Since SongGenie and CoverScout work so closely with iTunes, we’ve been closely investigating iTunes Match and how it works and have found some interesting details that we wanted to share. At lot of us here at equinux enjoy using iTunes Match, here's what we've found out:
What is iTunes Match?
iTunes Match is a service from Apple, that simply allows you to download any song you have on your computer onto your iPhone, iPad or another Mac. Your songs are "matched" to songs sold through the iTunes Store and Apple allows you to download those directly from the cloud.
How iTunes matches your songs
Matching is done with some form of acoustic fingerprinting - just like SongGenie uses. And like SongGenie’s acoustic matching, iTunes Match doesn’t always get it 100% right - every now and then you’ll see that it uploads a song available on the iTunes store instead of “matching” it.
Does iTunes replace SongGenie?
No. Even though iTunes can recognize and match songs, even if they have missing or incorrect song information, iTunes will never “fix” that information for you. Even if you delete and re-download a song via iTunes Match, your songs will still be missing information or have incorrect metadata.
Fix song information everywhere.
If you use SongGenie to update and fix your song information, that information will automatically show up on your iPhone or iPad running iTunes Match. So if you change “Track 1” to “Help!” with SongGenie, it will update that song on your iPhone and iPad automatically, thanks to iTunes Match.
iTunes Match and lyrics
In our tests, all song information was sent to your iTunes Match library in the cloud just fine, however lyrics occasionally seemed to get lost on the way. This seems to be a bug and we expect Apple will fix it in the future. So if you notice that some of your lyrics aren’t immediately available on all of your devices, it’s probably this glitch.
Does iTunes Match replace CoverScout?
No. If a song is available on the iTunes store, it will get a cover via iTunes, just like you have been able to get covers in the past. But all those albums and songs for which iTunes doesn't have covers will still need artwork from CoverScout.
Covers everywhere – thanks iTunes Match!
In fact, thanks to iTunes Match, covers that you add with CoverScout are then automatically added to your iPhone or iPad with iTunes Match. So add a cover on your Mac and boom – it shows up on your iPhone.
Hopefully that explains how SongGenie & CoverScout can both be used to get your collection looking spectacular on all your devices – with iTunes Match. If you have any questions, be sure to let us know!