Not talked about much with iTunes Match...

[philbyers]

iTunes Match so far = so good. Some weirdness with albums being "partially" matched, but otherwise, I'm happy that about 85% of my library (of 13K songs) was matched. Everything else is still uploading.

I'm excited for everything to be done. But the reason I'm MOST excited? I CAN CLEAN THESE FILES OFF MY DRIVE! Why don't I hear more people talking about this? I have an iMac (w/640GB) and I'm thrilled to be removing about 80GB off my drive (and putting it in the Cloud).

Am I missing something? This is my favorite part of IM...

----------

Oh yeah - one more thing. I keep all my iTunes Match music on my home computer. On my Macbook Air (where I don't keep anything), how do I access all my music that is in the Cloud?

 

[Guiyon]

I'm excited for everything to be done. But the reason I'm MOST excited? I CAN CLEAN THESE FILES OFF MY DRIVE! Why don't I hear more people talking about this? I have an iMac (w/640GB) and I'm thrilled to be removing about 80GB off my drive (and putting it in the Cloud).

I can't stress this enough: Do not do this!. Services such as this are not infallible and there have been incidences of data being lost/corrupted/mixed up/etc. from various providers. If you do not have a local backup of some sort I can almost guarantee that, at some point, you will lose at least some data.


As for your Air questions, just download iTunes 10.5.1 onto the Air, go to the 'Store' menu and select 'Turn On iTunes Match'. iTunes will grab a list of everything in the cloud and allow you to stream and/or download songs on-demand.

 

[satchow]

iTunes Match is still in beta. At the end of the beta they will delete your library so if you don't have a copy of everything on your HDD already, you've just lost a ton of music!

 

[philbyers]

iTunes Match is still in beta. At the end of the beta they will delete your library so if you don't have a copy of everything on your HDD already, you've just lost a ton of music!

I think you might have missed the announcement that iTunes Match was LAUNCHED yesterday.

And I appreciate the concern, but why should I assume I'm going to lose data? I pay for the service (and everything seems to be fine far). You guys are freaking me out.

 

[verwon]

I think you might have missed the announcement that iTunes Match was LAUNCHED yesterday.

And I appreciate the concern, but why should I assume I'm going to lose data? I pay for the service (and everything seems to be fine far). You guys are freaking me out.

You should still be warned to be careful. I set mine up last night, but without my deleting songs and with no one else having access to my library, I've gotten the icon on several showing that they were deleted from iCloud, from a different device. I had to put them all back in my library.

Thus, the service is not yet perfected.

 

[Heebeejeebies]

While faith is something to admire, do you really want to risk that? Imagine that something catastrophic happens to your data in the cloud (which is a physical space somewhere on Earth, consisting of hard drives much like your own - except fancier and much bigger) and your data is erased. Apple will most likely refund you your money and apologize, but that's not going to bring it back.
80 Gigs of music is a LOT to have to replace yourself, and I doubt you could ever get it back to the way you have it now...

I have 33 Gigs of music, which is now on iCloud, plus backed up on an external. Better safe than sorry...

 

[tharris0101]

I still have mine backed up to an external, but I agree with you. I think I will be able to delete at least half of my library that I rarely ever listen to but like having around for those rare times.

 

[djrobsd]

DONT DELETE YOUR MUSIC! Copy it to an external drive first!

if you are going to delete it, ONLY delete the ones that iTunes matched, DONT delete the ones that you upload to their servers. I guarantee you there will probably always be a way to get your matched music back, but the stuff you upload, if Apple screws something up you'll be screwed.

 

[hokiepokie07]

DONT DELETE YOUR MUSIC! Copy it to an external drive first!

if you are going to delete it, ONLY delete the ones that iTunes matched, DONT delete the ones that you upload to their servers. I guarantee you there will probably always be a way to get your matched music back, but the stuff you upload, if Apple screws something up you'll be screwed.

Yeah, if you delete your music, I'd highly recommend to store it on an external hard drive first. You can never be 100% sure with iTunes Match since it is in its infancy.

 

[philbyers]

I should have made it clear earlier - I have Time Machine running on my iMac, so I'm backed up (plus I have the entire collection in Google Music).

Meanwhile, I *did* delete everything after it was done. The only issue I have right now is 433 of 13,495 songs have a status of "Waiting", and they are greyed out. Can't play them - can't do anything with them.

Not perfect. But also not terrible. I'm sure Apple will get these issues corrected. And I'm not worried that less than 5% of my music has "issues". Especially considering I have it all backed up anyway.

In the end, I want my music OFF my computer and in the Cloud.

 

[danny_w]

In the end, I want my music OFF my computer and in the Cloud.

Sorry, I don't think it works that way. Sure you can delete the music now, but the next time you listen to a song from "the cloud" it will automatically re-download itself to you computer (or iPhone or iPad or whatever). For example if you put iTunes on shuffle and just start listening to your music, the hdd will keep filling with music that you thought you had stored in the cloud. This is not a streaming service as Apple has stressed time and time again.

 

[milo]

...the next time you listen to a song from "the cloud" it will automatically re-download itself to you computer (or iPhone or iPad or whatever).

It downloads on iOS devices but on the computer playing it streams unless you specifically tell it to download.

 

[TheCheapGeek]

I have so much media with Movies and TV shows in iTunes 2TB that the 35 or so GB of music I have is really not that significant. I already have everything off loaded to network storage and backups and now I do have an online backup for music too but I wont be deleting them. Also a good portion of my rips are of higher quality than the 256 kbps AAC.

 

[philbyers]

Sorry, I don't think it works that way. Sure you can delete the music now, but the next time you listen to a song from "the cloud" it will automatically re-download itself to you computer (or iPhone or iPad or whatever). For example if you put iTunes on shuffle and just start listening to your music, the hdd will keep filling with music that you thought you had stored in the cloud. This is not a streaming service as Apple has stressed time and time again.

That's not right. On my COMPUTER, it *does not* download the entire track during a shuffle play or normal play after the songs have been deleted. It actually *does* stream the song.

Here it is in the middle of playing a song:

And then later when I click on another song to play:

On my iPhone (4S, iOS 5.0.1), it *does* download the song.

 

[ToddJ]

Has anyone found a way to transfer music videos that weren't downloaded from iTunes? I know I could just label them as movies, but I would like to keep them vertical music videos so they can play vertically

 

[danny_w]

That's not right. On my COMPUTER, it *does not* download the entire track during a shuffle play or normal play after the songs have been deleted. It actually *does* stream the song.

Here it is in the middle of playing a song:

Image

And then later when I click on another song to play:

Image

On my iPhone (4S, iOS 5.0.1), it *does* download the song.

Thank you for the explanation, my bad. Still I would not delete them from my computer unless I made sure that I had a good external backup (and no, TM to me is NOT a good external backup).

 

[PNutts]

That's not right.

The pics do not display.