iCloud + iTunes Match ideal for us DJs?

[Wickedsight]

Just watched the WWDC keynote, where they announced wireless syncing for iPhone and the iTunes match service.

iTunes match will scan your library and upgrade the music you ripped to 256kbps AAC. All for $25 a year.

I can see myself buying a track on my phone on the way to a gig, rating it, syncing it to my laptop, and spinning it an hour later.

Do you guys think this is an interesting development?

[MrPopinjay]

Not really. Couldn't you have done that before anyway?

[ssjaken]

I agree with Popinjay. I think the ability to just buy a song, pay for the extra kbps and dump it when you get to an event already exists. Does this like send it from the phone to the laptop?

[Wickedsight]

Does this like send it from the phone to the laptop?

Pretty much, needs to be on wifi tho.

[mostapha]

I've been wrong about almost every prediction I've made about apple, and I think that service is stupid…which means it's going to be insanely successful for the general public and if your DJ software supports AAC, then you'll probably like it for that exact purpose, OP.

I love that this development comes about a day after I decided to stop buying mp3s and move up to buying wavs and keeping flac files around. What's the point of paying for good-quality files if the fucking computer's going to compress the shit out of them for you anyway?

I love Apple for making an OS that lets me use real software and not fight with Windows…but literally every time they change anything about iTunes or the iPhone, I get a little more pissed off and care a little less that Android screens hurt my eyes and that their BS operating system is a bit more of a pain in the ass to use than un-jailbroken iOS.

And why is it that every time they've come out with an OS update lately it turns out that those 250 features actually wind up being 245 things that don't affect me or that I've done with 3rd party software that I like better anyway, 1 thing that is kinda neat but that never gets used, and 4 things I have to search the internet to figure out how to disable…?

I'm actually excited about some of the stuff that's going to be in Lion, and I'll probably do the upgrade as soon as I know Logic, Maschine, and Traktor will keep working. But I already have a list of "features" that I want gone: like, another criterion for me doing the upgrade is that I know how to turn them off before I start the install. iTunes is quickly joining that list. I'd almost rather not have music on my iPhone and buy a different media player (or just burn CDs like the dark ages) than deal with an even more intrusive version of iTunes that I never use to play files anyway.

[photojojo]

I know of at least one DJ on here that's been beta testing Lion for awhile. I know he uses Ableton and Traktor, not sure about Logic. He seems to like it so far.

[mostapha]

That's good to hear. I kind of assumed they wouldn't break Logic with an OS update considering that it's their product, but you never know. I'm more worried about Maschine and Traktor.

And the more I look at that list of features, the more I just want to turn things off. Mission Control–or is it Master Control–seems kinda cool, but not if a gesture is the only way to activate it. Gestures are cool for tablets that I don't want…I can't see them being more useful than the keyboard for a laptop. But I'm weird…I switched to Crome solely because there's an extension for it that makes me not have to use a mouse to browse the web.

Anyway, iCloud looks cool…it's just too little too late to keep me using iTunes.

[DJWilliams]

I'll never buy anything from iTunes, 256kbps FTL.

[Karlos Santos]

I just got an email from Apple saying that my MobileMe account will become an iCloud account "this fall" so i dont have much choice.

MobileMe is well handy for me, iDisk makes sharing and backing up my Traktor collections a piece of piss so... yeah ill be getting this cloudy stuff.

iTunes is becoming like a fattened goose ... soon for the chop if it carries on like this.
Currently its borked with the rainbow of death thingy... that should have been fixed already.

[jimbob5000]

For DJs, iCloud/iTunes match does not seem to be very useful. I mean, wherever I go DJing, I take my laptop with me for obvious reasons. All the music is on there, I don't need it in the iCloud, mClound or whateverCloud.
Don't get me wrong, maybe half of my music library is iTunes. But the other half just isn't and consists of tracks that are either not on the iTunes store or even on any digital music store at all. iCloud or iTunes match won't help me with that. And even if it could, I already have it, just in a different format.

Don't see a problem with the 256kbps bitrate though, AAC at that bitrate is just as good or bad as mp3 at 320k, so if you go for compressed files anyway, it really doesn't matter.

Technically, the iCloud thing seems to be useful for people who rely on a mostly apple-only digital lifestyle. It's free because it's supposed to support an apple-only lifestyle and it is paid for with all the money the company makes by selling it's hardware. It's supposed to lure in as many people into that lifestyle as possible, and if you're willing to live with that, iCloud may be a good thing.

But to me personally, the iCloud thing seems a little overhyped. I mean, I own three macs and an iphone, and for me and my way of doing things, I just don't see the point. Maybe it's because I'm still a little paranoid about uploading all my life onto some server, just waiting for some crooks to hack the service and use my data for their purposes. Maybe it's because on-the-go wireless data transfer via 3G networks in vast amounts still costs a considerable amount of money. But mostly it's because it won't be as useful to me as Mr. Jobs thinks it will be. Love my macbook, love my iPhone, but icloud - meh. I prefer a daily dose of dock cable.