I'm planning to get iTunes Match, but I have two questions that I haven't seen answered elsewhere:
1) How does iTunes Match identify the non-iTunes-purchased songs in your iTunes library to see if they're in the iTunes Store database? The majority of my iTunes library was ripped from my large CD collection. I never liked how iTunes alphabetizes artists by Firstname Lastname, so I changed the artist names to Lastname, Firstname. Will iTunes Match look at, say, "Down by the River" by Young, Neil and think, "Nope, that must be different from 'Down by the River' by Neil Young"? Or does it analyze a portion of the digital wave form, or go by some other digital tag?
2) That ties in with my second question. I ripped my CDs in 128 Kbps AAC format years ago, so my collection would fit on my iPod at the time, and because I believed the initial reports that 128K was "good enough." I was thinking about re-ripping my collection at 256K, but now with iTunes Match, I wouldn't have to do that for songs that are in the iTunes store (assuming they're recognized despite my having changed artists' names). So let's say that 95% of my songs are available in the iTunes Store, and I delete my 128K local copies and replace them with downloaded 256K copies (I saw an article on how to do this). That means that 5% of my songs, which were ripped at 128K, have been uploaded to iCloud. Those, I'd want to re-rip at 256K and re-upload to iCloud. I'm guessing that the most efficient way to do this would be to create a playlist of all my 128K songs, make sure I do indeed have the original CDs, delete those songs from both my Mac and iCloud, re-rip them at 256K, and re-upload them to iCloud. Does that sound like the best way?
1) How does iTunes Match identify the non-iTunes-purchased songs in your iTunes library to see if they're in the iTunes Store database? The majority of my iTunes library was ripped from my large CD collection. I never liked how iTunes alphabetizes artists by Firstname Lastname, so I changed the artist names to Lastname, Firstname. Will iTunes Match look at, say, "Down by the River" by Young, Neil and think, "Nope, that must be different from 'Down by the River' by Neil Young"? Or does it analyze a portion of the digital wave form, or go by some other digital tag?
2) That ties in with my second question. I ripped my CDs in 128 Kbps AAC format years ago, so my collection would fit on my iPod at the time, and because I believed the initial reports that 128K was "good enough." I was thinking about re-ripping my collection at 256K, but now with iTunes Match, I wouldn't have to do that for songs that are in the iTunes store (assuming they're recognized despite my having changed artists' names). So let's say that 95% of my songs are available in the iTunes Store, and I delete my 128K local copies and replace them with downloaded 256K copies (I saw an article on how to do this). That means that 5% of my songs, which were ripped at 128K, have been uploaded to iCloud. Those, I'd want to re-rip at 256K and re-upload to iCloud. I'm guessing that the most efficient way to do this would be to create a playlist of all my 128K songs, make sure I do indeed have the original CDs, delete those songs from both my Mac and iCloud, re-rip them at 256K, and re-upload them to iCloud. Does that sound like the best way?