iTunes Match concern

[hey_WILL]

Hey iPhone bloggers, i haven't posted here in a while, but i came back with a question and i hope you can be a helpful as you have been before.

I recently signed up for iTunes Match. Everything went through, matched/uploaded all of the songs, turned "iTunes Match" on on my iPhone. But now i still have all of my songs stored locally on my phone. From my understanding, the whole point of match is to get all of that data off my phone and into the cloud. I tried to sync it as well (wired) but it won't sync because it thinks everything is in the cloud.

So now i have a phone that i can't even sync, and that still has all of my songs on it. Am i missing something? How does everything get pulled off my phone? I was told that it would wipe it when i turned on match in settings. Now i am going through a variety of measures, restarting, re-syncing, turning match off and on, etc..

Is this happening to anyone else? Thanks for help, guys.

 

[cardfan]

You misunderstood its purpose. It lets you upload your itunes music library to their cloud. It uploads all your playlists as well. No need to manually check them in itunes.

You don't stream these songs though. You still need to have space on your iOS device for whatever you choose to put on it. You're simply accessing your library from the cloud instead of your computer.

 

[verwon]

Exactly! If you want to remove a playlist from your phone, delete and add whatever else you want.


Sent from my iOS ecosystem!

 

[thebignewt#IM]

Good thread here, I'm interested too. So let me get this straight: Match's purpose is to get your entire iTunes library (10k songs in my case, 60GB) from your Mac to iCloud so that you can stream all of the songs to your iPhone, even though you have only 16gb of storage. You have to be in 3G to get the song. You may also have music directly on the phone, that you can hear on an airplane, etc. Right?
Is this thing ready for prime time?

 

[verwon]

No streaming! If you want to listen to it on your phone, you'll have to download it from the cloud!

 

[bmuncy]

I think everyone has covered the basics but the plus of iCloud is that once all your music in stored you can download the songs you want to listen to anytime over 3G or wifi. The only streaming is on a computer with iTunes. When you want a song on your iPhone you will press the little iCloud icon and it will begin the download and start playing the song. This may seem like streaming but it is actually downloading it in the background to your phone so you can access it without internet.

 

[verwon]

I think everyone has covered the basics but the plus of iCloud is that once all your music in stored you can download the songs you want to listen to anytime over 3G or wifi. The only streaming is on a computer with iTunes. When you want a song on your iPhone you will press the little iCloud icon and it will begin the download and start playing the song. This may seem like streaming but it is actually downloading it in the background to your phone so you can access it without internet.

Also streams on Apple TV!

 

[cardfan]

Also streams on Apple TV!

Which i don't really understand since mine streams from PC already (so why waste the bandwidth?). Seems like it streams to devices you don't need the streaming for. And downloads to device you'd want to stream with.

 

[verwon]

Which i don't really understand since mine streams from PC already (so why waste the bandwidth?). Seems like it streams to devices you don't need the streaming for. And downloads to device you'd want to stream with.

Because not everyone has one computer, with all of their music on it.

Thanks to iTunes Match, everything is now consolidated in one library. I don't have to access the library on separate computers to find what I'm looking for, anymore.

 

[cardfan]

Because not everyone has one computer, with all of their music on it.

Thanks to iTunes Match, everything is now consolidated in one library. I don't have to access the library on separate computers to find what I'm looking for, anymore.

Good point

 

[Ringfinger]

This is useless to me. I wanted the ability to access my library, anywhere, and not take up space on my iPhone. I can plug in a USB anytime I want music. If I am that desperate and away from home, You Tube works great. Glad I read this, definitely against this now unless there is some other advantage to me.

 

[NoleScream]

This is useless to me. I wanted the ability to access my library, anywhere, and not take up space on my iPhone. I can plug in a USB anytime I want music. If I am that desperate and away from home, You Tube works great. Glad I read this, definitely against this now unless there is some other advantage to me.

FWIW, I believe it will manage the space on the phone, by deleting the least played / older tracks when you download newer music from iCloud. I haven't actually tested that though since I only carry around 2-3 Gigs of music on my 16GB and still have like 7GB free after apps and everything else.

It would be nice in the future for Match to give us an option on our devices to "limit music to 4GB of space" or something, that way it's not so unclear how the storage on the device is used.

 

[Ringfinger]

I'll wait, I was hoping that it would be more of a stream as opposed to a way to only download on your devices.

 

[Steve28]

If you do Match and upload you 60GB library to the cloud, from your phone's point of view, it will all be there. You will be able to see every track from your whole 60 GB library. If/when you go to play a song that hasn't been downloaded yet, it will start downloading it and play at the same time (which will look to you like streaming) only difference is when it had played, it's also saved on your phone.

If your phone is 'full' iTunes will intelligently pick other tracks to remove to make room for the new song. The song that was removed is still in the cloud and still shows up in all of your playlists etc on the phone, it will just have a 'cloud' icon next to it and will have to be downloaded the next time you want to play that track.

Bottom line, as long as you are on wifi/3G, it will appear to you that you have your entire 60gb library on your phone. If you get on an airplane or go some other place where you have no wifi or cell coverage, you will only have the songs which have already been downloaded to your phone - you will know which ones are not on your phone by the little 'cloud' icon next to them in your library and playlists.

 

[dram57]

Hey newbie here. Is there a way to download all songs on to my iphone4 at once? Or do I have to hit the icloud icon for every song and wait for it to download?

 

[NoleScream]

Hey newbie here. Is there a way to download all songs on to my iphone4 at once? Or do I have to hit the icloud icon for every song and wait for it to download?

Make an "Everything" Playlist in iTunes and let it sync to your phone, then download the whole playlist. That's the easiest way I could come up with.

 

[thebignewt#IM]

If you do Match and upload you 60GB library to the cloud, from your phone's point of view, it will all be there. You will be able to see every track from your whole 60 GB library. If/when you go to play a song that hasn't been downloaded yet, it will start downloading it and play at the same time (which will look to you like streaming) only difference is when it had played, it's also saved on your phone.

If your phone is 'full' iTunes will intelligently pick other tracks to remove to make room for the new song. The song that was removed is still in the cloud and still shows up in all of your playlists etc on the phone, it will just have a 'cloud' icon next to it and will have to be downloaded the next time you want to play that track.

Bottom line, as long as you are on wifi/3G, it will appear to you that you have your entire 60gb library on your phone. If you get on an airplane or go some other place where you have no wifi or cell coverage, you will only have the songs which have already been downloaded to your phone - you will know which ones are not on your phone by the little 'cloud' icon next to them in your library and playlists.

That is an excellent expanation of this feature, thanks. It was confusing to me.
Question: is the thing out of beta and ready for primetime yet? I think it is, but since I don't have an iPhone (yet) I'm not sure. And could my son (who has his own iTunes library) use mine as his iCloud library?