[Macworld]

Post your comments for Toggle between iTunes Match and local syncing here

[mindflayer30yb]

Excellent tip - some of my playlists are very long, and it's a PITA over iCloud.

[macreader]

It seems needlessly limited to make me choose. Why can't I have it both ways: songs I always want on my device, period, and everything else available via iCloud? I'm going to pay to be limited? I travel a lot and there is never a guarantee of bandwidth. No iCloud for me.

[pablorkcz]

Ugh. iTunes Match is starting to sound more limiting and complicated than I expected.

[appledogx]

What Apple seemed to leave out was to me the most logical; neither cloud nor USB, but a simple local wifi sync. I don't need my music on somebody else's cloud, traveling across the world when I want to sync what is a few centimeters away. Until the speed of my ADSL internet connection gets seriously better and I want to spend more to let Apple control my music, I guess I'm still stuck with the stupid USB cable.

[whitedog]

macreader, on 14 November 2011 - 08:32 PM, said:

It seems needlessly limited to make me choose. Why can't I have it both ways: songs I always want on my device, period, and everything else available via iCloud? I'm going to pay to be limited? I travel a lot and there is never a guarantee of bandwidth. No iCloud for me.

I don't see the point of your complaint. As it stands now, when you travel you only have access to the music you've already synced to whatever iDevice(s) you are using. That won't change with iCloud. It won't remove any of that music. On the other hand, you will have access to iTunes Match almost anywhere you go (inside the US). Which means you can listen to any music in your iTunes library at home that you haven't already added to the iDevice. As well, you can buy new music and it will automatically be available for download to your computer when you get home. This article gave instructions for the occasional issue where you need to sync again manually. But you don't have to use that method if you don't want or need to. And, for the most part, you won't need to.

[jslove]

This article appears to contradict itself.

In the first paragraph, it says that iTunes Match no longer deletes the files that are already on the device, though it did while iTunes Match was in beta. You say that, "any music that was already on the device will still be there".

In the last paragraph, it says that files added to the device which are not in the iTunes Match library will be deleted if they are not in the iTunes Match library. Granted, you say this in the context of having temporarily disabled iTunes Match on the iDevice and then reenabling it after manually adding the files via iTunes.

Does this mean that when you first enable iTunes Match for an iDevice that it will in fact delete any files that are not in the iTunes Match library, and that therefore you can never have music files on your iDevice that iTunes Match is not matching? If so, the first paragraph would need revision. In this case, it would just allow optimizing the file transfer of matched files. So if I used iTunes Match, my iDevice could never contain music that iTunes Match refused to match, for whatever reason.

Or does this mean that once you start iTunes Match on the iDevice, you can never add a track to the iDevice that isn't iTunes Matched? If so, this is a very strange restriction, if it grandfathered non-matched files when first enabled. Could this paragraph be left over from the behavior of the beta?

[CptPatriot]

Just what is "iTunes music"? is it music, or anything iTune has. I have audio interviews etc, that I don't want in any cloud that might be hacked in some cloud some day, or the government gives Apple a blanket warrant to access my account because some time in the future I might become politically uncorrect. How does one keep his personal stuff private, and in his posession only. We are losing conctrol of what belongs to us and how we can use it. Now that all down loads to your computer, you can stay off the web, even to update the operating system. Big brother is quietly getting bigger every day.

[ibelyias]

CptPatriot, on 15 November 2011 - 11:58 AM, said:

Just what is "iTunes music"? is it music, or anything iTune has. I have audio interviews etc, that I don't want in any cloud that might be hacked in some cloud some day, or the government gives Apple a blanket warrant to access my account because some time in the future I might become politically uncorrect. How does one keep his personal stuff private, and in his posession only. We are losing conctrol of what belongs to us and how we can use it. Now that all down loads to your computer, you can stay off the web, even to update the operating system. Big brother is quietly getting bigger every day.

How many of these comments do I have to read before I just give up completely on humanity? This one made me so ill I actually created an account just to respond.

Anyone who claims that Big Brother is invading every last byte of data, please heed: No one, at any point, is ever forcing anyone to compromise your privacy. The Internet is optional. Cloud computing is optional. Credit cards are optional. Phones are optional. About the only thing you can't get away from is having a mailbox, and even then you can have a PO Box. Point is, if you are so concerned about keeping whatever information that's so direly critical out of the hands of certain people who, in all likelihood, do not give a crap about you, then please exercise your right to do that. I realize that data mining is a real concern for some people. There's a simple solution: If you are paranoid, then simply do not opt in. If the sacrifice of not being 100% confident that your information is not being comprised is too great, then please continue leading your life in a way to where this won't happen. The rest of us will continue to embrace progressive technology that is, at its core, to unify all of us. I applaud Apple, Google, and even Amazon for all making great efforts to continue pushing the envelope.

Thanks for reading. Apologies for the rant. Don't feed the troll.

This post has been edited by ibelyias: 15 November 2011 - 03:12 PM

[kmon3y]

I have a particular issue hopefully someone can help me out. There is an album that I really like that is not available for purchase through iTunes, this album and one other will not upload to iCloud and therefore I can only listen to it on my computer. How can I get this album onto my iPhone so I can listen even though iTunes won't accept it? I've tried deleting the album out of iTunes and adding it again to no avail. Please help!

[ScottStruber]

appledogx, on 15 November 2011 - 05:48 AM, said:

What Apple seemed to leave out was to me the most logical; neither cloud nor USB, but a simple local wifi sync. I don't need my music on somebody else's cloud, traveling across the world when I want to sync what is a few centimeters away. Until the speed of my ADSL internet connection gets seriously better and I want to spend more to let Apple control my music, I guess I'm still stuck with the stupid USB cable.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but WiFi sync is a feature of iOS5.

[BigDaddyQB]

One qualification to this article. When I tap on a matched song on my iOS device to play it, and it has not yet been downloaded, I get a message saying "This Item Cannot Be Downloaded on This Network You must connect to a Wi-Fi network or download it on your computer." So it does not appear iTunes Match works as advertised over a 3G network. (Yes I have Cellular Data enabled). So this tells me I have to download all my songs from iTunes Match to my computer (which I have to get the 256 versions) and then do a local sync before I can listen to them on my iOS device, since most of the time I am listening on my iOS device I am not on Wi-Fi.

[elroth]

kmon3y, on 16 November 2011 - 09:39 AM, said:

I have a particular issue hopefully someone can help me out. There is an album that I really like that is not available for purchase through iTunes, this album and one other will not upload to iCloud and therefore I can only listen to it on my computer. How can I get this album onto my iPhone so I can listen even though iTunes won't accept it? I've tried deleting the album out of iTunes and adding it again to no avail. Please help!

Interesting question. I thought iTunes Match (for $25 a year) was supposed to take music in your iTunes Library that is not available in the iTunes Store, and copy it into the cloud so it can be synced to your iDevices. I haven't seen anyone talk about this, and I wonder whether it works or not.

Any iTunes Match users out there who have tried this out? Does iTunes Match keep the files at the original quality (Lossless), or compress them?

[JennieVijeh]

Since turning on iTunes Match did not replace the previously synced music on my OS devices, how should I go about replacing my music on these devices with the iTunes Match songs?
Here are the steps I was planning on doing:
1) Replacing the lower quality music in my iTunes library with the matched songs
2) Turning off iTunes Match on both my computer and OS devices
3) Syncing my devices through iTunes
4) Turning iTunes Match back on
Please tell me if my plan sounds good, or if I'm missing some steps?

Maybe I should wipe my OS devices of any music all together before re-syncing them (step two then sync with nothing checked for music)?