iTunes Match: One year in

“On November 14, 2011 (a few weeks later than promised), Apple released iTunes Match, a $25-a-year, cloud-based service designed to provide access to your iTunes music library from a computer, iOS device, or Apple TV,” Kirk McElhearn writes for Macworld.

“The idea is simple: iTunes scans your music library, sends the information about your songs to Apple’s servers, and then either ‘matches’ music that’s in both your library and the iTunes Store, or uploads the music that isn’t in the iTunes Store,” McElhearn writes. “Then, you can either download or stream (depending on the hardware) all of your music from a Mac or PC running iTunes 10; an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5 or later; or a second- or third-generation Apple TV.”

McElhearn writes, “In theory, iTunes Match is a great idea. In practice, however, everything doesn’t work as well as it should in the realm of iTunes Match, with users facing a number of hiccups and difficulties since the service’s inception. With renewal notices going out to those who signed up early on, it will be interesting to see how many people pony up for another year.”

Read more in the full article here.

50 Comments

  1. The thing still cannot keep tracks straight. It confuses remastered for original, live for studio, single vs album length version, etc.

    The concept is great and a bargain, but the execution is typical of Apple these days- lots of promise and poor execution. It’s a beta a year in.

  2. If one has an existing media collection, why on earth even consider paying someone else to store it for you, then rely on expensive internet connectivity everywhere to access it?

    media rental = FAIL

    with multiple iPods & iPads and hundreds of gigabytes of ALAC-encoded music, we happily use smart playlists to transfer –over wire!!!– music from the hi-fi system-connected Mac media server to portables. fast, efficient, free, higher audio quality too. The only price to pay is that you have to manage your music and create playlists. Oh, the horror of such grueling labor!

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