iOS 6: iCloud with iTunes Match now streams your music directly from the cloud

News

  • June 13, 2012 at 7:24 am

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A cloud illustration with a album covers inside

Out of all the cloud storage music services, Apple’s iCloud is by far our favorite and this is mainly because of iTunes Match. Uploading and syncing even a moderately sized music library is generally a hassle, and I gave up on uploading mine to Google Music half-way, I only keep around 500 songs there.

Instead, with iTunes Match all your music becomes immediately available in iCloud as long as it has been matched to music on Apple’s servers. In addition your cloud copies are available in higher definition 256kbps AAC format irrespective of the quality of your local files and we’ve even showed you how you can easily upgrade all your local music using iTunes Match here.

Our single biggest annoyance with iCloud and iTunes Match has been that in order to listen to your cloud-stored music on an iOS device, i.e. iPad, iPhone etc., the song would first have to fully download to your device and then played. This meant a delay between selecting a track and actually listening to it, and it also filled up your device’s storage with the downloaded files.

Well one of the new features in iOS 6, and one that had generally slipped by, is the ability to now actually stream music directly from iCloud.
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How to: sign-up and access Google Music for PC and Android from outside the US, easily

Guides

  • November 20, 2011 at 9:19 am

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Google Music

I’m sure you’ve read about Google’s online music service, appropriately titled Google Music. If you haven’t, it’s Google’s online music store and it’s also a free service which allows you to upload up to 20,000 of your own music files to Google’s cloud. Then, it allows you to listen to both purchased and uploaded songs from any browser (Windows or Mac PC) or through the Google Music app on Android devices. It’s Google’s answer to Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Player.

Unfortunately the service is currently only available within the US, and although Google will successively begin offering the service to other countries, if you reside outside the United States you will be out of luck for a while. Nevertheless there is a very easy way to sign-up and use the service from anywhere in the world, if you are willing to jump a couple of hoops. Note you still won’t be able to buy any music through the service, but you will have access to the free storage and streaming service for you own songs.
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What do all the new cloud icons in iTunes mean about iTunes Match and your iCloud library and how-to troubleshoot errors

Guides

  • November 15, 2011 at 7:54 am

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iTunes Match subscription email

If, like us, you were anxious to try out the new iTunes Match service offered by Apple, you’ve downloaded the latest version of iTunes, and subscribed to the $25/month service — more info on that here. You’ve run iTunes Match and your library is now fully accessible from iCloud. Note that running iTunes Match does not affect your locally stored files, also if you’ve painstakingly edited the meta data (i.e. Artist name, Album etc.) of your files, these will be transferred to the iCloud copies, even if the files are just matched and not uploaded.

So now you could be presented with a new set of icons in iTunes which show the status of each song in iTunes Match and iCloud. Apple has created a handy table to guide you through these cryptic new cloud figures, which however tell you a lot about the status of your library:
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Nook Color price to drop to $199, getting update with Hulu Plus and more music services

News

  • November 4, 2011 at 5:34 pm

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B&N Nook Color charging on a stack of books

Yesterday we brought you the news on Barnes & Noble’s upcoming tablet, the Nook Tablet, which will retail for $249. It only makes sense that the previous generation Nook Color, which currently retails for the same price, will see a price drop. B&N is planning to cut the Nook Color’s price by $50 to $199. It will also be getting a software update, version 1.4, with Hulu Plus and additional music streaming services from Rhapsody, MOG and Grooveshark with free trials — Pandora is already included with the NC.

We are still doubtful that it will have much success even at the discounted price, since the Amazon Kindle Fire will also retail for $199, while the more capable Nook Tablet is only $50 more. You can check out our Nook Tablet vs. Kindle Fire and the original Nook Color vs. Kindle Fire comparisons. In any case, it’s good news for existing Nook Color owners who will be getting more from their e-Reader/tablet soon. Even better, you can grab yourself a Nook Color for free, just by entering our simple giveaway.
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