iTunes Match Surfacing in iOS 5 and iTunes Suggests Imminent Launch

[Akshay Masand]

Although Apple launched iOS 5 and iCloud last week, the company ended up pushing back the debut of its paid iTunes Match service in the US until the “end of October.” The feature was previously in beta testing with the iTunes 10.5 developer releases and was removed from the public release. Instead it folded into an iTunes 10.5.1 beta that will probably debut alongside the service.

The Music section of the Settings app in iOS 5 has gained a toggle for turning iTunes Match on and off. This toggle was previously seen in the beta, then disappeared, and now returned. As of right now, non-developers turning on iTunes Match on their devices will not be able to sign up for the $24.99/year service, as iOS 5 pops up an alert instructing users to sign up through iTunes.



Apple also seems to be advertising the service as “coming soon” on the front page of the iTunes Store. The service is on route to debut in the United States by the end of the month and shortly after internationally. The Cupertino giant feels comfortable enough with their timeline of the product though that they have updated not only the US site but other international sites as well.

For those of you who don’t already know, iTunes Match will allow users to have their music libraries matched to Apple’s database of over 20 million tracks in the iTunes Store. These songs will be available for use on any iCloud-enabled device, which is associated with the user’s accounts. For songs which are not available in the iTunes Store, they can still be uploaded to Apple’s servers and also made available across multiple iOS devices.

Source: MacRumors

[VerizonIphone4_help]

I don't know about other people, but I hope the apple "match" doesn't overwrite information. I take EXTERME pains to ensure my almost 2000 song library has every single tag and piece of information. Many times the itunes store will give you single's album covers etc (since those are the ones that are priced and easy to access at 1- 1.29 USD). I enjoy having the album that the song actually came out on. I wonder if this will be overwritten or not. At least for me that will strongly influence my decision as I don't have near enough songs to overload my iPhone (about 10GB).

[zinjen]

I don't know about other people, but I hope the apple "match" doesn't overwrite information. I take EXTERME pains to ensure my almost 2000 song library has every single tag and piece of information. Many times the itunes store will give you single's album covers etc (since those are the ones that are priced and easy to access at 1- 1.29 USD). I enjoy having the album that the song actually came out on. I wonder if this will be overwritten or not. At least for me that will strongly influence my decision as I don't have near enough songs to overload my iPhone (about 10GB).

I'm curious as well, also is there a good program that can grab album art.. iTunes does not find half of my mixtapes, etc. Thanks in advance?

[GrandMstrBud]

So far I am subscribed and it's not downloading almost all of my sons on my second computer. I know it's in beta but I'd have figured it would be a little bit better than this.

[holygamer22]

I feel the same way- I like my library to be organized

[politicalslug]

I don't know about other people, but I hope the apple "match" doesn't overwrite information. I take EXTERME pains to ensure my almost 2000 song library has every single tag and piece of information. Many times the itunes store will give you single's album covers etc (since those are the ones that are priced and easy to access at 1- 1.29 USD). I enjoy having the album that the song actually came out on. I wonder if this will be overwritten or not. At least for me that will strongly influence my decision as I don't have near enough songs to overload my iPhone (about 10GB).

You aren't the target audience. You clearly have no need for iTunes Match. Your puny collection of 2000 songs will fit on the smallest capacity iPhone. iTunes Match is for people with large libraries they want to share across multiple devices. Does that sound like you?

[z6joker9]

Ah, it finally works again! It's been off (for beta devs) since iOS 5 launched!

[drigo1178]

so will they store my 80gb worth of music? i dont see limits on the service...

[GrandMstrBud]

I only have about 5-6 GB of music and it matches my library to my second computer but it only downloaded maybe 150 out of my 650 songs give or take. I have not installed iOS5 on my iPad 2 yet because no jailbreak and I love my jailbroken devices.

[drigo1178]

im sure movies will soon follow? hmm

[DaLsim]

FU*k itune match! why in the hell would u pay itune $24.99 a year for them to store n copy ur music?

[willis0037]

I need to match my 128GB of music-over 60 days work, hopefully it will be able to download multiple songs at a time

[duromega]

Sounds great I have around 90GB of metal if it's only 24.99 a year for unlimited storage I think this is great I won't even have my music on my hard drive any more! 

[charliebee]

I don't know about other people, but I hope the apple "match" doesn't overwrite information. I take EXTERME pains to ensure my almost 2000 song library has every single tag and piece of information. Many times the itunes store will give you single's album covers etc (since those are the ones that are priced and easy to access at 1- 1.29 USD). I enjoy having the album that the song actually came out on. I wonder if this will be overwritten or not. At least for me that will strongly influence my decision as I don't have near enough songs to overload my iPhone (about 10GB).

iTunes Match doesn't overwrite anything, it's only streaming (or variant of). If a given album in your library is available on iTunes, it's will be available to you on your iDevices through iTunes Match, with whatever info iTunes has in THEIR files. It won't change your locally stored files but you won't have access to your own version when playing through iTunes Match.

If your album is not available on iTunes at all, it will be uploaded to Apple's servers in order to be synced to your iDevices. At this point I don't believe they will overwrite your tags since they don't have any info about that artist/album.

[bigboyz]

I have a decent sized library of 12,000+ songs..I know people that have 20-80,000. I too want to ensure that ALL of my content is synced to the cloud. Has anyone tested with a larger than 2,000 song library? Please provide some feedback so I can have a little more confidence in this feature..Thanks in advance!

[mortopher]

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this article is. It's no surprise that iTunes Match is launching in the relatively near future nor that traces of it are found in iOS 5. Both are already well known facts.

[charliebee]

The service is on route to debut in the United States by the end of the month and shortly after internationally.

If I remember correctly, the words used in the keynote were in the line of "We are working very hard to bring this feature to other countries as well." or something like that and from what the history as shown us about service providers dealing with record labels and distributors, this might take quite a while, if ever.

I know I'm still waiting for Pandora in Canada...

[drkgremlin]

this will make up for all the low quality mp3 i have