The developer beta of iTunes Match, Apple’s new iCloud-based music sharing service, is live and IGM has confirmed that Match will not only support downloading but will stream content directly to your Mac or iOS device as well. Here’s how it works.
iTunes Match first scans your library and compiles a list of songs from what it finds–doesn’t matter if it’s a song you’ve bought through iTunes, one you’ve ripped from a CD, torrented, or even made yourself–all of them will be available on the cloud. Songs that iTunes recognises are streamed from Apple’s master recording at 256kbps. Ones that it doesn’t recognise are uploaded to the iCloud from your local copy. You’ll then be able to access the entire library from any Mac (limit five separate computers) or iOS device with an Internet connection.
The service is expected to launch later this year alongside iOS 5 and reportedly will cost $US25/year. [Insanely Great Mac via Mac Rumors]
Steve B
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 4:07 PMHasn’t got a launch date for Australia yet but hopefully its when iOS5 drops. I’m sure they will have to stagger it geographically for the sheer number of people that will be wanting to sign up to the service, if even just to try it.
TSH
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 4:15 PMWill it retain my naming scheme and album art? The quality and consistency of iTunes’ metadata is, frankly, pathetic. Not that it’s an iTunes thing: no online database I know of is adequately curated. But I’ve spent a long time ensuring my entire collection (a modest ~8500 tracks) is fully tagged incl. art. Has Apple gone to the same trouble?
BenDTU
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 4:23 PMI’d be interested to know the same thing – I’m generally pretty happy with iTunes metadata, it’s a lot more complete than Musicbrainz or Gracenote tend to be.
InsideHacker
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 10:20 PMApple is partnering up with Facebook, creating a mobile version of Facebook video chat
William B
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:49 PMtuneup will sort you meta data for you have been using it for years now; i too also can’t wait until itunes match to hit australian itunes accounts. the service is already live in the us so if you are worried perhaps visit some of the forums of the active users in the us. just a thought.