iCloud

[ryberg]

It's been the better part of a year since I started this thread, and these offerings from Apple, Google & Amazon have been out for a while, now. Just wondering if anyone here has been using any of them (several people indicated they would), and if so, what reports you might have to offer.

There are several 3-way comparison articles out there on the web, though many also seem to be older. This report links to a number of them. I've been reading some of them as I'm finally looking at getting into such a system. As is my wont, I have been looking mostly at iTunes Match. A number of comments in online reviews suggest it is not surprisingly the smoothest thing to get into for Apple users, and I'm inclined to think like this comment from the above link:

Peter Kafka declared on All Things Digital that the service is already ahead of other cloud-based, music-streaming services like Amazon, Google, Spotify, Rdio and others. "I've got limited time and attention, so the reality is that I'm going to end up picking one cloud and sticking with it," Kafka wrote. "I've been working with iTunes since 2001, so Tim Cook already has a very long lead — long enough that he can get away with charging me $25 a year to make it even harder for me to leave."

25 bucks for a year just doesn't seem too bad. And since my iTunes library currently has 21-22K tracks in it, wel the limits by Google and Amazon would affect me (unless they've now raised those), whereas I would still for at least some time be under Apple's.

Anyway, just curious to hear some firsthand reports. Thanks in advance if you've got any to offer.

[james]

Spotify (premium). It's all I use.

[James A.]

I use:

Spotify Premium...very good
Pandora...pretty good
iMatch for iTunes portability...works very well for me
iCoud for purchased video content...excellent in conjunction with Apple TV
Photostream...I find this very useful
Dropbox for for document storage...excellent ( I would use iCloud, had it the functionality of DB)

[james]

yeah, GDrive is going to have to be pretty good to steal me away from SugarSync and Dropbox.

[ryberg]

Thanks — keep 'em comin'!

One question for you, James A:

Originally Posted by James A.

iMatch for iTunes portability...works very well for me

Any issues you have experienced with the aspect of downloading some music for listening when not connected? Comments seem to suggest that it works pretty well — quick and easy — but that's one key point for me as I want the portability but don't want to trade the portability for always having to be hooked up via wireless somewhere, or for a clunky, frustrating download system, or for paying for an unlimited data package, etc.

And actually, another question I'm curious about. I've read that the system isn't always so good at matching with iTMS content. This doesn't bother me much in theory given that it would just upload what it didn't recognize, you know, and after the initial go at it, you'd still have whatever wasn't recognized as a match. But I just wonder how picky it is. I mean is it just looking for absolute matches in every way, like does it not even recognize your "Third Stone from the Sun" because it is expecting "Third Stone From The Sun" as the track name? Or does it similarly fail to match up if you've got the last name first for the artist and it doesn't?

OR, does it recognize these but then always show you the listing the way the iTMS lists it, as opposed to how you may have tagged the track in question (whether it's as small an item as capitalization, or who the artist is, or the artwork or whatever else)?

[James A.]

Steve,

I haven't noticed any problem with iMatch recognizing my songs.

One PIA, is that, as far as I can tell, you need to turn off iMatch if you want to manually move a playlist from iTunes to your device.

[Thor Henning]

Spotify, iCloud and DropBox.

-

[ryberg]

So what I'd really like to know (if any users want to answer) is whether on iTunes Match i'll be getting my tags and so forth with the music.

For example, I took to organizing my files by putting the artist's surname first a long time ago. So Hendrix stuff is under H rather than J. Furthermore, I took to filing tribute albums done by various artists under the tributee's name. So this is also under H for Hendrix. And I also took to getting the "(feat. ______)" info out of the artist field and into the track title field. So it's "Smooth (feat. Rob Thomas)" by artist Santana rather than "Smooth" by artist "Santana (feat. Rob Thomas)". Otherwise you get a gajillion different artists listed on your iPod. (You'd have like a dozen just for that album.)

But is all that organizational effort going to go out the window because the iTMS versions I'll be listening to via the cloud list the artist for Hendrix albums under J for Jimi? Or throw that tribute to Hendrix just in with the regular compilations? Or give me those dozen different "artists" just for the album Supernatural?

If so, I'm not sure it would be worth it for me, personally. OTOH, if the iTunes Match system smart enough to keep my tags and organization and so forth with the versions of songs I play on my devices, great. (I would have thought not, but some articles I've seen vaguely suggest that tags are kept like that.)

Anybody?

ETA: If there was some kind of trial version for free — you got to upload 10 tracks and then try it out for yourself to see how it worked or something — I'd just do that and see for myself. But there isn't.

[ryberg]

OK, well, I couldn't find solid answers to my questions about anywhere I looked, and finally gave up a couple of weeks ago and just took the plunge, signing up for iTunes Match. I can now answer some of my own questions, happily, and give a reaction, for what it's worth.

I think the initial whole ordeal to get set up and the subsequent user experience have to be rated differently. I would say the initial process gets a nice fat D. It sucked. It was unclear. It took forever. I had to go to user support forums 3 different times to find suggestions as to how to fix issues that were stopping the process completely, none of which were mentioned anywhere along the way in any instructions, as far as I could see. And I'm still not sure what worked to get me through, in the end. Really poor work by Apple on this aspect. In fact it felt a lot more like using not only some kind of Windows system, but one that was never a big success even among Windows users. Took me the better part of 2 weeks to get my collection (about 22,000 tracks) into the cloud and to make the various numbers ever add up (or just about — I have about 20 tracks unaccounted for, in the end, but close enough for me given the size of the collection). I would have expected this sort of trouble right when it first came out, either because there's often time required to discover issues and fix them, or because of additional pressure on their system from loads of early adopters, or both. But several months after it was released? Poor work, in my book. I mean it gets a D because it did not in fact fail, you know, but that ain't saying much!

However the user experience after getting that all done seems just fine with me, at least so far. I'm happy that the potential issues I referred to above are not in fact issues. So for example I get my music exactly as I tagged it, not with tags and categorization and so forth replaced by whatever the iTMS has for the same music. I also like the nifty little side effect of getting to replace any versions of mine with any pops or clicks with nice clean iTMS versions. Adding stuff to my library since then has resulted in almost immediate and painless uploading to the cloud (though given the sudden hit on bandwidth that that involves, I would personally prefer the option to have it hold off and do that only when I tell it to, which may be something I can change in preferences somewhere). And having your whole collection at your disposal anywhere you have a wireless connection is of course great (though I will still be interested to see if I run into any complications downloading stuff when in Mexico). So there are always occasional glitches but I guess I'd give it an A– once it's finally up and running.

I did run across commentary from people who never got it up and running, though, and who gave up and turned it back off (and I guess may be asking for refunds, I dunno). I feel a bit fortunate that I did not have more problems than I did with that aspect of things...

[ryberg]

Just to report back — and to basically correct the above reaction — I have to strongly recommend against using iTunes Match for anyone using a device with a data plan that is not unlimited (unless perhaps you're on Verizon, as a fix of unmeasured success has at least been issued for you, it seems). Summary is here and in previous posts and links posted on same thread, but basically while the problem seems to due with iOS 6 as opposed to iTunes Match, it makes iTunes Match practically unusable and potentially quite expensive. FWIW.

[James A.]

Originally Posted by ryberg

...it makes iTunes Match practically unusable and potentially quite expensive. FWIW.

I think it really depends on how you use it. I've never had a problem.

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by James A.

I think it really depends on how you use it. I've never had a problem.

Well if you mean which of the appropriate ways you use it, then yes, it depends on that (and your data plan). But if you're referring to people misusing it, nope. Proper use results in data overages because settings fail to work as Apple says they will (precisely in order to avoid data usage issues).

There's a lot more on it over at the other thread, I just linked to this one here in case somebody looked up something about iTunes Match or whatever, at some point (and saw me recommending it when now I have to recommend against it).