Quote:
Originally Posted by
holymadness 
Well Amazon's service is more expensive than Apple's, which may keep usage down. Google hasn't announced their pricing yet. I don't use Pandora (not available outside the US afaik), but I have no interest in running up against my pitifully small monthly bandwidth cap and getting charged $5 for each additional megabyte to stream music. I blame the carriers.
Where do you live currently? I could see it being an issue if you don't get a few gigs included with your data plan. The carriers here in the USA are playing us for fools, IMO. They are all taking us down to 2gig caps (luckily I am grandfathered in on ATT's "unlimited) while claiming it's no big deal because the average user doesn't get close to that amount of data a month. Sure for now. What about in a few years when streaming, cloud services and HD downloads become the norm? We will all be paying out of our asses while the carriers laugh all the way to the bank.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
grundletaint 
it's 25/year. it's also good if you've pirated a bunch of stuff because, if it's in the itunes database, it will be replaced by a 256 AAC version.
http://www.cultofmac.com/how-steve-j...042#more-99042 i'm on the fence about streaming (if it's really included or not is a bit confusing - ) because of sound quality and signal strength. i do like the cloud because i won't have to be near my computer to handle a majority of my library. i always have 'compulsive song syndrome' so it'll be nice to grab stuff on the fly. also, it's doing more than the 100/yr for mobileme is doing for a fraction of the cost so that's nice. edit: so apparently it will stream (they call it 'push") music from the cloud to your device over wi-fi only. you can purchase things the same way as now (wi-fi or 3G) and direct them to a device (i.e. purchase it on your phone and have it DL to ipad) rather than have them go to the device you're using. comes with 5GB free storage for things NOT in their library (music, apps, books) so if you have stuff that isn't in the itunes database, you can upload it. anything you bought from them or they already have will not count against the 5GB.
1. Yes, I meant $25/yr. That was a mistake on my part. 2. Apple's comparison chart is misleading. With Amazon you can get 20 gigs for $20 a year and if you buy a single digital album from them they will give you a 2nd 20 gigs for the year for free. 40 gigs is a lot of cloud space and the average user would never fill it up. 3. What if you have more then 5 gigs of rare music and audio books? I know I have over 5 gigs of books easily. Having a general storage pool has it's advantages. Amazon gives you 5 gigs for free too, BTW. 4. Push is NOT the same thing as streaming. Not at all. It's downloading. You have to download the song to your device. One of the big advantages of streaming is that it does not take up storage space on your device and you don't have to worry about managing the file. With iTunes Match you have to download the full song on the go and if you are limited on space, delete them to make room for more music being pushed. No word from Apple as far as I know on how seamless that process would be. 5. Is iTunes Match only Wi-Fi? If so it is extremely limited. If not then you run into the same data cap problems you would with streaming. Downloading gigs of full songs still count against your cap. Look, I'm not saying it's a disaster. I can see the advantages, but my main point is that it's of limited value unless I can stream. Otherwise I think I will stick with Amazon for now. EDIT: Is Amazon's Cloud player bitrate limited for MP3 files? If not, then you can upload songs encoded in higher bit-rates then 256. I'm also fairly sure it can handle AAC files too. Another potential limitation to Apple's strategy here.