iTunes match and multiple accounts

MacUserAE --- based on my experience over the last few days, I would urge you to STAY AWAY from iTunes Match until Apple can better support the concept of multiple Apple ID's sharing content. After purchasing the Match upgrade about a week ago, I've spent perhaps 20 hours of my home life dealing with Match-related issues. What you are fearful of - that you will somehow be locked out of your ID and your purchased content - is exactly what happened to me.

I also thought that iTunes Match would be a good way to consolidate and then share music/video/apps between family members. I purchased the service with 2 goals in mind: share content in my house via a Mac Mini server, and also "consolidate" the content my wife and I had purchased across three separate Apple IDs. I am not a technology novice. I read the various online boards, read the Apple support pages, and based on what I read was convinced that Apple's product would deliver exactly the benefits I was looking for.

I was wrong.

Apparently I did not migrate or associate my hardware (2 notebooks & a mini home server) in an Apple-approved sequence. After putting about 10 hours into the project, I discovered that I had "used up" my computer's associations and could no longer download previously purchased items. I am now missing 1000's of purchased iTunes songs and videos. I am not permitted to download or recover them until the 90-day "timer" runs out on each of my computers. (Currently 84 days & counting). Ironically, I have an exceptionally "clean" and easy music collection: I have literally no shared/ripped/illegal content, as all of my media files were either uploaded from a purchased CD or purchased through iTunes.

When I contacted Apple for support, I encountered a steady stream of suspicion and poor/misleading information from the different support reps I spoke to, each of whom seem to working independently. Support is apparently by Chat only, and much of the dialog seems canned, or pre-written. For eample, the last support rep I dealt with first described his own experience setting up match using these pre-written cut & paste "snippets" that had obviously been prepared earlier, as they did not actually address the questions I was asking. Later in our encounter, he seemed to forget what he had already "pasted" and he wrote (in real-time) that he had actually not had any first-hand experience with the product.

Discouraging all around.

In order for match to work on both of your iphones, both will have to be signed into the same itunes store account.

It will not mess with any apps. You can still sync apps from your other account through itunes, but your other iphone will need to start using the same id in order for match to be available on it.

currently there is not a way to use different id's and have the same itunes match.

Match can only be synced with one id and all devices have to be signed into this same id to use the match.

When you sign out of the id that match is associated with then all match content that has not been downloaded will be taken off of the device.

Match was not created to consolidate libraries or for you to be able to merge id's.

Match has nothing to do with anything other than your music.

I thought about itunes match as the concept sounds like a good idea but issues needed to be sorted with the apple IDs before i spend any money on itunes match. First apple needs to come up with a way to merge itunes accounts. This was not really an issue till icloud was introduced and then itunes Match. I have two apple IDs well three if you count my wifes old account - My orginal account i created back when itunes first came out under my then yahoo account which i do not use anymore other than for itunes and paypal. About 5 years ago i got a .Mac account and that became my new apple id since my emails were attached to it. No big deal at the time since then since itunes is attached to my yahoo account i bought some music (music i could loose as i did not spend to much on it) but it is the ipod touch and ipad apps that are not cheap to replace. I want to merge my yahoo account to my .mac now icloud account since that is what i use for emails and the app store on the macs so that i can use icloud fully for ipod backups ect. Since I am recently married we want to merge my wifes old itunes with her yahoo under the master apple id of the icloud .mac account. Apple please fix this and allow use to merge muliple accounts (even if you do it so that i can only be done once a year or so) into one so that we can fully take advantage to your services in icloud and itunesmatch.

anyone hear any word on merging accounts i heard rumors that they were working on it. I want to close my yahoo account but itunes will not alow me to change it to an existing account. Please fix

I have this same problem. Multiple accounts that I was hoping iTunes Match would unify. Ive been thinking of a workaround.

Since the account info in the audio files can only be stored in the AAC files (.m4a extention i think), could you not just convert all songs on the old accounts to mp3, then delete the AAC versions. Then get itunes match and have it upscale those mp3's back to the AAC quality, but on your desired account?

Or does mp3 files also store account information (I do not think this is the case, but I am no music file expert).

It is fairly straightfoward. iTunes Match is a service for Music so your Apps will not be changed.

With multiple Apple ids the neat route is to ensure that the Computer library you use to upload from is authorised for each Apple Id - once the Song files have been uploaded / matched you will then be able to retrieve Song files that are not protected for 'Matched' Songs.

It is worth looking carefully at the potential for Apple Id lock out both in this thread and on the wider area discussions. The issue is that iTunes Match can not be used with a different Apple Id on the same computer without a period of 90 days passing - so once your happy with your Computer being authorised for the correct Apple Ids its a great idea not to have to change this association - if it is essential ensure you make a secure backup of all your Song files - whilst the Computer in question would be locked out of iTunes Match all of your other Computers and Devices will be able to continue without issue.