Apple launched iTunes Match on Monday this week, making the service available to public users five months after its introduction and a few weeks later than expected. The service, meant to sync an entire music library over iCloud for easy access on other devices, has already thrown some users for a loop—Apple had to stop taking new subscribers yesterday thanks to too-high launch volume, and others were frustrated by Apple's limit of 25,000 non-iTunes-bought tracks.
The service seems to be back up and accepting new signups again, however, and plenty of users are finally getting the ball rolling on matching their iTunes libraries in the cloud. But the service isn't necessarily as straightforward as it seems, and there are plenty of questions floating around about how, exactly, Apple determines which songs to "match," which to upload, and which to leave behind. We put together the answers to some of the most common questions and problems we've seen so far in hopes of clearing up confusion about how iTunes Match does and doesn't work.
I have more than 25,000 songs in my iTunes library. I'm outraged!
Indeed, we've already heard a lot about iTunes Match's 25,000 song limit, but what does that really mean? As we wrote on Monday, the 25,000 limit only applies to tracks that were never purchased from iTunes, so if you have 10,000 tracks from iTunes (the economy thanks you, by the way) and 16,000 that you purchased from Amazon, ripped from CDs, or pirated, only those 16,000 would apply towards the limit, assuming iTunes would be able to match and/or upload them. (More on this in the next question.)
Still, some of you out there may actually have more than 25,000 tracks that never came from iTunes, meaning you're still subject to the hard limit. There are ways to get around this, but unfortunately, it's not as easy as going into a preference pane and checking some boxes for the playlists you'd like to match. As noted by Macworld, the answer involves creating an entirely new iTunes library to which you can copy the non-iTunes tracks you want to match and sync, while leaving out the ones you don't. (Be sure to turn off the option in your preferences that copies files to your iTunes Media folder when adding to the library—if you don't, you'll end up with multiple copies of your files, and your hard drive won't like you.) After performing this procedure, you should be able to switch back to your original iTunes library—the one with iTunes Match turned off—and the ones you matched from the new library will now reside in iCloud.
What do you mean "assuming iTunes would be able to match and/or upload them?" What's the criteria for music being matched or uploaded?
When iTunes Match goes through your library, it uses a three-step process in order to make the system more efficient. First, it scans your local song library, then it looks within the iTunes Store to see whether any of your songs match up with what's already on the server. If the songs are already on iTunes, the song is then deemed to be "matched," and it's not uploaded—instead, you simply get access to that song, via iTunes, on all of your devices. The third step only comes in if your songs are not matchable with anything that currently exists on iTunes—in this case, the songs are uploaded from your computer to iCloud, and they count against the aforementioned 25,000 song limit.
Still, there are certain scenarios in which your obscure songs may not be matched or uploaded to iCloud. For example, songs that are encoded at a low bit rate (some are theorizing 96Kbps, or 128Kbps) are simply ineligible for iTunes Match and won't be uploaded at all. And even more maddening, as tweeted by Macworld's Dan Moren, songs that are only in Smart Playlists (and not in normal iTunes playlists) are strangely not eligible and therefore won't be matched. Correction: My interpretation of Moren's tweet was misdirected; songs that are in smart playlists can indeed be matched. It's just the creation of a smart playlist for songs that are not ineligible doesn't seem to work.
Will iTunes Match keep my carefully crafted metadata when it matches or uploads a song?
This question came to me from Twitter yesterday, and from what I can tell, the answer is yes. Whether it's matched or uploaded, iTunes Match appears to keep whatever metadata you have added to your songs, which can then be copied back to your computer or other devices that you're syncing with. But, as MacRumors forum user Ninyabinez pointed out, it's important to keep in mind that any metadata you don't want will be copied to iCloud as well. So if you are an avid BitTorrent fan who downloads songs with clear metadata about the l337 h@ck3rZ who put the songs online in the first place, you may want to clear that information out (after you think about what you've done, of course).
Can I use iTunes Match on multiple computers to match/upload songs to the same iCloud account?
Yes. If you have different music on different machines (say, a home library and a work library), you can use iTunes Match on both in order to merge the songs into the same library within iCloud. You can then download those songs to the other computers, or access them from your iOS devices.
What if I rip my music at a higher bit rate than 256Kbps? Will iTunes Match replace them?
When iTunes Match matches a song on its servers, it makes that song available to your other devices in the typical 256Kbps iTunes Plus format. But this doesn't mean the original, higher-quality version will be replaced on the machine you're uploading from unless you specifically request it. iTunes Match won't delete any of your music—you have to be the person to delete it—so don't worry about lossless rips disappearing without your permission.
Besides "ineligible" songs, is there anything else iTunes Match won't work with?
Sadly, iTunes Match won't match or upload most non-music media, such as movies, TV shows, audiobooks, or podcasts. (This almost surely has to do with licensing; Apple has licensing agreements with music studios to let their songs work with the service, but such a licensing agreement probably doesn't exist for those other types of content.) Music videos, however, are fair game, so if you're one of the four people who still downloads their own music videos instead of watching them on YouTube or Vevo, iTunes Match has you covered.
Anything else?
Have any other burning questions? Or perhaps you found the strange, obscure answer to your specific problem and you'd like to share it with the class? Let us know!
Listing image by Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson
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