More advanced iTunes Match questions and observations

[CavemanUK]

Ok, I've had iTunes match for a couple of days now and here are some of the things I've noted and some questions I still have.

Observations

If I want the 256 AAC version of any song that was matched I just need to delete the song from my iTunes collection making sure not to tick the box that says delete from the cloud. I can then redownload the new version.

If you access your shared library over a network it only shows local files. Not sure if there's a way to change this behaviour but personally I don't mind this.

Matching seems very inaccurate at the moment. All too often one song in an album will be uploaded while the others are matched. Not sure if iTunes will auto match in the future. Nobody seems to know for sure why this is or how iTunes determines a match.

It would be nice for this to work with podcasts and bring new podcasts to your collection automatically.


Question

a common usage scenario for iTunes Match is someone on the go with an iPhone or iPod touch who wants a music to listen to. So let's say I'm browsing through my entire collection on my iPhone and download a load of random songs. I then go on my way and want to just shuffle through all the downloaded songs on the phone. Obviously I don't want any new music downloaded. Just the ones I've already downloaded. Can I view just downloaded songs? The only solution I can come up with is to create a new playlist and drop the songs on there but that sounds like a lot of work.

Anyone found an easy way to do this?

 

[bucksaddle]

Anyone found an easy way to do this?

Settings -> Music -> Show All Music -> Off

 

[delomax]

Settings -> Music -> Show All Music -> Off

Well yes, you can do that. But it does seem like Apple haven't thought this trough.

Assuming you don't want to be constantly gong in and out of settings to change the "show all music" option, your iPhone or iPod touch will steadily fill with music until there is no remaining space. Every time you 'shuffle all' or play an album that isn't wholly on your device, you'll end up downloading more music.

Am I missing something?

I'm not sure what Apple though the use case would be! Maybe I'm suppose to fill my phone with music and go into the music app and delete an song every time I want to take a photo.

An option to turn off automatic downloading of songs would be nice. So you could leave "show all music" ON but be safe in the knowledge that new songs won't be downloaded from iCloud until you explicitly tap on them.