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iTunes Match: on the way out?

JoEw

JoEw

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 29, 2009
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It seems like ages since I have seen any changes in iTunes match, there seems to be very little bug fixes nowadays. There also has not been any new features other than you get iTunes Radio ad-free woo?

There is not much change occurring and iTunes match and it could use better functionality especially better stability and syncing, and where are the international roll outs? Does this indicate Apple may have its future in limbo?

Anyone agree?

Do you think the future of Match is in limbo?
 
JoEw said:
Do you think the future of Match is in limbo?
Click to expand...

I really doubt it. As much as Apple is pushing that you can use an iPad as your only device, I think you will see an expansion of these cloud services like iTunes Match and iCloud Photos.
 
I have a love/hate relationship with it. When it works, it's great, but when it doesn't I just want to throw something. I hope they keep it because I use it a lot. Because of it, I can almost get away with a 16GB iPhone also. For a while I thought I would need a 64GB, but because of iTunes Match, a 32GB is perfect.
 
I love my iTunes Match. I haven't loaded more than a dozen songs on to my phone since subscribing to it. And now with the addition of Radio, it's only gotten better. :)
 
SpyderBite said:
I love my iTunes Match. I haven't loaded more than a dozen songs on to my phone since subscribing to it. And now with the addition of Radio, it's only gotten better. :)
Click to expand...

I like it "in theory" but my experience has shown it really has not gotten any updates/fixes since I subscribed when I first came out, it also still mixes explicit with clean songs I know there are nice work arounds but shouldn't it no do these silly things in the first place? and if it does shouldn't there be a simple ability in iTunes to switch between clean/explicit copies in the cloud?

If I saw changes being made to the service I would not be so suspicious of it's future, but for me and judging by the forum posts it defiantly should not be stagnanting on some of the evident problems it has had.
 
JoEw said:
I like it "in theory"
Click to expand...

I feel the same way. My issue with iTunes match is that, on some albums, it only matches maybe half of the album and then uploads the rest. My other issue is when it matches a greatest hits albums, it tends to match you with the song that is on a individual albums instead of the same greatest hits album, causing the sound levels to be all over the place.
 
I don't think it is perfect, but I love it. I can be driving (or doing anything for that matter), hit the Siri button, say play an artist and it will play their music shuffled with the option to open it in the music app. It is also built into the AppleTV interface, so it is available when I take it on trips or when my computer is off.

I haven't had time to go through all 23,000+ songs I loaded up, so it probably does have some stuff missing, but there is more than enough to make the $25 a year worthwhile. I also like iTunes Radio.
 
Funny you should ask. I bought iTunes Match on the day it launched. I felt the service was only okay. I was more happy that my 128kbps or less files where now iTunes Plus files direct from Apple. What I didn't like was the syncing. I felt it really could have used a "Sync to Phone" or "Stream" to phone option, so I can decided depending where I was. Instead, it downloaded everything to my device.

I didn't go past the first year, but I opted into it again in January of this year and nothing as changed. In fact, last night, I deleted everything in my iTunes Match (now shows 0 songs in the cloud) and I am simply using plain old iTunes now. The reason is because:

1) Apple hasn't bothered to improve the service since launch day.
2) Like all other Apple software, it barely works or won't see an update in years.
3) The Match algorithm is flaky. I'll have a complete album that will Match all songs but one that gets uploaded, even though the song is clearly in the iTunes Store. Messes with my OCD and I got tired of jumping through hoops trying to get it to Match.
4) The service takes FOREVER. Out of the 24k songs I have in iTunes, every time I had a new album, the Match takes over an hour to match just that one. I guess Apple is not looking at the delta changes, but this is absurd. Sometimes the service won't even pick up the new album and will say "waiting", so I can to run the service again, causing more time delay.
5) The never solved the issue with Explicit lyrics. I want my cuss words the way the artist intended.

I'm sending my complaints to Apple and hope they give me a pro-rated refund. iTunes Match is completely turned off on my system due to lack of support and usefulness. I'm looking into Amazon Music for my cloud music needs.
 
Jessica Lares said:
They're probably still having issues getting labels onboard.

I don't think it's dead, I just think they're waiting until the iPhone/iPad announcements to showcase changes.
Click to expand...

I guess you misunderstood, we are talking about iTunes Match and not iTunes Radio.

I surely hope they don't discontinue the service, as I love it, though I too have started having doubts about it's future given apple's track record of abandoning some of it's services or apps.
 
AnorexicPig said:
I guess you misunderstood, we are talking about iTunes Match and not iTunes Radio.

I surely hope they don't discontinue the service, as I love it, though I too have started having doubts about it's future given apple's track record of abandoning some of it's services or apps.
Click to expand...

No, no, I very well understood that it was iTunes Match.

I hope they don't either. I think it will most likely end up being a feature of iCloud Drive though.
 
JoEw said:
It seems like ages since I have seen any changes in iTunes match, there seems to be very little bug fixes nowadays. There also has not been any new features other than you get iTunes Radio ad-free woo?

There is not much change occurring and iTunes match and it could use better functionality especially better stability and syncing, and where are the international roll outs? Does this indicate Apple may have its future in limbo?

Anyone agree?

Do you think the future of Match is in limbo?
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any evidence that Match is in limbo.
 
impaler said:
I haven't seen any evidence that Match is in limbo.
Click to expand...

Then why hasn't anything about it changed in almost 3 years?

To clarify I never claimed evidence, like this site it is just speculation.
 
JoEw said:
Then why hasn't anything about it changed in almost 3 years?

To clarify I never claimed evidence, like this site it is just speculation.
Click to expand...

Just because they haven't revamped it or drastically changed it doesn't mean it's going away. Look at iWork...four years before a significant update, but then totally redone.
 
Jessica Lares said:
No, no, I very well understood that it was iTunes Match.

I hope they don't either. I think it will most likely end up being a feature of iCloud Drive though.
Click to expand...

My only hope is that apple has been working on a version 2.0 of the service and will rebrand it with drive..

4 things I want to see..
1. more controls over syncing/matching (choose versions of song to match, multiple versions of song tend to get match confused, choose explicit or clean via toggle on my devices much like iTunes Radio, a 320 higher res option)
2.more reliable syncing/metadata editing - I should be able to have more than 1 computer reliably uploading and syncing with match, right now my laptop doesn't upload music from cd's only my iMac does, a lot of times I get failure to connect and album artwork doesn't sync up sometimes)
3. a web based streaming option an "iTunes in the Cloud" a nice feature i would continue to pay 35 dollars a year for.
4. More stable downloading to IOS devices, if I cue up hundreds of songs the music app tends to crash, perhaps an option to load up songs through iTunes but still be able to have iTunes match on.
 
impaler said:
Just because they haven't revamped it or drastically changed it doesn't mean it's going away. Look at iWork...four years before a significant update, but then totally redone.
Click to expand...

But iWork was somewhat decent and not many new features were added infact it lost quite a few features.

iTunes match needs fixes and I don't think it is as popular as iWork in Apples eyes.

But yes you could be right.
 
25,000 Limit is a problem.

I tired juggling different iTunes folders and converting songs I didn't want in iTunes match to "Voice Memos" but I finally gave up and now I can't use iTunes Match at all given my large library. I wish they would increase the song limit so I can use it.
 
I wish it had some sort of re-match functionality to replace the files previously "uploaded" with "matched" versions.
 
I have been on the fence about trying iTunes Match. For one thing, it would be handy, because I would not need to hook up to my computer after every restore or new device. However, I don't have much of a song collection, and due to our limited data plan, I don't stream iTunes Radio much except on my computer. I will keep looking at this and how this will develop, if any updates come to the service.
 
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