Apple Reopens iTunes Match Beta for U.S. Developers

Apple has sent out an email to registered developers today notifying them that the company has opened the iTunes Match beta to additional developers in the United States. The iTunes Match beta was initially opened late last month, but closed to new registrations within a few hours after the initial quota of developers was reached.

iTunes Match beta testing has now been expanded to additional developers in the United States.

iTunes Match stores your music library in iCloud and allows you to enjoy your collection from anywhere, any time, on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer. Any of your songs, including music you've imported from CDs, that matches with the 18 million songs in the iTunes Store will become available in iCloud and will play back at iTunes Plus quality (256 Kbps DRM-free AAC) — even if your original was of a lower quality.

Apple goes on to note that developers must upgrade to the new iTunes 10.5 beta 8 in order to use iTunes Match, and continues to warn that all iCloud libraries will be deleted at the end of the beta testing period, so users should be sure to retain copies of their music libraries.

itunes match beta reopened
iTunes Match is priced at $24.99 per year, and Apple is providing developers who sign up for the service with additional time on their subscription to carry them through the beta testing period and the first full year of public availability.

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Top Rated Comments

alectheking Avatar
185 months ago
What happens if iTunes Match scans your pr0n stash?
if porno musicals are your type of thing..
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
peterdevries Avatar
185 months ago
It's a US service, so we can't really complain though ;-)

Well the thing we could complain about is that Apple is not really fast with adding other countries to their licensed countries list. Take for example iTunes movie content. This has been around for what, five years? It's still missing in a large part of the world.
The Dutch iTunes movie content is still MIA. I know we represent a tiny market compared to the US, UK and german speaking region, but it shouldn't be that hard to focus part of the effort on including smaller regions in negotiations with providers.

I do not have any confidence that I will be using iTunes match anytime soon. :mad:
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gnasher729 Avatar
185 months ago
I don't mind spending the $ during the dev program, but does anyone actually have this working full force? All I see is problems with it, and no sense spending more cash for a beta non working service.

I'll explain it: The idea is that you, as a developer, who wants to make money from Apple's services, use the beta service to help Apple find problems in the service so that they get fixed before general consumers use the service.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
spasm321 Avatar
185 months ago
Can somebody confirm if I can subscribe using iTunes Gift Cards credit?

It worked for me.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
alectheking Avatar
185 months ago
I'm sorry, but what?? You can't polish a turd, so why even waste the resources up-converting the lower bitrate songs? And what about higher bitrate songs? They get down-converted? No thank you, Apple. I will stick with Amazon for my cloud music storage.

Besides...who the bloody hell wants to use iTunes if they don't have to?

It doesn't up convert, it replaces entirely.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
besweeeet Avatar
185 months ago
...but talking about iTunes Match in a public forum such as this violates your developer NDA.

Didn't Apple violate their own NDA by posting information such as what's found on http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/? :rolleyes:
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)