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Apple Music improves iCloud matching

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 19 July 2016

Taking a day off from trying to screw over Spotify, Apple has decided to make an element of its own streaming service better. The element being improved is the iCloud Music Library which allows Apple Music subscribers to also stream tracks in their iTunes library on all their devices, which is mainly attractive where there are songs in said library that are not currently available to play via Apple’s streaming platform.

Setting up an iCloud Music Library requires Apple Music to match the tracks in a user’s iTunes folder with its own streaming catalogue, so to work out which of the user’s tracks it needs to upload to the iCloud. Many people reported problems with that matching process when Apple Music first launched. Basically a better matching system was needed. But Apple just remembered it already has a better system for matching tracks in this way, helpfully called iTunes Match. Sorted.

So, yes, basically Apple will now be offering Apple Music users the audio fingerprinting matching functionality of iTunes Match, instead of the less effective meta-data based system Apple Music was using previously, and at no extra cost. Technically accessing iTunes Match costs $25 a year, a fee in part required because Apple needs licences from the music companies to offer match functionality as part of its cloud storage service.

The better matching functionality will be slowly rolled out to all Apple Music users, who will also find that music in their iCloud Music Library is no longer DRMed. Those who have both Apple Music and iMatch subscriptions – either because they already had iMatch when Apple Music launched, or they signed up to iMatch for better matching – will not be charged another $25 when their current iMatch subscription expires.