[Macworld]

Post your comments for iTunes Match shouldn't shun those with big libraries here

[brobdingnagian]

I agree.

[smundich]

Personally I always supposed that that limit was imposed by the recording industry rather than Apple. The fact that it states songs not purchased on iTunes reinforces that theory for me. Because if it was a question of space, then it would probably say 25,000 songs not in the iTunes Store Database. I think it's rather logical to think that the recording industry demanded that limit in negociations. They probably believe that most people who have more than 25,000 songs must have gotten them illegally and I'd actually agree with them for once (though those people might have also bought more songs than the average user, thus actually helping the music industry. There has actually been in interesting study showing that people who pirate a lot of films and music actually also buy more of it then people who don't "steal" it). Anyway, would be curious to know if the author actually has a reason to believe this limit is imposed by apple and not the music industry who was, it seems, very hesitant to accept this deal at all.

[UNHsmitty]

In my mind, the solution is rather simple. Apple should allow users to match more than 25,000 songs but just charge an extra $5 for each additional 5,000 songs. More revenue for the company, more happy users.

[Tutankhamun]

I'm fairly confident this is a restriction set by the record labels not Apple and that it will be reworked in due time.

[ctwise]

If you're already willing to separate out the tracks, then just create a second iTunes library, move the 25,000 tracks you want to keep in the cloud into it, and then turn on Match for that library.

[BriannaWu]

How much free stuff do you want for $25? I thought I'd go over, but once I started importing, I could I didn't even use 1/3 of my space. I have probably 400 CDs - I think 1000 CDs is quite reasonable.

Something that frustrates me about the Apple community is everyone always thinks their edge case should be a priority for Apple. I do 3D work, and I'd love a MacPro update - but I realize and accept their priorities are elsewhere.

[contempt]

I agree. I'm in the same boat as you with about 65,000 tracks. I would easily pay extra for access to iTunes Match. Not so much the upsampling of some older songs, but just so my libraries sync (I hate that my computer at work is out of sync with my home computer and I have no idea which tracks I'm missing until I yearn to listen to something specific).

[buzglyd]

Maybe they just need to roll it out slowly and keep the "power users" at bay for now.

Once all the bugs are worked out, perhaps you'll get your match.

[PJL500]

At least half the music I own is not available at the iTunes Store. So better quality downloads are probably not available to me?

[keithedwards]

Regardless of who the keeper of these rights may be, I was waiting for this article to be written and am hopeful that this sort of dialogue helps keep the Classic alive for us, the large library owners. Also, if everything goes solid state it seems way more efficient anyway to keep large arrays of files local, instead of consuming bandwidth globally. But alas, Apple wants the INFORMATION in their databases I'd assume...

[alexdedalus]

I call BS on this because people with those kind of huge libraries aren't even listening to a fraction of it ; they're just hoarders and should consult instead of complain IMO.

It's simple math people, so here's a little demonstration just for the sake of the argument :

25 000 tracks by let's say 3min30s in average (very low av.) that's 87 500 min or about 60,7 days.

Let's say you have time to listen 2 full hours of music each day in average ; 60,7 days in hours is 1456,8.

1456,8 hours divide by 2 hours/day is equal to 728 days...that's nearly 2 years.

So if you have a 25 000 tracks library, in order for you to listen to it entirely....it would take 2 years ; and that's if you listen every track only once...and of course no one listen to music like that.

So the bottom line is pretty simple, no one have the time to listen to that much music....and if your collection is this huge I can bet pretty safely that you don't know even a quarter of the titles of your library and that probably half of the tracks haven't been listened even once.

So know you're not a "music lover" you're a "collecting music" lover...that's a pretty big difference.

This post has been edited by alexdedalus: 18 November 2011 - 07:52 AM

[lymond]

alexdedalus, on 18 November 2011 - 07:22 AM, said:

So the bottom line is pretty simple, no one have the time to listen to that much music....and if your collection is this huge I can bet pretty safely that you don't know even a quarter of the titles of your library and that probably half of the tracks haven't been listened even once.

Actually, I know Kirk, and, believe me, he does know all the titles in his library, and has listened to all of them. His breadth of musical knowledge and interests astonishes me.

[AndreaSciamanna]

Hey, stop complaining. At least you can use it if you have up to 25K songs, but outside US nobody can use iTunes Match at all: they've been put aside, because US is more important than the rest of the world.

Ok, there's always something to complain about, but really, in this case, think about all these people that waited for something they can't use.