Apple iTunes Match (+ iPhone and RNSe)

[audigex]

Hey guys

(Edit: Long post of crap following - if you cba reading, skip to TL;DR in bold below)

Not sure if this is off topic, but it relates to the RNS-e specifically so I'm guessing not? Apologies if I'm in the wrong place.

Basically I've got an RNS-e with iPod connector. I connect my iPhone 4S to it, I play my playlists and music and such things - all is well and good in the world.

Now, I've got about 80GB of music, which doesn't fit on my iPhone. I've also got an unlimited data connection, and I object to paying £10 a month for Spotify. It's a great service, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't work with the Audi iPhone connector, and I refuse to pay £10 a month when I don't end up owning any of the music - £120 a year is about 20 albums/150 songs, I'd rather just own them.

So, I'm looking at iTunes Match/Amazon Cloud Player/Google Play Music. Basically you pay nothing (Google) or about £20/year (Apple/Amazon) and you can upload 20,000 or so songs, which you still own and don't lose any rights to. But you gain the ability to stream them like Spotify for a 6th of the cost. For me, this seems pretty ideal - I've got 11,000 songs, and I can spend £100 a year on new music while still ending up spending the same as I would for Spotify. Since I already own most of the back catalogue I like, this works. Okay, enough plugging. I've basically settle on iTunes Match, because I've got an iPhone and my music is in iTunes. The others don't play nicely with the iPhone so are useless to me (although I'm using Google as a backup anyway, which I highly recommend)

TL;DR The problem being that I don't know whether iTunes Match works though the RNSe. Has anyone tried it? Do you get playlists/albums/songs displayed properly on the RNSe, and does it work with streaming music or just tracks which are already downloaded? Are there issues with streaming music over 3G at 70mph? Any experiences appreciated.

Cheers

 

[NHN]

Based on your info, its a MK2 with AMI?

 

[audigex]

Eeerm, maybe? Sorry, this is the part of my spec I'm a little hazy on - I remember doing the research, and I remember that one option was better than another, but I can't remember which was which.

Car is almost exactly a year old, if that helps with the RNSe versioning... and I believe it's the AMI rather than the plain iPod dock, because the iPod dock had an issue where it only shows the first 5 playlists or something? I seem to remember going for the better of the two iPod dock options, anyway.

It goes in the glovebox and has a short connector which I can swap out for a USB one, among others.

 

[Ash187]

yh i am going to say what nigel was thinking... swap that ipod connector with the usb connector and just plug in a hard drive to the AMI and put as much music as you like on that!

 

[audigex]

If I was going to do that, I could just use 2 SD cards. The issue with that is that I have a lot of songs, a lot of playlists etc and I don't really want to be managing files in more than one location: I really don't want to be messing about having to add the files to the HDD when I buy new songs. The point of using iTunes match was that I can just have one laptop, one phone and everything will be available.

 

[Ash187]

ahhh yh good point! i hate having to take my ipod home to update it

 

[audigex]

That was exactly the issue in the first place - having to update SD cards or swap the music around on/update my iPhone. A HDD would let me get all my music, so I wouldn't have to keep swapping in/out my favourite songs, but when I add new stuff then that would need some work. In this day and age, I want my things to just work.

 

[NHN]

yh i am going to say what nigel was thinking... swap that ipod connector with the usb connector and just plug in a hard drive to the AMI and put as much music as you like on that!

I'm afraid not, I was 1st trying to clarify how he was connected via rns-e, then we can ascertain his options.

If the tunes are displayed in the folder structure when plugged into the ami, then I suspect it will work, but if its a seperate app which doenst add to your playlist etc in the normal structure as such, then this may be where the break in the link is, dont they offer a free trial?

 

[audigex]

Cheers for the feedback - there doesn't appear to be a free trial, so it looks like I'll probably be the test case, then - I reckon it's worth a single year subscription just because it then works as an upgrade to 256kbps AAC and a backup for all my music: if you lose your music, you just re-subscribe and download it again. From what you're saying, NHN, I suspect it SHOULD work from the point of view that in the music app, the Match songs just appear alongside the rest of your music. I guess it depends whether AMI is tightly integrated with the music app, or with the underlying directory structure, and how Apple store the match files

I'll let you all know if I do decide to sign up and whether it works as expected

 

[NHN]

Just find another person with Itunes Match & see if they can check if it shows up in ami properly & plays before you spend the dough

I am asking few people so if they report back I'll update.