Apple has been silently working on rolling out a new feature that replaces the previous Apple Music matchmaking system with a new one.
Well not exactly new, but it's a different system nonetheless.
Subscribers of the streaming service will notice in the coming days that their synced music content on the Apple cloud will not display the usual "Apple Music" label but simply display a "Matched" status instead. Furthermore, users on Apple Music will notice that they can play their music despite a lapsed subscription.
The reason?
Apple is applying the same technology that iTunes Match uses to match content to the cloud.
Previously, Apple Music would use the less efficient method of analyzing a music file's metadata to compare it with those stored on the cloud. If the system found no similar metadata, the track would be uploaded. This leads to a rather cluttered cloud as some songs were basically the same but had different metadata values.
In addition, all stored content would previously automatically carry a digital rights management (DRM) license to lock the track whenever a subscription lapsed or the music was played on a device that did not carry the Apple Music subscription.
Moving forward, users on the subscription will be glad to know that Apple has finally started to reroll its feature and apply the same audio fingerprinting that iTunes Music does. Basically, the feature will now rely on a track's acoustic fingerprint to look for similar tracks before uploading. This is a more reliable and accurate way of finding the same music stored on the cloud, which should improve syncing capabilities and clean out those cluttered music libraries.
As mentioned, tracks will now be DRM-free unless, of course, these were downloaded from Apple Music. Only tracks the user owns locally will not carry the licensing and thus will let users access their content without the unnecessary red tape.
Since the update is mostly rolling out server-side, Apple Music subscribers will have to manually update their saved local content to reflect the current changes. Tracks that have been previously matched with the iCloud can be deleted locally to force the system to redownload the track and update its status from the previous "Apple Music" label to the simple "Matched."
Furthermore, the iTunes Match subscription is purportedly reaching its end since an Apple Music subscription alone will suffice for both services. Apple is expected to transfer users on the former subscription to the latter one in the coming days.
Photo: Brian Brantner | Flickr
