Why I ditched iTunes Match

[djjoejoe]

When djay announced that Spotify would stop working, I decided to leave the streaming world completely (at least for djing) and go for iTunes Match instead. I love that djay has iCloud sync for cue points and I wanted to keep the possibility to prepare my cue points on my iPhone to have them available on my iPad or Mac later on. With iTunes Match, I figured I would still enjoy some cloud benefits such as not having to worry about syncing data anymore. This didn’t work out for me and I wanted to share with you why:

1. Cue Points do not sync for all songs: For some reason, djay considers some songs on my Mac as different from those that iTunes Match puts on my iDevices. Details here
2. iTunes Match does not even work correctly outside of djay: One time, songs just got deleted from my iPad. “No problem”, I thought, “I can always download them again”. That does not work, though, because of iTunes Match’s dreaded “This item cannot be downloaded”. This has been discussed extensively here. I was able to work around it once but after having gotten a new iPad, there were just too many songs that I could not download. Fixing them would have meant deleting all songs in my Music.app and I was not ready to do that because I did not want to lose all my playlists.

In the end, I am now syncing files locally again, like it’s 2010. It sucks to go back but at least it should be reliable.

[D_Rey]

That is unfortunate that iTunes match is not working for you as it should. I’ve been using it for years along with the various versions of DJay for iPad and really haven’t had any issues. Recently things got a bit messed up with the release of Big Sur but I managed to get things back in order and syncing as they should.

[LaidbackFred]

I have been an Apple Music (not iTunes Match) subscriber since it’s beginning.
I’m in a family plan where I was the only User who chose not to upload my Music in order to be able to download any streaming music to my Devices.
I chose not to do so for the very reason you write this post.
By Subscribing to Apple Music but not uploading your music to Apple’s iCloud instead syncing your devices to Apple Music (Mac iTunes) Will work.
Cue Points will cloud across devices, in realtime.
What will not cloud Are the Beatgrids. Meaning Beatgrids have to be reset on every device if Djay analysis them wrongly. With my experience, the Beatgrids will need to be reset after a while.

By creating my playlists in Apple Music 2020 (iTunes), I can choose which device can have certain playlists. So if your phone has less memory than your iPad, you can limit the playlists on your phone.

I am part of this Community for help because I’ve always had and still have issues with Djay.
Where ever I can help I will.

[avensis]

I also ditched iTunes Match, so I understand you