would you recommend storing my itunes library on their cloud service?

banjobongo

I have a collection of over 100GB in my itunes library, mostly classical/opera, only about one third purchased from itunes, the rest from Cds. Im nervous that that the matching service wont always use a good version for albums I didnt purchase, and Im also nervous about how long it would take to initially set up?
Once its up and running how good is the service?
Would really appreacaite hearing from somebody who like me has a big classical collection on itunes?

Sad Professor

I can't really comment on how well it works with classical music, but generally speaking, matching accuracy is extremely poor. It's unable to differentiate between different masters of a track and it might well get confused between different performances/recordings. Simply put, if you are very particular about the correct versions being used, it can't be trusted to get them right. Unfortunately there's no option to force the tracks to upload.

How long it takes to set-up depends on how many tracks have to be uploaded and waiting for Apple's servers to return matches. I had absolute nightmare setting it up. I think it took over a day with multiple restarts, log outs and other messing around. The service is great in theory but very unreliable. While I've had long periods of smooth usage, I've also has a lot of problems with it often requiring me to reset everything or turn it off/on a dozen times.

Having said that, it's only 25 a year and it saves me having to sync my iPhone with iTuens. Apple are relatively new to online services and I'm reasonably confident it will improve in time.

Zcott

For albums that are matched, I've found it keeps the same version (even for classical music), and if it doesn't recognise them, it'll upload your version for you.

I have about 100gb of music as well and most of it wasn't recognised, so it took a few days to upload all the stuff iTunes didn't recognise, but having done that I think it's great. I'm happy to pay for it every year.

starlit

I recommend it if you have a lot of tunes to store or back up but to be honest best to leave it in the library and maybe back it up by other means cd/memory stick another mp3.