iTunes Match

Well, I took the $25 annual plunge tonight and signed up for iTunes Match.  You access it from the iTunes store (assuming you're using the latest version of iTunes) and it gives you the little sales pitch.  The deal is it will search through your iTunes library and any files it finds will be added to your collection in the cloud.  Once that's done, it will upload up to 25,000 additional songs.  So if iTunes has your song you get to listen to their copy of it from anywhere you have an internet connection (on up to 10 authenticated Apple devices) and if iTunes doesn't have your song you can listen to a copy of your file from anywhere you have an internet connection.

I'm game.  $25 a year seems a touch on the silly side, but I absolutely LOVE the idea of having my entire music collection available to me on my phone from anywhere I can get a signal, so I bit the bullet and went for it.  iTunes Match has the advantage over Google Music in that it will play my DRM songs that I purchased from iTunes over the years, as well as being integrated into the Music app on my iPhone and iPad.  The fact that Google Music doesn't have an iOS app, and their iOS web app blows, and that it keeps telling me I am at the 20,000 song max when I am still at less than 17,000 songs, all add up to me sticking with Apple for my cloud based music needs.

However, I hit an unexpected snag when I tried to sign up.  It told me that my library was too big.  Too big?  Didn't the sales pitch just tell me that the 25,000 song counter would only start running after the Matching stage was complete?  I had a little more than 26,300 files in my iTunes library.  Fortunately about 1,500 of those were audio book files and I have no interest in moving those to the cloud.  I removed them and tried signing up again and it worked.

The set up for iTunes Match runs in three stages:

1. Gathering information about your iTunes library
2. Matching your music with songs in the iTunes store
3. Uploading artwork and remaining songs

I am still on step one, and have been for a while now.  Maybe an hour or so.  The status bar for step one is still only about 1/3 of the way through.  This could take a while.  I have a lot of music that won't be matched with iTunes store files, so I expect the upload process to be long and tedious, but if the service works the way they are selling it, it will all be worth it in the long run.

I had one other Apple music related comment to make.  I've been meaning to throw this out to the public ever since I installed iOS 5 on my iPad and iPhone.  I had all sorts of trouble with the Music app (formerly called the iPod app) since the update.  Let's put aside the fact the the new user interface on the iPad is crappy and pretty much just blows and concentrate on whether or not files would actually play.

Almost every file I had on both devices would fail to play after taking the update.  Sometimes I would tap on a song and it would skip to the next one, but usually it would just hang at 0:00.  Also, on the occasions when it would skip to the next song, the next song in question would be the one to hang at 0:00.  Anything uploaded after the update played fine.  I got so fed up with it that earlier tonight I deleted all of the music off my iPad and reloaded it from iTunes.  I haven't done the iPhone yet, but that will probably happen tomorrow. 

My question to you, oh internet, is am I the only person this happened to?  Jen still hasn't taken the updates yet so I can't compare notes with her.  I'm curious if this is a more widespread issue that I just haven't heard about in the rabid Apple press.  At least the files I reloaded tonight seem to be playing.  Well, one playlist that I couldn't play earlier today is playing.  That seems like a decent test to start with.

Anyway, step one of iTunes Match is probably about 45% done now.  Progress is our middle name.