Apple Music Learns From iTunes Match
When Apple Music was released just over a year ago, Apple also debuted iCloud Music Library, a way of storing your iTunes library in the cloud. There were two ways to seed the cloud, either with iTunes Match or Apple Music. If you were an iTunes Match subscriber, matching your songs in your local library to your cloud library was done one way, and if you were just an Apple Music subscriber, matching was done differently.
This created some confusion about the way tracks were matched and stored in iCloud Music Library. Now, Apple is changing this, and will use the same matching method for both services. The company said that Apple Music now uses acoustic fingerprinting and provides matched files without digital rights management (DRM), or copy protection, just like iTunes Match.
Before, if you only had Apple Music, you only got the problematic metadata-based matching.
I’m sure there are reasons for the way things are, but from the outside, combining iTunes Match and Apple Music should have been there from day one.
See also: Jim Dalrymple, iMore.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
@Clark There may be other differences, but iTunes Match is $25/year vs. $10/month for Apple Music.
So what exactly is the difference between regular Apple Music and Match? It sounds like they've merged them in which case why are they still charging for Match?