iTunes Match on iPhone Streaming Explanation?

[MICHAELSD]

iTunes Match still seems like partly a mystery on iPhone. So, I am interested in learning more before potentially dropping my music subscription. Questions for early adopters:

Do songs automatically begin downloading when streamed? I subscribe to MOG right now partly so that I don't have gigabytes upon gigabytes of music stored on my iPhone, freeing up disk space for apps. iTunes Match would have to be a replacement for that for me to subscribe. Thus it would be useless to me if songs automatically download.

Does shuffling work with streaming or do songs have to be downloaded?

Can songs be streamed over 3G or are there restrictions?

Thanks!

 

[mactmaster]

iTunes Match still seems like partly a mystery on iPhone. So, I am interested in learning more before potentially dropping my music subscription. Questions for early adopters:

Do songs automatically begin downloading when streamed? I subscribe to MOG right now partly so that I don't have gigabytes upon gigabytes of music stored on my iPhone, freeing up disk space for apps. iTunes Match would have to be a replacement for that for me to subscribe. Thus it would be useless to me if songs automatically download.

Does shuffling work with streaming or do songs have to be downloaded?

Can songs be streamed over 3G or are there restrictions?

Thanks!

1. Yes songs will download when you choose to play them. Think "download while you listen". After you're done listening to a song, it stays on your device.

2. Shuffling works even if you have not yet downloaded the tracks.

3. There are no restrictions over 3G.

What remains to be seen is what happens on a device with no more available storage. I wonder if it will refuse to play a and popup an alert to clear some space.

 

[MICHAELSD]

Thanks for answering. We will just have to wait for the jailbreak community to disable auto-downloads .

 

[gentlefury]

1. Yes songs will download when you choose to play them. Think "download while you listen". After you're done listening to a song, it stays on your device.

2. Shuffling works even if you have not yet downloaded the tracks.

3. There are no restrictions over 3G.

What remains to be seen is what happens on a device with no more available storage. I wonder if it will refuse to play a and popup an alert to clear some space.

Are you sure about this? My MBA isn't downloading songs when I play them...my SDD is staying at the same amount used.

 

[CosmoPilot]

Are you sure about this? My MBA isn't downloading songs when I play them...my SDD is staying at the same amount used.

It appears computers do not download them, but rather place the song in a cache file somewhere. At least this is what I've read.

 

[big samm]

iTunes Match still seems like partly a mystery on iPhone. So, I am interested in learning more before potentially dropping my music subscription. Questions for early adopters:

Do songs automatically begin downloading when streamed? I subscribe to MOG right now partly so that I don't have gigabytes upon gigabytes of music stored on my iPhone, freeing up disk space for apps. iTunes Match would have to be a replacement for that for me to subscribe. Thus it would be useless to me if songs automatically download.

Does shuffling work with streaming or do songs have to be downloaded?

Can songs be streamed over 3G or are there restrictions?

Thanks!

Im also using Mog for several months now, but i still need the songs on my mbp but not all of them and not all the time... For me it might come handy but i don't want to download every song i listen too but rather just stream them. I thought that was the whole point of icloud!

 

[dmb499]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Anyone else stuck on the last song in step 2?

 

[spiderman0616]

I was worried about this too, as my iPhone and iPad typically don't have a whole lot of free space on them.

What you can do is just swipe the song and hit delete after you're done listening. It then appears with the iCloud logo next to it again, which I'm assuming means that it's no longer on your device anymore.

 

[gentlefury]

It appears computers do not download them, but rather place the song in a cache file somewhere. At least this is what I've read.

well if it actually downloads it, it completely defeats the purpose of the service! And seems like they should be giving refunds for a useless service!

 

[ladytonya]

I'm waiting to subscribe until I can get more infer, or at least some definitive info, on this issue. What's the point of iCloud if iTunes Match is downloaded to my phone? Right now, I have about 18 GB of music on my phone and about 10 GB of apps. I was hoping to eliminate some of the music to add more apps and hopefully make my phone run a little faster. I notice that when I synch removing the music and just have the apps on there, the phone seems to run a little snappier. Anyway, I have about 60GB of music all together that I cycle through, switching playlists out on my phone from week to week. I was hoping that listening through iCloud would allow me to just be able to have my apps on my phone and to end the weekly synching different playlists. If this is not the case, then what is the point?

 

[The General]

I'm waiting to subscribe until I can get more infer, or at least some definitive info, on this issue. What's the point of iCloud if iTunes Match is downloaded to my phone? Right now, I have about 18 GB of music on my phone and about 10 GB of apps. I was hoping to eliminate some of the music to add more apps and hopefully make my phone run a little faster. I notice that when I synch removing the music and just have the apps on there, the phone seems to run a little snappier. Anyway, I have about 60GB of music all together that I cycle through, switching playlists out on my phone from week to week. I was hoping that listening through iCloud would allow me to just be able to have my apps on my phone and to end the weekly synching different playlists. If this is not the case, then what is the point?

iCloud's tagline is "Your content. On all of your devices."

iCloud is not a streaming service, it's a syncing service.

 

[verwon]

I was worried about this too, as my iPhone and iPad typically don't have a whole lot of free space on them.

What you can do is just swipe the song and hit delete after you're done listening. It then appears with the iCloud logo next to it again, which I'm assuming means that it's no longer on your device anymore.

Correct!

And so is the other poster, it's not a streaming service. However, it stores your music for you, so you can download and listen anywhere.

 

[hexonxonx]

Also keep in mind that songs over 11-12 MB will not download as they are too big for 3G. The iDevice will not download them until you get to WiFi.

 

[HazyCloud]

Also keep in mind that songs over 11-12 MB will not download as they are too big for 3G. The iDevice will not download them until you get to WiFi.

While I thought there weren't any 3G restrictions, this is true. I just tried downloading Rush's 2112 and it gave me a restriction error.

 

[ladytonya]

I went ahead and subscribed anyway, and so far I am pleasantly surprised! While I don't have what I was hoping for in being able to free up space on my phone, I can listen to anything anywhere, and even if it is downloading to my phone, that's okay.

My favorite thing about this service so far is that I do not have to download to another PC. After getting all my songs matched, I turned iTunes Match on at work and it's great! I have been able to listen to everything from my home computer except what hasn't uploaded yet, and that is still a work in progress. The uploading process is taking forever and I'm assuming that is because the servers are slammed. It keeps locking up while uploading artwork and remaining songs, but I found that if I click stop then start again, it pretty much picks up where it left off. It's been at it since this afternoon, but it's getting there!

Anyway, I figured I would post back after my earlier post. While it isn't perfect (what is?), it really is a great service! Plus, while I know Match isn't and has never been advertised as a streaming service, I'm thinking that maybe eventually it will be. Since we can already listen on a non-iDevice, why not eventually on one. Hey, at least I can hope, right?

 

[thewitt]

It is not a streaming service. Apple does not have the agreements in place with the music industry to support streaming.

 

[pooryou]

Think of the metadata as what is being 'streamed' to you. Which is actually pretty cool if you think about it, it makes Smart Playlists way more powerful...as long as everything works well which remains to be seen.

I feel like what people would like to see is a way to set how long before the songs 'expire' so it's not just an ever growing storage suck. Seems like it would be good to have a setting where songs expire after X amount of time since the last time they were downloaded/played.

 

[HazyCloud]

Think of the metadata as what is being 'streamed' to you. Which is actually pretty cool if you think about it, it makes Smart Playlists way more powerful...as long as everything works well which remains to be seen.

I feel like what people would like to see is a way to set how long before the songs 'expire' so it's not just an ever growing storage suck. Seems like it would be good to have a setting where songs expire after X amount of time since the last time they were downloaded/played.

I really like this idea. I was just thinking last night that my 32 GB iPad 2 will fill quite fast if I continue to use iTunes Match on it. Not so worried on my 64 4S.

 

[hexonxonx]

I really like this idea. I was just thinking last night that my 32 GB iPad 2 will fill quite fast if I continue to use iTunes Match on it. Not so worried on my 64 4S.

But now iOS makes it so easy to delete music if your device fills up. You can delete all music all at once, albums or tracks and even by artist.

Don't worry about filling it up now.

 

[pooryou]

But now iOS makes it so easy to delete music if your device fills up. You can delete all music all at once, albums or tracks and even by artist.

Don't worry about filling it up now.

It's not that easy. I would call it a manual, cumbersome, and massively time-wasting process at the moment from what I can see. If you are downloading albums manually and then deleting them manually that could work I suppose but this is 2011....I'm not going to sit there and fiddle around with downloading and deleting music manually. The way I listen to music it will be songs from all different albums and genres, not so neat and tidy.

 

[HazyCloud]

But now iOS makes it so easy to delete music if your device fills up. You can delete all music all at once, albums or tracks and even by artist.

Don't worry about filling it up now.

How do you delete all of it at once?

EDIT*

Here's a nice find from Macworld:

.."With iTunes Match enabled, your iOS device will automatically remove some downloaded songs over time. The algorithm is smart—older and least-played tracks are removed first."

http://www.macworld.com/article/163676/2011/11/secrets_of_itunes_match.html