Tag Archives: iTunes

iTunes Match Coming Tuesday Oct 25th?

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*Warning Unverified Rumor*

We have received an anonymous tip that iTunes Match will come out next week on Tuesday October 25th.  While the rest of iCloud launched last week, there were many problems with the system being overloaded.  Apple probably delayed iTunes Match due t

o the intensive processing they will have to do to build up everyone's playlists that subscribe once it's release.  We were also told that likely the service will be rolled out for the US first then other countries in a staggered fashion.

*Warning Unverified Rumor*

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iOS 5 Beta 3 Seeded

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It’s All Tech is reporting that IOS 5 Beta 3 has been released along with an updated version of iTunes.  Carrying build # 9A5259f

There are a lot of changes related to Location Based Services which can be turned off or selectively turned on.

Interestingly enough Apple seems immune to their rules, they have placed a link to the iTunes store in the Music App.  Classy.

 

Spotify US Launch Soon

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US Visitors to Spotify.com are now greeted with a landing page that allows them to sign up for a notice when the service launches in the us.  Spotify is a music streaming service that has subscription options that allow you to also download and save music which is a little similar to what Napster tried as a legitimate service a few years back.  Spotify is very popular in Europe and US users have been wanting a piece of the action for quite a while.

iTunes Match Hurting Little Guys?

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MacRumors has an article where it talks about small publishers who claim they only sell 10,000 copies yet see 8x that shared over the various file sharing programs.  While I do not believe these guys should be shafted for the hard work they put into their works, I think the numbers do not represent actual listeners.  You can go to any number of broadband sites and hear all these people complaining about this and that cap and how they can not download all they want to download.  So sure 80,000 people might have downloaded your song, but how many actually listens to it?  It’s not saying your music is bad or anything, but I think the majority of these sharers are A hoarders of digital content, and B probably did A and do not know they’re re-sharing it.  The rest of us jump through the hoops and pay extra to access our content so it’s actually usable and we do not appreciate people trying to drag down improvement because they see it as a loss when in reality it may not be.  Trust me your true fans will pay for your music.

Sydney Morning Herald – Apple Cracks Down on Sharing iTunes Purchases

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Adam Turner over at the Sydney Morning Herald writes about how Apple in iTunes 10.3 disabled some sort of backwards way of using someone else’s iTunes account to copy a purchase onto your phone.  The one caveat was that you had to sign in again to get any updates.  With 10.3 and a US account this is no longer possible.  While Apple has made it okay to authorize 5 computers and more portable devices, they have never really made it possible for couples who marry to merge their accounts without having to ditch one and repurchase anything missing on the other.   Your other option was to burn to CD your music and re-rip it back.  Never a problem when I was married as neither of us had anything from Apple and we still used CD’s and mp3′s.  It was simple to combine our music empire into one collection and when we did move into Apple’s iGarden of devices we just used the same account for our family.

That brings up another issue.  Family accounts where your children move on to their own households, there again is no real process to allow them to separate their music collection without going the rip route.  In this case it really is more of a thing where the parents likely do not listen to the kids music and forcing them to repurchase their songs really sticks it to  a fledgeling who’s trying to make their way in the world.

It’s going to be a larger issue as more of our society moves into the digital media age.  Nobody wants to throw away potentially thousands of dollars of music when they leave their parents house, and it will not only apply to Apple, digital movies would be another issue if they’re tied to Apple’s iTunes or a Microsoft platform.

iTunes Match @ 24.99 a Pirates Amnesty?

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Phillip Elmer-Dewitt over at CNN Money writes about Apple’s upcoming iTunes Match feature and it’s ability to give those who pirated music a way to upgrade the quality of their music to sanctioned 256k AAC music files.  He is technically correct, if a user stole their music and used iTunes Match, then it would fix them up with better quality files than what they may have pirated off the internet.  Probably a few music exec’s are having a collective apoplexy right now after realizing what they just gave away for 24.99 a year.

On the other hand, if iTunes replaces those songs of an active pirate, then if they share those songs out, there’s a paper trail because their itunes account information is embedded into the files.

Over the Air OTA Updates Not Invented by Google

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A few websites are saying that Apple stole OTA updates from Google.  This is simply not true.  Feature phones before Android and even the iPhone were released were able to do OTA updates.  It was not something that was generally public from the carriers as it was a new process.  However it is a safer way to update since carriers have the ability to restrict how many people at once do updates.  This allows them to push an update to say 10,000 random customers and monitor their support systems for bug reports.  Say if a few days and no complaints go by that are show stoppers then they move along and push 100,000 and wait a day.  Then they begin pushing to rest of their customers.  It’s a great feature.

Other things that were added such as wireless media sync have been a requested feature for years.  Apparently Zune HD had this, but I knew one person who ever bought a Zune and they returned it a few months later and bought iPhones.  Is it really stealing an idea when it’s a common sense thing?

Camera from lock screen.  People have been asking for faster ways to take pictures, and that’s what Apple has provided.  Apparently Windows 7 Phones can do this, but manufacturers have been slow to adopt the feature.   Nobody ever made a feature popular by not implementing it.  Windows 7 phone users should thank Apple that other carriers may finally take note and begin to implement it more.  This is exactly the reason that competition is good.  If there’s a great feature out there, somebody is going to implement it.

iTunes 10.3 Available for Download

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Looks like Apple posted it sometime last night finally.  You can download it at http://www.apple.com/itunes/

 

Changelog:

· Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your Mac and iOS devices.
· Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music purchases again at no additional cost. Your purchases are available in the iTunes Store on your Mac or in the iTunes app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.
· iTunes 10.3 also adds Books to the iTunes Store, where you can discover and buy your favorite books on your computer and automatically download them to iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
· This version also allows you to use Automatic Downloads with apps and books or download previously purchased apps and books from your computer or iOS device.

iCloud Features for iTunes

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There’s a lot of features that are coming with iOS 5 it’s almost impossible to tell which one is the best.  Out of the list I would say no longer needing a computer to activate your iPhone and iTunes Wireless Sync are at the top of my list.  With iCloud if you purchase a song through iTunes on your Mac, it will also download to your iPhone, iPad, or other sync’d devices as well.  This is a welcome feature, and you can have up to 10 devices to Sync to.  Which is 2 devices per member of a 5 person family.  Your music is also stored in the cloud.  I had guessed right that Apple would not be doing any streaming as that would of caused some angst with cellular carriers, and probably would of made the CEO’s of several carriers cry.

Another great feature is that you can access your purchase history and re-download songs finally.

Finally there’s iTunes Match.  This will save people some time.  iTunes Match will check your library and match those songs against a database of Apple songs, if a CD you ripped in 128k Mp3 then if there’s a match for those songs, Apple will copy a 256k AAC file up into your iCloud library and you can sync that back down to other devices.  Not only does this not kill your broadband caps, it saves you a ton of time, although you will have to manually upload any song that’s not matched.  Currently this is a fee service for 24.99 a year which is pretty cheap along, but there is a limit of 25,000 songs.  Most will not be anywhere near that limit.

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