iTunes Match Program Misses October Deadline
Apple's iTunes Match service has missed its October deadline.
The company previously advertised the launch of iTunes Match at the iPhone 4S media event last September.
As of today, the iTunes Store still lists iTunes Match among its "Quick Links" as a service that is labeled as "Coming Soon."
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Developers for the new service have been beta testing the service since last August.
Some problems have been discovered regarding the beta for iTunes Match. A few developers have encountered stalling while attempting to scan a user's music library, and other times not correctly matching local files that are available on the iTunes Store.
Several accounts have been reset to carefully configure the service for its launch.
The missed launch means that the feature has been removed from iTunes 10.5, and iTunes Match may now become a part of the next iTunes update.
MacRumors has provided some more details on iTunes Match: "Sources have indicated that Apple is close to a launch of iTunes Match, with retail store staff having been briefed on the service in preparation for its debut."
"But with the calendar now having turned to November, Apple has missed its public launch target for iTunes Match. The company has not yet commented on the status of iTunes Match, leaving some questions about its plans even though a launch still seems near,” the technology Website added.
The new iTunes’ program will support music collections of up to 25000 songs for $24.99 per year. When the service scans users' music libraries, whether legally downloaded or ripped CD tracks, several iTunes tracks from the iTunes store will appear alongside them.
Any matched songs from an iTunes Match subscriber will also be re-downloadable for other iOS devices. These downloads will be 256 Kbps AAC files, even if the original user-owned files are of a lower quality.
The service will also automatically upload any songs that are not available from the library of 18 million songs on the iTunes Store.
The iTunes Match service will fall under the iCloud umbrella that Apple has used to brand its cloud-based services.
