iTunes Match Songs, Local Storage Devices

[thatoneguy82]

Hi, I know there's a bunch of threads about these but I couldn't make sense out of them for my situation. I pretty much understand everything about the entire iTunes/iCloud situation, but one thing I'm still on shaky ground on is the local storage of songs that are in the cloud and also stored locally in my MBP or iP4S. Synching of music from computer to iPhone was simple before and straight forward, this time it's a bit different. I did my "last" sync prior to match (of course) and so I have a considerable amount of locally stored songs on my iPhone.

Now, here's the part where I get confused. It seems like there is no more synching when it comes to music because that's all done wirelessly. Some of the songs I have in my iTunes, I have deleted and downloaded the higher quality version to be stored locally. I'm pretty sure there's no way to get that on my phone. And I'm also pretty sure that my phone still has the lower quality version since they are two different local devices. I might be wrong. I know the process of deleting songs and downloading the higher quality for my phone as well, but this is tedious. I don't plan on doing that for everything. For instance, I have a playlist that I want to make sure is all high quality. I would think that I could delete/download from there, but I can't. The app makes go the song category and look exactly where the song before I can delete it. The search function doesn't help. I really don't want to go from screen to screen, swiping across the screens. It's tedious. Plus, I have ~13K songs so it's not going to be easy to wade through the songs. Is there a faster way? Is there a select all function? or select several at a time for a mass deletion? I really want a select few of my music to stay stored in my iPhone for various reasons, I'm adamant about that. That's partly the reason I got the 64GB, which is now full again. The rest can stay in the cloud.

Anyway, any guidance or help that you can offer would be great and appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Papajuice]

A bit confused on the question but here goes...

You can either have the songs tx using itunes andthe song stored in ip4 or when you activate itm on ip4 it "removes" the stored songs and adds a list of songs in your database. So with itm activated you are dl the song from itunes heaven and cannot have the lower quality version. You may still have it on your itunes computer but not the iphone because the source is from itunes heaven, not your puter. Now that you are way confused....

I would download the songs into your ip4 cache using itm, then DE-select "show all songs" option listed in music of the settings area. That way your songs will be ready and always avail.

I am not sure how the itm cache works or how big it is so you may have a limit on how many songs you can have on your ip4 at one time.

Not sure if i helped

 

[PNutts]

The only "nuke 'em from orbit" I'm aware of is to in iTunes (before enabling iTunes Match on the phone) disable sync'ing music. At the next iTunes sync it will remove all music and playlists from your phone. At that point you can turn on iTunes Match and download everything you want on the phone. The only saving grace in this is that you don't have to download every song individually, you can download an entire playlist at once.

I am a little confused on some of your earlier points, but it sounds like you know that deleting all music from your phone will replace it with the cloud versions, and that any matched songs will be the 265 kbp/s.

And unrelated, if you decide to download 60+GB of songs at once, you may want to turn off the ability to download over 3G if you leave your wifi. Someone already posted that they went over their 4GB 3G data cap. Yikes!

 

[thatoneguy82]

Okay, I think I understand both posts, but let me rephrase my earlier questions.

1. How do I know the locally stored songs on my phone are the 256kbps songs? The songs were transferred from my laptop prior to iTunes Match. Toggling "Show All Music" removes the cloud music and leaves the locally stored songs, which is about 4500, the same amount that was synched before I turned on iTunes match. I'm pretty sure turning on iTunes Match just added the ability to select the cloud music, or did it completely wipe all music and re-download all of the stored music I had so that it is now 256KBps? Anyway to confirm?

2. In iTunes, I can select multiple songs to delete and download to ensure they are the one from the cloud, how do I a multiple select and download on the phone (if possible)?

3. Is there any other way to delete songs on the phone to initiate a download? Selecting it from the playlist doesn't allow it. Searching for it doesn't either. The only method that I found to be successful is actually manually finding it in the Songs section and deleting.

Hopefully I've been a lot more clear this time.

Thanks.

 

[masemase]

I've been wondering the same exact thing, so any help here would be much appreciated; thanks for getting this confusion/problem out there so that I didn't have to write it!



Thanks in advance,
Brandon

 

[zhenya]

Okay, I think I understand both posts, but let me rephrase my earlier questions.

1. How do I know the locally stored songs on my phone are the 256kbps songs? The songs were transferred from my laptop prior to iTunes Match. Toggling "Show All Music" removes the cloud music and leaves the locally stored songs, which is about 4500, the same amount that was synched before I turned on iTunes match. I'm pretty sure turning on iTunes Match just added the ability to select the cloud music, or did it completely wipe all music and re-download all of the stored music I had so that it is now 256KBps? Anyway to confirm?

2. In iTunes, I can select multiple songs to delete and download to ensure they are the one from the cloud, how do I a multiple select and download on the phone (if possible)?

3. Is there any other way to delete songs on the phone to initiate a download? Selecting it from the playlist doesn't allow it. Searching for it doesn't either. The only method that I found to be successful is actually manually finding it in the Songs section and deleting.

Hopefully I've been a lot more clear this time.

Thanks.

1) Music that was already on the phone before iTunes Match is turned on remains at the bitrate it was at when you originally loaded it. You can confirm this by loading your music, checking the amount of space it uses, enabling Match, then turning it back off. It uses the same amount of space. Your songs are not automatically replaced with the 256k versions.

2) Make a playlist of the songs you want to download. Go to the bottom of the playlist and 'download all.'

3)No way that I'm aware of other than deleting them individually and re-downloading.

 

[PNutts]

1. How do I know the locally stored songs on my phone are the 256kbps songs? The songs were transferred from my laptop prior to iTunes Match. Toggling "Show All Music" removes the cloud music and leaves the locally stored songs, which is about 4500, the same amount that was synched before I turned on iTunes match. I'm pretty sure turning on iTunes Match just added the ability to select the cloud music, or did it completely wipe all music and re-download all of the stored music I had so that it is now 256KBps? Anyway to confirm?

Turning on iTunes Match does not delete the songs already on your phone, so if they were ripped at less than 256 Kbps they still are. I looked around and did not see any solutions on how to confirm the bitrate on the phone. The only way I know of to be sure is to verify the bitrate in iTunes and then re-download those songs to the phone.

2. In iTunes, I can select multiple songs to delete and download to ensure they are the one from the cloud, how do I a multiple select and download on the phone (if possible)?

Put the songs in a playlist. Entire playlists can be downloaded at once.

3. Is there any other way to delete songs on the phone to initiate a download? Selecting it from the playlist doesn't allow it. Searching for it doesn't either. The only method that I found to be successful is actually manually finding it in the Songs section and deleting.

I haven't found a way to delete songs from playlists on the iPhone.