Apple improves iCloud Music Library matching, ditches copy-protected matched files for Apple Music users
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.
As I explained just over a year ago, iTunes Match and Apple Music were, as Apple said, “independent but complimentary.” Both matched tracks you owned that were in your iTunes library, but in different ways.
If you had an iTunes Match subscription, matching was done using acoustic fingerprinting; a way of analyzing the music in your audio files to find the correct track in Apple’s huge library of music. If a track didn’t match, it was uploaded.
If you only had an Apple Music subscription, matching was based only on metadata: the track name, artist, and album. And if nothing could be found with this metadata, the track was uploaded. This way of matching tracks is much less precise than acoustic fingerprinting.
If you subscribed to both iTunes Match and Apple Music, then the iTunes Match matching won out; you got the fingerprinting algorithm to match your music. But if you only subscribed to Apple Music, then you get the simpler, less efficient matching. This led to two issues. The first was matching that wasn’t as accurate, and the second was that when you re-downloaded files to another device, those Apple Music matched files had DRM or copy protection. If you let your Apple Music subscription lapse, then you wouldn’t be able to play those files.
Having both services use the same matching method should improving matching and hopefully making your iTunes library less cloudy. More specifically:
Also, if you are an Apple Music subscriber, then you won’t be able to subscribe to iTunes Match any more; which makes sense, since you won’t need it.
Apple will be rolling this new system out gradually to the millions of Apple Music users, and you won’t be notified when your account gets these new privileges. But you will be able to see that newly added files in your library will have the iCloud Status of Matched, after your account has been updated. Note that Apple hasn’t changed the matching algorithm; and your iTunes library won’t be re-matched.
This is a good move on Apple’s part. There was a lot of hand-wringing over the DRM issue when Apple Music was launched, and the overlap between Apple Music and iTunes Match was confusing. Now there’s just one method of matching tracks, and things will be a lot simpler for everyone.