Should I try to fix itunes match uploaded songs to matched?

Bathplug · Dec 20, 2012

Most of my music library was matched but some songs were uploaded even though some are definately on itunes. Should I try get these songs matched instead of leave them as uploaded? There not causing any problems to me and they don't take up any space in my icloud storage but its a bit strange how they wasn't matched.

Thanks

James Godfrey · Dec 30, 2012

You can try, however you will probably still be subject to uploaded music no matter what you do, think its probably for copyright reasons, because technically if you made a blank track of similar length to a track you would like and just edited the details within iTunes it could potentially match the track, which they want to avoid, so unmatched songs are purposely done to avoid this

shorn · Jan 1, 2013

I tend to find that the odd tracks that don't match are due to differing lengths. Change the length under options to match the iTunes version and create a new copy of the track. Match this one to iTunes and 90% of the time it works.

For the odd occasion that it just refuses to match, I'll buy the track. I'd rather have a consistent quality per album. (I.e, all 256 Kbps)

There are better tutorials on how to do this on these forums and others sites.

I'm about to hit 500 albums in my iTunes library, all successfully matched.

HazyCloud · Jan 1, 2013

James Godfrey said:
You can try, however you will probably still be subject to uploaded music no matter what you do, think its probably for copyright reasons, because technically if you made a blank track of similar length to a track you would like and just edited the details within iTunes it could potentially match the track, which they want to avoid, so unmatched songs are purposely done to avoid this

Nope, iTunes Match does not use metadata at all. It doesn't because of the reason you specified. iTunes Match uses something similar to Shazam to identify the tracks.

OP, no matter what you do, you're going to be stuck with uploaded tracks. I have 15k+ in my library and only about 95% were matched.

shorn said:
I tend to find that the odd tracks that don't match are due to differing lengths. Change the length under options to match the iTunes version and create a new copy of the track. Match this one to iTunes and 90% of the time it works.

For the odd occasion that it just refuses to match, I'll buy the track. I'd rather have a consistent quality per album. (I.e, all 256 Kbps)

There are better tutorials on how to do this on these forums and others sites.

I'm about to hit 500 albums in my iTunes library, all successfully matched.

I've had far less success with matching the song length. I have however had decent success with re-ripping the uploaded song as 256 AAC. Although, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

From A Buick 8 · Jan 10, 2013

I have several Greatest Hits CD's and compilations with various artist. How does iTunes match handle those.

Will it match the disc it came from, or will it match the "Album" that the song would have came from.

Bear · Jan 10, 2013

HazyCloud said:
Nope, iTunes Match does not use metadata at all. It doesn't because of the reason you specified. iTunes Match uses something similar to Shazam to identify the tracks.
...

What I wished Apple did was use your metadata for a first pass attempt at matching the item. And if it didn't match using their algorithm then they should match it from whereever.

From A Buick 8 said:
I have several Greatest Hits CD's and compilations with various artist. How does iTunes match handle those.

Will it match the disc it came from, or will it match the "Album" that the song would have came from.

It matches it with the song from whatever copies it has. It keeps your metadata attached to it, so you won't necessarily know the source.

HazyCloud · Jan 10, 2013

Bear said:
What I wished Apple did was use your metadata for a first pass attempt at matching the item. And if it didn't match using their algorithm then they should match it from whereever.

It matches it with the song from whatever copies it has. It keeps your metadata attached to it, so you won't necessarily know the source.

No, that's just wishing for something that won't ever happen. If it did match by metadata, I could get anything I wanted from the iTunes Store for free and then just update the data once it was "matched". It'll always be the way it is now. All we can do is assume Apple isn't happy with it and is constantly trying to update it.

From A Buick 8 · Jan 10, 2013

Bear said:
It matches it with the song from whatever copies it has. It keeps your metadata attached to it, so you won't necessarily know the source.

Thanks, that makes sense, i think im going to pull the trigger on this.

Bear · Jan 10, 2013

HazyCloud said:
No, that's just wishing for something that won't ever happen. If it did match by metadata, I could get anything I wanted from the iTunes Store for free and then just update the data once it was "matched". It'll always be the way it is now. All we can do is assume Apple isn't happy with it and is constantly trying to update it.

Ahh, I think you misunderstood me. If a song has a few possible matches according to however Apple does the matching, I am saying it should first use the user provided metadata to see if that is one of the possible matches.

I did not say Apple should blindly use the metadata, only use it for matching hints.

HazyCloud · Jan 10, 2013

Bear said:
Ahh, I think you misunderstood me. If a song has a few possible matches according to however Apple does the matching, I am saying it should first use the user provided metadata to see if that is one of the possible matches.

I did not say Apple should blindly use the metadata, only use it for matching hints.

I gotcha ya. That makes more sense. I don't see any issue with that as long as Apple still falls back on their form of matching after the fact. You don't want people abusing how it works.

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Should I try to fix itunes match uploaded songs to matched?

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