What Does the Little Cloud Symbol Mean?

Always happy to answer questions and we get many phone calls to resolve issues with CD ripping or other aspects of digital music. Last week I ran through a Q&A with a client day by day, over email. He's away on business so the stuttering conversation was the result of flights and time differences. Me, I remained stuck here in rain soaked Brentwood.

Q: What does the little cloud symbol with a down arrow mean in iTunes?

A: This indicates tracks that have been purchased from iTunes Music Store against the account to which that computer is linked, but haven't yet been downloaded.

Q: How did I make these purchases? Don't remember doing it and wouldn't they have downloaded when I bought them?

A: OK, couple of ways. maybe after buying the tracks the computer you were working on lost its internet connection. Or the transmission got screwed up. Alternatively you could have made the purchase from an iPhone or an iPod Touch. The tracks would have been sent to those devices over their data link, then synced with your computer later.

Q: Wouldn't they sync when I connected my iPhone or whatever to the computer at home?

A: I don't think so, I think syncing purchased music only goes one way, from iTunes Music Store to one of your five authorised devices.

Q: Would the symbol have anything to do with iTunes Match?

A: No, and you don't have an iTunes Match account (at least you didn't when I was with you last week).

Q: Do I have to enter a password when I buy music from iTunes Music Store?

A: I think that's optional. You can turn on one-click purchasing that side steps that, so anyone can make a purchase if that's set that way.

Q: So that explains why I've bough stuff from this Bon Jovi. Can I get a refund on music I don't like?

A: No, Apple doesn't do refunds.

International Family Sync

So here's the question - how do you make the following work?

Potential client travels extensively, homes in London and overseas, where members of his family (eight people in total) live, and of course enjoy music. He would like his music collection to be available to everyone, everywhere. They have a mix of iPods and iPhones.

Well my first thought was a cloud service such as Dropbox. That appears on your desktop pretty much as if it were a local drive, so computers in each location could be set up to reference their local version of a central Dropbox folder holding the family music. Two problems came to mind, one being the cost. Not the cost of using a CD ripping service but of buying close on 100 Gb of Dropbox space; but then if you can afford to live internationally I don't suppose the cost of a Dropbox account is a show stopper.

Second, and more significantly, is the fuss of adding more music to the library. A CD would need to be ripped then added to the Dropbox folder, then each local PC would have to reload their PC so that iTunes picks up the latest tracks. Sure you could simply "share" the central library but then the remote iPods won't be able to sync at all.

Having given this some thought the only viable solution I can see is to set up an iTunes Match account. It's around £25 pa, affordable, and you can connect up to 10 devices. Other Macs and PCs can be part of this network and changes made centrally are replicated across the network. Music can be streamed to the iPhones or loaded like an iPod in a sync process. This seems to me to be the most viable solution.