Went live Monday with the release of iTunes 10.5.1.
The short version is you pay your $25 and upload all your music to the cloud, 25K tracks maximum. The long version is Apple scans your library, and if a track is already in iTunes, they use that track instead. In my case, I got ~10K matches out of 16K tracks, so less than half my library was actually uploaded.
Here's the interesting part. If you need to download a matched track, you get a 256 kbps AAC file no matter the quality of the original file. Again, in my case it replaces thousands of 128 kbps and lower mp3 files. The new files are DRM-free, so they will play on players like Winamp with no trouble.
If you have a large library like mine, be prepared for a LONG wait before iTunes finishes processing and uploading. Took ~24 hours before it was finally done.
The caveat is you have to install iTunes to use the service, but now my music collection finally has an off-site home. I'm sold. Anyone else using it or looking into it?
The short version is you pay your $25 and upload all your music to the cloud, 25K tracks maximum. The long version is Apple scans your library, and if a track is already in iTunes, they use that track instead. In my case, I got ~10K matches out of 16K tracks, so less than half my library was actually uploaded.
Here's the interesting part. If you need to download a matched track, you get a 256 kbps AAC file no matter the quality of the original file. Again, in my case it replaces thousands of 128 kbps and lower mp3 files. The new files are DRM-free, so they will play on players like Winamp with no trouble.
If you have a large library like mine, be prepared for a LONG wait before iTunes finishes processing and uploading. Took ~24 hours before it was finally done.
The caveat is you have to install iTunes to use the service, but now my music collection finally has an off-site home. I'm sold. Anyone else using it or looking into it?
