itunes match - page 2

Nothing helps me turn my swag on more than when I’m listening to rap music during my morning jogs. Swimming in a tidal wave of beats fused with magically crass lyrics, I get this uncontrollable tick that slowly mutates into spasms of weird arm movements as I trot along. I think it’s called “crunking”, but I’m not sure. All I know is I need my terribly cheesy rap music to survive my jogs, but today I loaded up songs on my iPhone using iTunes Match and there was a subtle but devastating difference in the tracks I listened to: all the curse words were gone!

iTunes Match had successfully filtered out all the profane and derogatory words by changing the tracks to clean versions of the albums, which pretty much ruined my jog because I was really really wanting to sing along and drop 50 “F-bombs” a minute. Maybe this is just a rare glitch in iTunes Match’s system, but it’s a travesty tantamount to treason in my eyes and I want it fixed.

Apple has expanded the reach of iTunes Match this week by adding support for an additional 19 countries across Latin America and Europe. The music matching service, which only launched late last year, is now available to users in 37 countries in total.

Apple has felt the need to create a dedicated webpage and how-to video for iTunes Match, the company’s new music service. iTunes Match became available for US customers in November, while 17 other countries were added to the availability list last week.

The new webpage for iTunes Match is home to a handy video walkthrough and more details about the service, including a 10-question FAQ.

So Santa stuffed an Apple TV in your stocking? That’s pretty freaking awesome. We’re jealous. Well actually, we already had one so I guess we’re not that jealous, but congratulations on joining the club of Apple TV owners. We’re stoked to have you with us, and we want you to get the most from your new gagdget so we’re going to help you get it setup the right way so you can skip through all the menus and side features and dive straight into the good stuff.

In this handy guide, we’ll take you through initial setup; show you the best features of Apple TV and teach you some awesome tweaks that will take your television experience to the next level so you can cuddle up in next to your flatscreen wearing those new pajamas your kids bought you and go into a week-long tv-coma.

Here’s our guide to setting up your new Apple TV the right way.

Apple has just posted a new support document outlining everything international customers need to know about iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match availability. Customers in the United States were given public access to iTunes Match back in November, and Apple has been rolling out its cloud services for iTunes to international markets since then.

After countries around the world were given access to iTunes Match last week, Apple has officially outlined both iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match international availability, including the types of media that are offered to customers in each country.

Yesterday, Apple began rolling out iTunes Match to over a dozen new countries, but as with the U.S. rollout, demand has temporarily exceeded capacity, and so Apple has halted new subscriber sign-up for iTunes Match until some of the initial crush peters out.

Not a big deal, honestly. This happened a couple times with the U.S. rollout, and frankly, iTunes Match can take an awfully long time even in the best of times to match a large collection, let alone when the servers are being hammered. You’re probably better off waiting a few days to sign up, anyway.

[via MacRumors]

The internet sounded the bell a little prematurely last night, but it now appears that iTunes Match is indeed rolling out to international customers. While we all thought the service had been rolled out to most of Europe and Australia yesterday, it was later confirmed that the launch was an error, with Apple emailing apologizes to international customers and handing out refunds.

Now it appears that many countries, including Australia, U.K., Canada, Mexico, and others, are now able to access iTunes Match from the iTunes Store.

Apple is slowly rolling out international support for iTunes Match today, with the service appearing in the U.K., Australia, and parts of Europe. The music matching service has been exclusive to the U.S. since its launch earlier this fall, but it made its way to Brazil earlier this week. If you can’t see it where you are, here’s a handy tip to get it working.

Apple has expanded the reach of its iTunes Store today by offering music and movie content for the first time across 16 Latin American countries. It has also introduced the new iTunes Match service to users in Brazil, making it the first country outside of the U.S. to gain access to the feature.

Apple has released iTunes 10.5.2 to the public alongside an update to its iTunes Match service. The new version of iTunes only deals with audio distortion issues when playing or importing certain CDs. Apple has remained vague about the specific improvements that have been made to iTunes Match.

Noting that the latest iTunes Match features “several improvements,” Apple has made its new download available in Software Update and on its website.

When it comes to Apple’s iTunes Match, profit motive goes out the window — indeed it’s “immaterial.” Although Apple is most known for iTunes and the App Store, the Cupertino, Calif. company remains a hardware company — and very profitable one at that. The real value of the iTunes Match service is as the latest member of Apple’s vast iTunes ecosystem, acting as a honeytrap for hardware purchases.

iTunes Match gives customers access to their music libraries from any iOS device or authenticated desktop computer. The service uses the magic of iCloud to ‘match’ and upload tracks from an iTunes account so that songs can be played and downloaded multiple times on multiple devices.

While Apple has offered some documentation on the innards of iTunes Match, aspects of the service remain unaddressed. For those wondering, one iTunes Match account can be used with a maximum of 10 devices. You can manage your registered devices and iTunes Match subscription inside your iTunes account settings.

The new iTunes Match service is a handy way to share music among all your computers and iDevices. One reader is wondering if this feature can also be used to replace older 128kbps DRM encoded tracks with their higher bitrate, unencumbered iTunes Plus versions:

Just wondering something about iTunes Match. I’ve got a bunch of songs on iTunes that I purchased early in the game, and they are in .m4p format, so they have the DRM locks and can’t easily be converted to .mp3 format. They are only at 128kbps, which is the only thing iTunes offered back in the day. If I sign up for iTunes Match, will these songs be updated to their new DRM-free 256kbps versions, or do I have to pay for the iTunes Plus service first?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a nasty, totally broken little power grab of a bill that would effectively end the concept of ‘safe harbor’ that has allowed the internet to grow and thrive over the last ten years by allowing the government to add websites to a DNS blacklist for posting any kind of copyrighted material, fair use or not.

The bill’s so stupid and the outrage over it so deafening that it’s doubtless it will be never make it into law. Too many people are openly angry about it, including Mozilla, 4Chan, Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, AOL, Wikimedia, the ACLU, Twitter and Yahoo!

You know who supports SOPA, though? Apple. In fact, they are writing a check to support it, albeit indirectly. It’s a check iTunes Match might have to cash.

Apple released iTunes Match this week, and along with it a new version of iTunes which includes a lot of new features to support music in the cloud. We’ll look at these features in the Mac OS X tip for today.

After missing its initial October launch date, iTunes Match finally went live yesterday, but only for those in the United States. Users in other territories are left waiting for the music matching service, with no indication of when its international rollout may begin.

Those in the U.K. may be the next to get the service, according to a CNET report, but it won’t arrive until at least the start of 2012.

iTunes Match went live earlier today as a beta, but Apple apparently can’t handle the demand: it’s already temporarily unavailable for new subscribers, who are being told to “check back in an hour.”

Honestly, want our advice? Check back in a week. Even in developer beta, iTunes Match took ages to match our libraries, and a million people hammering on the service on launch day isn’t going to help matters.

Apple’s new music service, iTunes Match, launched today as a beta, and it includes the handy ability to upgrade your low quality audio tracks to lossless audio tracks and then mirror them in the cloud. In this video, I’ll show how to set up iTunes match and upgrade your songs. It just couldn’t be easier.

Two weeks late, Apple’s match-and-mirror music in the cloud service iTunes Match has finally launched while retaining its beta status. In the meantime, iTunes 10.5.1 for both Windows and Mac has been released, so get downloading if you intend on using iTunes Match.

On Mac, the iTunes 10.5.1 update is 102MB, and is available now on the official iTunes homepage or through Software Update.

iTunes Match is Apple’s much anticipated cloud music service. For $24.99 a year, users can match any of the songs on their hard drive into the cloud to be redownloadable on any iOS or Mac device in 256Kbps AAC CD quality, even if their original track was of much lower quality.

iTunes Match is launching as a beta service. However, for subscribing to iTunes Match Beta, we hear you get 15 months of service instead of just 12. Not a bad deal, but be warned that Apple will delete your iTunes Match library at the end of the beta, meaning you’ll have to go through the matching process all over again.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve found that Apple has been having problems getting iTunes Match’s mirroring service to work reliably. We’ll report back and let you know if they’ve worked out the kinks.

Apple has released iTunes Match beta 3 to developers following the scheduled library reset that took place yesterday, November 11th. The latest beta version of iTunes Match addresses a number of important performance and stability improvements.

Apple originally projected the public launch of iTunes Match for the end of October, but that deadline has passed. Apple is still ironing out the final bugs in its $24.99/year cloud music service.

Apple has sent out an email to developers saying that yet another iTunes Match reset is scheduled to take place tomorrow at 10 AM PST. Developers that are currently testing iTunes Match will have their libraries erased as Apple readies its servers for the public launch of its music streaming service.

Apple has seemingly missed its iTunes Match launch date after promising at its ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event early last month that the new service would be up and running in the United States at the “end of October.” Developers who have been testing the service in beta are discovering today that the iTunes 10.5.1 beta has now ended, with no replacement in sight.

Apple is issuing another reset of iTunes Match for tomorrow, October 27th. The wipe applies to developers that have been beta testing the service for the last couple of months.

Beta testers are asked to disable iTunes Match on their iOS devices and computers for the reset tomorrow. All saved libraries will be erased. Apple is expected to launch iTunes Match to the public very soon.

Apple is working to secure iCloud music rights for international customers, according to CNET. The iTunes legal team is trying to get international cloud-music rights for October 4th’s iPhone event, due to the fact that Apple is expected to launch iCloud to the public at that time.

Procuring these rights would assumedly give international iCloud customers the ability to re-download music and stream tracks through iTunes Match.

Facebook’s f8 conference got under way today, and speculation has begun that suggests the social networking behemoth is going to announce its very own music service, which Jonny Evans at Computerworld believes “may give iTunes hegemony its biggest shake yet.” But I’m inclined to disagree.