You’ll need an Apple Music subscription to make the most of HomePod. But new details that have emerged since the device went on sale last week suggest you’ll be able to play tracks in your iTunes Match library, too.
Apple Music’s matching software has a terrible history of replacing artists’ live songs with a studio version, but that will finally be a thing of the past, thanks the addition of audio fingerprints from iTunes Match.
A quiet rollout of the iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscriber is currently underway, fixing the less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match that was currently used on Apple Music.
Never let it be said that Apple doesn’t go above and beyond the call of duty in troubleshooting problems for its users in the name of achieving customer satisfaction.
After James Pinkstone, director of design service Vellum, posted a terrifying story on his company blog claiming that iTunes Match stole his files, Apple sprang into action — sending two engineers to his house to troubleshoot the problem.
The power of bad publicity, eh?
If you’ve been having problems with Apple Music and iCloud Music Library incorrectly matching songs in your library, you’re far from the only one. It turns out the reason is that Apple Music doesn’t use the same method for matching songs you own as iTunes Match does. This results in significantly more errors and frustrated users.
Though iTunes Match used acoustic fingerprinting to identify songs you own and match them for all of your devices, Apple Music uses the metadata of those songs. That means if you change something as simple as the title and artist, it could match to an entirely different song despite the unchanged audio.
While Apple hasn’t been adding DRM to your music, there must have been some issue with the service when paired with iTunes Match.
iTunes 12.2.1 is out now, and it contains a fix for any iTunes Match users who saw iTunes change some songs from Matched (which gives you access to high-resolution audio files that you own) to Apple Music (which will disappear if you let your subscription lapse).
No, you won’t lose all your DRM-free iTunes music. At least, not without deleting your actual files and not having a backup. Apple isn’t adding DRM to your iTunes files, either.
The reality here is that Apple will not automatically remove any iTunes music files you own on your computer and replace it with a digital rights managed (DRM) file.
However, the convergence of iTunes Match, Apple Music, and the new iCloud Music Library can be confusing, and there is a small potential to re-download files you’ve deleted from your Mac as DRM-protected Apple Music files.
Luckily, the folks at iMore have a pretty fantastic, clear explanation of what’s going down here, and a pretty neat way to check and see which of your music files have been matched, uploaded, or purchased. Even John Gruber linked to it, so you know it’s good.
With one day to go until Apple Music officially launches with iOS 8.4, Eddy Cue has revealed that Music’s iTunes Match integration will soon let users upload 100,000 of their own songs to iCloud for streaming at any time.
It’s not often that Google incontrovertibly one-ups Apple on anything but search, but the company just scored a small but sizable advantage over Cupertino in at least one regard: music storage space.
Google expanded its Google Play Music service Wednesday to match, store and stream 50,000 tracks, twice what Apple allows iTunes Match paid users. Even better for listeners with large libraries? Google Play Music is free.
If you’re a Dane, a Swede, a Fin, or a Norse who likes having all his or her music in the clouds of Valhalla, or just wants to legitimize your pirated Lordi collection, good news: iTunes Match has come to Scandinavia.
Amazon announced this morning that it has updated its desktop Cloud Player to include support for Mac, after launching the desktop app earlier this year on PC only.
Cloud Player for Mac allow Mac users to manage their entire music library regardless of whether you’re online or offline. The app also lets you shop for music on on Amazon’s catalog of over 25 million songs.
