Apple Music Lossless - iTunes match now a problem?

[neil74]

As I understand it, Apple music will be lossless but any items uploaded via iTunes Match will not be?

If I am correct here then it looks to be a pain for anybody with iTunes match. iTunes match items are merged into your iCloud music library and are not easy to separate so it will then become a lottery of losssless vs. lossy

Is this how it will work?

 

[DeanL]

iTunes Match gives you a lossless and/or Dolby Atmos version of the song if it’s matched.
That’s the behaviour on macOS 12 Beta. However the file given is a proprietary one…

 

[neil74]

iTunes Match gives you a lossless and/or Dolby Atmos version of the song if it’s matched.
That’s the behaviour on macOS 12 Beta. However the file given is a proprietary one…

Thanks that is god news then. It must be just purchases that are excluded

 

[DeanL]

Thanks that is god news then. It must be just purchases that are excluded

Nope, my purchases too are working.

 

[DeanL]

Here's proof

 

[macagain]

Unfortunately, not for me... here's an e.g. This was a CD i ripped and uploaded and was matched. Album shows Lossless, but each file still shows old AAC format. I used to sub to iTunes match, then switched to AM and killed the iTM sub.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I'm impressed that people feel comfortable using iTunes Match

I've got decades of very curated music that I'd be so paranoid about Apple nuking the metadata on.

It honestly feels like a service they won't keep much longer as the streaming push really feels like it's ramping up and now breaking away with things like Spatial Audio.

 

[riggles]

This is a very good question. I've got 9,000+ matched songs and 2,000+ purchased songs. And they are still in 256kbps AAC format as of now.

Wish there was an easy way to switch them all over to Apple Music, or at least the ones that are now available in lossless.

 

[Luba]

Here's proof

I my ripped CDs and have Apple Music which includes iTunes Match, and I have the same info as your screenshot. I read the screenshot as the song is available as lossless or AAC. It shouldn't be available as AAC as iTunes Match is supposed to keep my original format of lossless from my CD rip.

 

[neil74]

You do not have to let then nuke anything, I always upload a copy when I use it, not actually uploaded anything for a while though. The ability to upgrade my matched content to lossless and be able to download them is interesting, most of my CDs are long gone now.

What I have discovered so far is that the labels in Apple Music are a little buggy e.g. lossless does always seem to = lossless but I have also seen a lot of files that do not display any label or only have the apple master one that are actually lossless (at least the file size a would indicate so). Lastly every one I have tried so far with the hi-res label seems to just be a standard AAC file.

 

[Apleeseed84]

One thing I noticed is that some of my personal lossless songs I’ve uploaded to my iphone that are cd backups show their respective lossless/hi res logo! Neat feature though. I’m a bit irate at how they are handling things at the moment. I can’t play purchased content on other hi res music players that used to let me before now.

 

[Lvivske]

If you select AAC in settings, thats the format you get when downloading. Pick lossless for downloads and not just streaming.

 

[verdi1987]

I'm impressed that people feel comfortable using iTunes Match

I've got decades of very curated music that I'd be so paranoid about Apple nuking the metadata on.

It honestly feels like a service they won't keep much longer as the streaming push really feels like it's ramping up and now breaking away with things like Spatial Audio.

I tried it (with Apple Music) shortly after Apple Music launched, and it screwed with my library. I reverted and never attempted it again.

It’s kind of ludicrous that one cannot enable Sync Library (what used to be called iCloud Music Library) without also triggering iTunes Match. My solution is to maintain separate library files for Apple Music and my own library.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I tried it (with Apple Music) shortly after Apple Music launched, and it screwed with my library. I reverted and never attempted it again.

Exactly the horror I never want to go near..

 

[Apleeseed84]

Exactly the horror I never want to go near..

I once deleted all my songs to start over and choose and select what I really wanted. Come to find out that it deleted my alternate location of the actual songs and not from icloud.

I lost so much music from bands that are not together anymore and can’t download them anywhere.

The messed up part Is that itunes completely destroys the file from your hard drive, they never give you a chance to restore it from the recycle bin…

 

[verdi1987]

Lastly every one I have tried so far with the hi-res label seems to just be a standard AAC file.

I just tested this. I downloaded a-ha’s “Take on Me,” which is 24-bit/192 kHz. The downloaded file is 168 MB of type “HLS Media,” with an extension of .movpkg.

 

[neil74]

I just tested this. I downloaded a-ha’s “Take on Me,” which is 24-bit/192 kHz. The downloaded file is 168 MB of type “HLS Media,” with an extension of .movpkg.

I was talking about on the iPhone, not tried mac yet other than in iTunes the formats are all showing as AAC.

I just quickly downloaded an album in iTunes and it downloaded as a matched AAC file.

 

[verdi1987]

I was talking about on the iPhone, not tried mac yet other than in iTunes the formats are all showing as AAC.

I just quickly downloaded an album in iTunes and it downloaded as a matched AAC file.

Are you using iTunes Match? Maybe that is causing an issue.

The tracks I have downloaded on iPhone have indeed been hi-res or Atmos when labeled as such. As an example, a 16-track album is 1.5 GB at 24-bit/96 kHz. I own this same album on CD, which I ripped to ALAC, and it is 398 MB.

 

[neil74]

I am yes, it is really annoying that you cannot easily separate the 2.

As I said on the iPhone app I found a lot of albums labelled as hi-res that were not when I downloaded and played them and a lot with no label at all that turned out to be lossless. I have just put this down to some initial rollout glitches.

 

[DeanL]

Unfortunately, not for me... here's an e.g. This was a CD i ripped and uploaded and was matched. Album shows Lossless, but each file still shows old AAC format. I used to sub to iTunes match, then switched to AM and killed the iTM sub.

Are you on the macOS 12 beta? I specified I am on the beta. They also won't redownload automatically in lossless. You need to remove the download and download it again.

 

[Luba]

I tried it (with Apple Music) shortly after Apple Music launched, and it screwed with my library. I reverted and never attempted it again.

It’s kind of ludicrous that one cannot enable Sync Library (what used to be called iCloud Music Library) without also triggering iTunes Match. My solution is to maintain separate library files for Apple Music and my own library.

I didn't think of creating a copy of my library and moving to another folder for safe storage. Oh well, at least I still have most of the CDs.

 

[Apleeseed84]

I didn't think of creating a copy of my library and moving to another folder for safe storage. Oh well, at least I still have most of the CDs.

It was a lesson learned for me because iTunes will complete take over and override EVERYTHING, I had songs I uploaded there, only for it to change my
Album covers, metadata and info.

it’s a blessing sometimes though because I had cds I ripped with songs out of order and it legit helped me find songs I completely forgot about it, but yes it is wise to keep separate libraries because of it.

 

[Lvivske]

the whole system is broken, i was writing about it in another thread, and on reddit, and long story short i've been deleting and rematching albums

sometimes they match the old way

sometimes they match and show "uploaded," (usually means non-aac, like mp3) but allow AAC

sometimes they match but a couple tracks are lossless but the other 10 aren't

sometimes the entire album matches and is lossless

there is zero consistency to it, i'm just rolling the dice and getting different results with every re-add to my library. some times they just flip and go from AAC to Lossless just from removing and re-downloading. Borktown software.

 

[Apleeseed84]

the whole system is broken, i was writing about it in another thread, and on reddit, and long story short i've been deleting and rematching albums

sometimes they match the old way

sometimes they match and show "uploaded," (usually means non-aac, like mp3) but allow AAC

sometimes they match but a couple tracks are lossless but the other 10 aren't

sometimes the entire album matches and is lossless

there is zero consistency to it, i'm just rolling the dice and getting different results with every re-add to my library. some times they just flip and go from AAC to Lossless just from removing and re-downloading. Borktown software.

I totally agree, I’m dealing with this, this is the third time i deleted my library and currently back to square 1 where the songs stop playing after 15 seconds despite the fact that I wanted lossless but it‘s been downloading the high res, it’s eating my celular data and I had to factory reset it because the ”other” memory was taking up the entire delete library’s space… i gave up and just switched everything back to high quality


let’s not forget the monumental error that will single handedly stop all your downloads in the queue such as “item not available because it’s being modified”.

I would have 2000 songs in queue and if a song had that error the 1999 songs would stop downloading.

 

[neil74]

It is a mess on my 2 macs, I am yet to see either lossless or artmos show up on either of them.