen before. I'm sure I could figure out what it is and why it happened, but at this point, I don't care.
 
pdaholic said:
Posts like these are always interesting...A person posts that they are having problems, and someone replies not to help, but rather to say that they aren't having any problems. Anyhow, just for you, I'm going to post what happened when I opened iTunes tonight...
View attachment 522503
Note that this is a new error, one I've never seen before. I'm sure I could figure out what it is and why it happened, but at this point, I don't care.
Click to expand...

Well you need to tell people what you're running on what system. When I had my issue I would upload a few songs at a time when none wouls upload. I posted a link too at here at that time and that seemed to fix my issues.

----------

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1731547/

This is when I had my issue
 
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