So, I just got off the phone with an Apple rep. who i think answered my question if I even properly asked it.

So for $25 a year, you can upload/match up to 25,000 songs into your own icloud account...
Whether it was bought from itunes or ripped from a CD or 'stolen'.

I was under the assumption months back that I would have to buy the additional gigs of storage to store the over 10k worth of music I have in my Itunes library. I could have sworn that was the deal. I have been using the Amazon cloud service for $20/year for unlimited uploads....The layout sucks and you can't edit the album/song details through the service itself which it sucks.

I wonder if Apple changed their tune to compete with what Amazon was doing?

Anyways, although I could come up with 25k worth of songs to maximize my cloud's space, I know I don't need too.
I do like and would rather use a the itunes/apple layout for all the cloud stuff, so I am gonna give them a shot instead...


Where is everyone's heads these days with all this cloud stuff? you happy with where you are at?

i put all my stuff up to amazon and it seemed cool, but now I find i hardly ever use it. same with spotify. great ideas, but fuck me if i dont have the time to really utilize them. where was this shit 10-15 years ago when all i had was free time? i may give the itunes thing a shot though, because it would integrate better with all my apple products.

I'm still on board with the Amazon cloud. I just upload whatever I get as I get it and it's there. I stream through my phone that then bluetooth to my home or car stereo so I've got everything I could want instantly anywhere pretty much. The care is where I really use it. No more carting CDs or tapes or having to carry a phone and an iPod or anything like that. I can hold a few gigs (32 I think)of music on my phone for in case I am out of range on the road sometime. I do wish you could edit titles and all within the Amazon interface, but I'm willing to put up with it and just try to make sure all my tags are in good shape before uploading. Sound quality isn't as good as CDs or records though and I usually at home play records and only stream stuff when I have people around and don't want to be getting up and down to change records. Seems about the same quality as MP3s played other ways.

Sadly, 25K songs wouldn't work for me. I really like the unlimited because I can just grab whatever and listen when/if I get a chance instead of having to try to focus on on what I want to have access to.

Also, if i delete stuff out of my itunes library, is it off the cloud as well?

or is everything i upload over time, there for good.....until i reach 25k?

If I understand the concept right (and I'm no expert), it'll stay in the cloud if you delete it off your itunes. But you can go in and do specific maintenance to your cloud, so it isn't as though it is there for good if you don't want it to be.

If this is true, this is awesome...

i don't think i'd delete my library off itunes, but it'd be nice to know i can free up hard drive space if need be, or clear off stuff that I 'want' but don't need readily accesible.

i think the 25k isfor what you have that DOESNT show up in itunes match. so that would be better for many people. ive been told that anyone with a decent sized library (>30K songs) will be disappointed. also, to have your iDevice "join" the icloud it will delete what you have already on there, which im not crazy about.

Upon playing around with iMatch last night, it does indeed seem that if you delete a track/album from your itunes library, it also deltes it from your cloud....Ugh....Unless their is a setting I am missing....This is kind of what I didn't want....I can easily carry my ipod around...

Amazon still holds all my music....gonna call apple again...

i think that you can delete the file from your machine, thus saving space, but have to keep the track in your "library" which is housed in the data file and that alows the cloud to keep it for you

Mashable did a head-to-head comparison between Amazon, Apple and Google: Link

Thanks.

If i am correct though, it seems that Amazon and Google allow you to upload xx,xxx amount of music which is available anywhere anytime (within reason).... Apple Cloud, from what I am experiencing does the same, as long as the music is also on your hard drive and itunes library....thats a big loss for me...while i have the hard drive space to accomodate 25,000+ songs, I dont want to bog my computer down holding that much stuff...

Amazon's player and layout is a big turn off.....Google, seemed kind of the same, albeit a bit nicer....and Google being free is nice...
Itunes layout is the nicest.....

ugh.

Wait, I am wrong......(damn, learning curve)

If you delete something off of your itunes library, it asks you if you also want to delete it off your cloud.

if you click no, it removes it from itunes library, but stays visible with a little symbol allowing you to d/l it from your cloud in the future....If you choose yes, then it deletes it from the cloud and itunes library.

ok, back to being happy about all this.

Google music is pretty neat. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on between the music on my phone vs. on the cloud, but I think I have it worked out.

Edit: the downside is that it has taken me 9 hours to upload 560 songs.

icloud seems to be winner for me so far. had to create a 2nd itunes library and keep it under 25k songs for it work, but it is nice having everyting everywhere (apple tv, ipad, iphone).

this is what I think I want to do, but not sure how to go about it....
care to go a bit more in depth on how you did what you did?

i don't need 20k+ songs sitting on my laptop hard drive, but i would like them accesible through the cloud should the desire be there to hear them.

http://www.macworld.com/article/163599/ ... limit.html

this explains it and it worked for me, although I had to restart my computer and it does take a while for everything to get uploaded and running. however, now it works.