Is there anyone out there who has used iTunes Match for a large music collection who actually likes and recommends it?

When you purchase Match and all your tunes have been matched or uploaded, what do you do with your current iTunes library?

You need do nothing with it. You can keep it on your hard drive to access locally.

It's my understanding that you can stream tunes through your Mac computers but that you have to download them to an iPad, iPod or iPhone if you play the tunes through them, right?

Yes, that's correct.

When iTunes Match matches the tunes, does it put them where you had them prior to the match. I.e., will your library look the same as when you started?

It presents the library as it was originally on my hard drive, but then I don't have my library's organization customized.

iCloud- iTunes Match

iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match Availability

iTunes Store- Troubleshooting iTunes Match

iTunes- How to add a computer or iOS device to iTunes Match

I don't use it all that much except as a cloud storage of my iTunes collection. I do keep my disk-based library. Occasionally, I re-sync with Match.

Mostly, I use it on my iPad or Touch so that I don't use up all the storage for a >30 GB iTunes Library. I can keep a minimum set and rely on Match if I need anything.

To me it's $25 per year for a cloud backup. Best deal in town. 🙂

The issue I have with iTunes Match is that it messed up my library organization. I have 20,000+ songs and use date added to keep track of them, the metadata gets changed so my library thinks old songs are new and messes up the structure I have going.

So the only downside is it may mess up you're exisitng metadata organization as it did to me. I restored to an ealier itunes library file to get everything back the way it was. But for someone who DJ's, I cannot deal with any error to my organized chaos

Glad to help Jazzmanjohn, I've been determinded to find a way for this to work since I've installed the beta of ios6 which allows for true streaming on ios devices.

So, I copied my iTunes folder to another external hd and will use that one to upload to match. While my primiary music library live's on a separate hd that will not have match enabled. I hoping this will give me best of both worlds in terms of a consistant solid library organized my way, and the ability to listen to these songs on my iPhone.

In terms of audio quaility and bit rate, I can hear the difference from 128kbs to 256kbs but this will require a decent set of speakers or headphones. All my music is encoded at 320kbs because you will hear the differnce if played on 1000+watt speaker systems, it really is night and day. But yeah iTunes match allowing for 256 is no differnce for me, infact I use Platinum Notes if I need to upscale an mp3s anyways.

I'll provide an update after this library gets uploaded to match, but it may be a few days til that happens

Cheers

I really like iTunes Match.

Do you have songs ripped from vinyl records or tape recordings in your iTunes Library? I never got around to remaster my tape recordings and vinyl records properly, but iTunes match saved me the trouble to do that for more than 700 of these older recordings by matching them to better recordngs from the iTunes Store. o.k., some matches were wrong, but that was a minor annoyance compared to the work I saved me! 😁

JazzmanJohn wrote:

I have over 16,000 custom selected songs in my library. It's the most important thing on my computer by far. Before I purchase Match, I would like to know if other users really like it.

I like the concept, but the implementation is a little lacking for my uses. But that's just me. I depend a lot on play counts and last played dates, which are a bit problematic for me. YMMV.

JazzmanJohn wrote:

When you purchase Match and all your tunes have been matched or uploaded, what do you do with your current iTunes library?

Nothing. The files on your HDD are untouched.

JazzmanJohn wrote:

It's my understanding that you can stream tunes through your Mac computers but that you have to download them to an iPad, iPod or iPhone if you play the tunes through them, right?

Yes to both, but the music only streams in iTunes if you've deleted the track from the library; or you you've created a new, emtpy library exclusively for iTunes Match.

JazzmanJohn wrote:

When iTunes Match matches the tunes, does it put them where you had them prior to the match. I.e., will your library look the same as when you started?

If you are refering to the actual files on the HDD, and downloading "matched" files from the iTunes Store then yes. The existing metadata is preserved and the "matched" file goes in the same place the deleted file was.

I have 13,000 songs and have tried about three times since release and gave up on using it after a day or two.

Not only have I had it rearrange and create albums from songs from other albums and then delete the original album, but I've also corrected artwork only to have all artwork disappear from my phone seconds later. Both albums were purchased in iTunes. I fixed it by downloading copies elsewhere and then running iTunes Match once again. Yes, I downloaded copies elsewhere and deleted my purchased copies. I wonder how that makes sense?

See the Image below:

Hi I have 180 GB of music and Already put in Itunes Match 24000 songs 75% Matched and the rest uploaded, now I have and reorganize my collection to chose other albums to put in Itunes Match (and complete the 25,000 limit)

I think is a large collection and Icloud (itunes match ) do it well, I have all in iphone in streaming (really download songs).

My unique compliant is now, when I want to download songs with better quality have some err -50 with files large than 14mb

But I think support solve in next days and I have 25 usd well expended

best regards

I've succesfully upload all my my music to match again using a seperate hd than my main one and for the first time has kept my library in tact.

i'm still going to keep this library off my main external just in case, but so far so good!

Plus iOS6(running beat 3 on my 4S) Streaming is legit! it only stores a streaming cache and when you turn it off then back on it wipes all cache and allows you to contiune steaming !

I've been using iTunes Match for several months now. Between iTunes Match and iCloud that was the worst mistake that I could have made. My library is now disorganized. Songs purchased through iTunes have been shortened and will not play completely thru, or they do not play at all. I'm forced to delete the song from my iTunes library and re-download it from iCloud before it will play on any of my devices. As a D.J. you can imagine how frustrating this is.

I would not recommend iMatch; iCloud and I'm having some doubts about iTunes. Oh, by the way, I only have 14,000 songs in my library.