The Things They Didn't Tell You About iTunes Match

Image borrowed from Apple

I’ve spent the last few weeks getting iTunes Match up and running across all of my machines that support it. This includes a couple of different laptops with iTunes Libraries, an iPhone, iPad, and a couple of Apple TVs. For 80% of the population, I’m guessing the basic iTunes Match service will work splendidly. They’ll turn it on, feel better that they’ve got all this music up in the cloud, and love that they can pull down all their music on their phone without plugging it in over USB.

However, if you’ve got more than 5 or 6 GB of music, or keep your iTunes metadata clean, or are familiar at all with smart playlists, you’re probably going to bump your head a time or two.

If you read through this, you may avoid those unsightly welts on your noggin’. Sadly, I didn’t.

Getting Music into iTunes Match

Again, for most folks, you’ll just turn it on, let iTunes Match chug for a while, and then you’ll be done. That while might be an hour or two, but start it before you go to bed, and when you wake up, you’ll be all cloudly.

The rest of you are likely going to run into a couple of things uploading your music. The first thing you’re giong to do is turn on the “iCloud Status” column in iTunes (right-click on the columns at the top of your iTunes). The second thing to do is make an “iCloud Errors” smart playlist so you can triage any of those songs.

What we’re basically doing is looking for all the songs that are in our library that didn’t get matched or uploaded (or weren’t already purchased from iTunes). This playlist is going to basically show you two types of errors:

1. Errors
2. Ineligible

The first thing you’re going to do is select all, right-click, and choose “Add to iCloud”. iCloud, often, just messes up the first time through and it’ll upload or match a bunch of tracks the second time. Once you’ve done that, you need to deal with these tracks individually.

Let’s deal with the Ineligible tracks first.

Ineligble Tracks

These, by and large, will be tracks that fall below iTunes Match’s standards. Usually they’ll be tracks you ripped a long time ago and are below 128kb (bit rate) or will have been ripped at a variable rate and didn’t require much (often vocal or quiet tracks end up at a low bit rate). Fixing these is simple: right-click on them, choose “Convert to MP3” (or AAC, whatever your iTunes is set to), and let it go. Your iTunes will make a copy of your track (metadata included), at a bitrate high enough for iTunes Match to be happy.

Occasionally, you’ll find iTunes Match needs a bit more coaxing, which involves turning your track into an AIFF track and then back to mp3. Macworld covers that process in detail, so I won’t repeat it here. I only had to do that twice out of ~9k songs.

Error Tracks

If you find a bunch of tracks marked as “Error”, in my experience, just retrying the “Add to iCloud” option fixed them. For a handful of other tracks, the issue was that the mp3 is corrupt and iTunes Match couldn’t read the song to match it. Your best bet is to re-rip that music, because surely you ripped that music off your own CDs and didn’t steal it from Napster or someone else’s collection, right?

One more hiccup …

I ran into a case where Purchased music that was definitely on my machine stopped working. I have no idea why or how, but it did. It was the most recent album I’d bought via iTunes. All of a sudden—my guess is that I ended up with a contention between the songs downloaded to my computer and to my iPad—iTunes lost the metadata and couldn’t play the music.

The solution was one of the major features of iTunes Match. I deleted the songs, and then re-downloaded them. Problem solved.

iTunes Metadata & Libraries

iTunes Match does a reasonably good job of managing metadata. It doesn’t replace any of it, so if you’re hoping that you’ll take all of your crappily tagged music and have iTunes replace it with much better data, you’re going to be disappointed.

However, if you’ve done a reasonably good job of keeping your iTunes library tagged, iTunes Match allows you to merge all of your iTunes libraries into one big library in the cloud. Doing that is insanely easy.

1. Turn on iTunes Match on your first library
2. Let it do its thing
3. Turn on iTunes Match on your second librar
4. Let it do its thing
5. Rinse and repeat for each library

There are some gotchas that pop up when managing your now merged libraries in the cloud.

• If you enabled iTunes Match on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV), Album Art doesn’t show up on a song until you play it. I’m sure some engineer at Apple thought that was a great idea, and it is a good way to ensure you’re not keeping a bunch of extra art on your device. But it sucks in real life, especially if you’re someone who tries to keep your album art up-to-date on your music. Hopefully, Apple comes up with a better solution.

• Smart playlists that rely on other playlists simply don’t sync. You can probably rebuild those playlists using nested playlist logic (option-click on that little plus icon), to create a playlist like this:

My “Radio” playlist

• Smart playlists that rely on the “Limit” feature simply don’t work on iOS devices. They ignore the limit. This is, by far, one of the most infuriating things about iTunes Match. I have a ton of playlists that rely on that feature. Your “Top 50 songs” playlist that is limited to the top 50 most played tracks, or your “Best Rated Songs” limited by tracks you’ve most recently added are both not going to work. Or, more accurately, they simply ignore the limit, which probably destroys the value of that playlist.
  • I’m guessing that this is because the iOS device doesn’t have the iTunes Library or the necessary database to make those limits work. This seems reasonably easy to fix (store that data in some sort of binary file and sync it out periodically).

• No Genius playlists on iOS devices. You can still create them on your Mac/PC, and then click the “Save Playlist” button. This playlist will then sync out to your devices. I’m assuming, once again, that this is because the Genius database is no longer getting synced to your phone. Apple should fix this. Genius is awesome.

• Playing songs on another device seems to only update the play count for the first song. This is just a weird bug.

Is it worth it?

In the end, is it worth it to move to iTunes Match? So far, for me, I think so. I no longer have to manage multiple iTunes libraries the way I was before, which probably saves me an hour or so a week. When I’m at work on my Macbook, I can listen to music that isn’t locally on my machine. If I ever run out of space, I’ll just blow up a bunch of my music, but still be able to listen to it as long as I have an internet connection.

The fact that I no longer need to have my media server turned on just to serve up music to the Apple TV is going to save me more in electricity than iTunes Match costs per year.

One day, when I get bored, I can go through and replace all of my old bad rips with pristine iTunes copies. That’s kind of nifty too, and probably worth the $25 by itself.

The broken smart playlists and Genius on iOS devices is a bummer, and in some cases, so un-Apple-like that I wonder how the hell it got out the door. Then I remember that probably 5% of iTunes users have ever created a smart playlist or used Genius and it makes a bit more sense.

In 6 months, if we’re still complaining about poorly matched songs, broken playlists, and all that fun stuff, I certainly won’t be happy. But, we’re still talking about $25/year, which to me feels worth it just for having a backup of all my music off-site, and the reduced electricity use in my house from not having to keep a media server turned on.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

The Reallllllly Magic Scenario

Almost everything that needed to happen to get Virginia Tech into the BCS Championship game happened.

Except one thing.

Auburn lost to Alabama.

Which kinda blows the whole thing up. Sure, Clemson losing twice didn't help, but it wasn't killer. And it would have been helpful for Notre Dame to beat Stanford.

But none of those were killer. Those were all nice to haves.

The must have was Auburn defeating Alabama. And it didn't happen, leaving my Hokies' chances of a BCS title bid much, much, much thinner.

They are, however, non-zero.

First, the Hokies need to take care of business and defeat Clemson to lock up the ACC Championship. Oklahoma needs to show some pride and beat Oklahoma State for the Big 12 title.

Those two events should move Virginia Tech into 3rd in the BCS standings. It's not definite—but that would be likely. Then we need some voter angst. Not wanting to pit Alabama, who didn't even win their division, in a rematch against LSU for the title. Maybe Georgia knocks off LSU in the SEC Championship game, taking a guaranteed bid, and the voters get cold feet about basically having two non-conference champs facing off for the title.

That's our best bet. It's unlikely, but there's a small chance everything could fall the Hokies' way.

Given that, they better take care of Clemson next week. ACC Champions. That's goal #1.

Magic Scenario Update

You might remember that I laid out a path for Virginia Tech to play in the BCS Championship game. I did it jokingly, not really expecting there was a chance that the Hokies would end up with a shot.

What a difference a week makes.

Oregon lost. Oklahoma lost. Oklahoma St. lost.

The Hokies vault from the bottom of the BCS to 5th, with at least one team above them guaranteed to lose. It looks like the BCS now shakes out like this:

6) Virginia Tech
5) Stanford
4) Oklahoma State
3) Arkansas
2) Alabama
1) LSU

LSU plays Arkansas this week. At this point, we have to be rooting for an LSU victory, since I’m not sure an LSU loss would move them down the polls enough.

So, let’s put in LSU over Arkansas.

Alabama plays Auburn. We need an Auburn victory.

Oklahoma State plays Oklahoma in two weeks. We need the Sooners to bring it and beat the Cowboys. Oklahoma over Oklahoma State.

Stanford plays Notre Dame this week. A Notre Dame victory would be ideal, since that would hurt both Stanford and Oregon’s chances of jumping up the list. Stanford is then going to play UCLA or Utah in the Pac–12 Championship Game. We’d like Stanford to lose there as well. But we don’t need to be greedy.

Of course, we really need the Hokies to beat Virginia (not a given), and then defeat Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. Neither of those will prove to be easy tasks, but there’s a chance that with both of those wins, the Hokies would vault over Stanford, regardless of the outcome of their games.

I think, if all of this happened, you’d end up with LSU #1 and Virginia Tech #2. I think that’s the best thing we can hope for at this point. To make it more confusing, we could also hope for Georgia over LSU in the SEC Championship Game.

Let’s see where we stand next week. If Alabama beats Auburn, the odds of the Hokies getting up into the top two drops considerably. Of course, if the Hokies play the way they played against UNC, they won’t defeat Virginia, which will render the whole thing moot.

Google Wants Me to Rename My Wireless Network →

File this one in the Google tenet of "Do No Evil", right?

"We're introducing a method that lets you opt out of having your wireless access point included in the Google Location Server. To opt out, visit your access point’s settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with "_nomap." For example, if your SSID is "Network," you‘d need to change it to "Network_nomap."

So, if I don't want Google to map my (private) wireless network, I need to change the name of my network, and go around and update the 15+ wireless devices that I have around the house? How about if I want you to map my wireless network, I change it to "_map"? Wouldn't that be more fair?

(I realize that arguing about Google mapping a radio signal that's broadcasting from my house is sort of pointless, but this is more of a principle thing.)

Just another sign of Google's growing tone deafness.

(Via Search Engine Land.)

Testing Out the iPhone 4s Camera

The Magic Scenario

#10 Virginia Tech defeats North Carolina, Virginia

#9 Clemson defeats NC State, South Carolina

#8 Arkansas defeats LSU, loses to Miss. St.

#7 Oregon loses to USC or Oregon St. (or both)

#6 Oklahoma loses to Baylor, defeats Oklahoma St.

#5 Boise State lost to TCU

#4 Stanford lost to Oregon, ideally would lose to Notre Dame or Cal

#3 Alabama loses to Auburn

#2 Oklahoma State loses to Oklahoma, loses Big 12 Championship too?

#1 LSU loses to Arkansas, loses to Georgia in SEC Championship too?

If all of that can happen, then the Clemson/VT ACC Championship game should be between two top-5 teams. If VT wins that, they should have a clear path to play Houston in the greatest BCS Championship game ever.

Hey, it could happen … McWorld!!!

Ah, Somerville

Here’s why I dig Somerville:

• For lunch, the gf and I walked about 15 minutes down a reasonably tree-lined street to the Five Horses Tavern for lunch.
• We had awesome fried buttermilk chicken tenders and pork belly tacos (really good)
• I had a Hobgoblin beer (there were lots of good options)
• It cost about $30 for two of us
• For dinner, we went across town (could have walked or taken the subway, but we drove the 10 minutes) to meet friends for dinner. The place we were going was packed (we were going for a local beer tasting, so we walked next door, heard some live music and ate some decent, cheapish food.
• Oh, and drank some good beer.
• Then we went down a couple of doors and had a couple of beers.
• The whole thing was probably $30 for the two of us again.

A bunch of good beer, some good food, some live music, and most of it within walking distance. $60.

Today, if I wasn’t lazily watching football, I’d probably walk down that same tree-lined street and go see a movie. If I lived in the ’burbs, I’d have trees, but not the array of stuff in walking distance. If I lived in a bigger city, I’d be poor and stabbed.

I’ll take the happy medium.

Airlines Are Trying to Cut Boarding Times on Planes, Doing It Shittily →

"Airlines have been boarding passengers since the first commercial flight, but as they have added new classes of seating to their cabins and new fees for priority boarding — all in the name of more revenue — they have slowed down the whole process.

Checked-baggage fees have only added to the problem, because travelers now take more roll-ons onboard, blocking the aisles as they try to cram their belongings into any available space."

I took two flights yesterday (and will take two more on Thursday), and I spent most of my boarding time thinking about ways to make it better. The easiest way? Someone (flight attentdant?) should be roaming around bitching at people for doing stupid things (shoving a giant bag into the overhead and taking up the entire thing, sticking all of your belongings in the overhead before anyone else has a chance to even get on the plane, being a general douche).

The simplest fixes I've thought of:

• If you can't put something in the overhead due to its size, weight, or your physical condition, then you should check it. No exceptions.
• You get to put one item in the overhead until the doors are shut and everyone is seated. If you put your jacket or your purse up there, you better hope your carry-on fits under the seat. One item.
• In an economy-boosting measure, all carry-ons that are going in the overheads get tagged when you get to the ticket kiosk. At the gate, you put them in a pile. A team of baggage handlers takes those bags and plays Tetris with the baggage, trying to get your bag near your seat, and fitting as much in the overheads before anyone even sets foot on the plane.

I kinda like the last one the best. These guys (maybe two or three folks?) are working while the plane is getting setup. On a big flight, there's a couple of hundred bags going in the overhead. They throw all the bags on a hand truck, take it down the jetway, and start maneuvering. Assuming that you can reduce the amount of time it takes to board a plane, and that airlines can therefore get a few more planes out a day, there's no profit loss. You're getting more efficient, hiring thousands of new people across the country, and making the flying process might more relaxing for most passengers.

Sure, there are some exceptions. If all the bags won't fit, they will gate-check your bag for you, and give you your tag as you board the plane. If you're late, and you missed the pre-loading, they will gate-check your bag for you.

I'm sure there's some reason it won't work. But for now, this is the best plan I've got. And it's better than just charging more.

(Via The Brooks Review.)

Another iCloud Lesson Learned

Katie was managing 4 or 5 different versions of calendars between her iPhone, Mac, and Google Calendar. It was leading to dupes (and trips!) of things showing up and just making a general mess. So I thought I would help. I get everything reduced to just a couple of calendars synced to iCloud.

Then I go to move her Google Calendar to iCloud like I did with my own GCal. I export her ics file, import it into iCal, and merge it into her normal calendar.

Everything looks normal.

Until iCloud starts sending out acceptance emails to people for meetings from her work calendar (that had been synched with Google Calendar back in 2008 and 2009).

Yep, tens, maybe hundreds of acceptances to meetings that were years old. I’m sure there’s a setting that I missed somewhere, but that just doesn’t seem like the right thing, Apple, now does it?

Politics Be Crazy

The current Republican party is so crazy. They are legitimately behind someone (Herman Cain) who has no chance at all in an actual election, when they’ve got a real candidate (as douchey as Mitt Romney might be) who could potentially hold his own against President Obama.

I suppose that this dalliance with Cain is just the GOP’s way of showing Romney some tough love (like an abusive boyfriend). Drag him right, so he basically becomes unelectable. It’s a good strategy.

In the short-term, though, the GOP gets to push someone who thinks this tax plan is something that middle American can get behind. (Graph from On the Economy). Stay crazy, GOP.

Crazy Tax Plan

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