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Apple Seeds iTunes 10.5.1 Beta 2 for Continued iTunes Match Testing

milo said:
I've been following these threads and don't remember seeing a confirmation either way. Could someone testing the service try it out and confirm either way?
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OK I can definitely state that it is using wave analysis. Here is what I did to be absolutely certain there was no metadata, even embedded in the file in some way that I was not able to see:

1.) I grabbed a track that many years ago I had recorded via Internet music stream. At that time I was saving songs as WAVs, to avoid another lossy itineration (and the app I used had trouble compressing on-the-fly too). This track was Blondie's Rapture, apparently a live version, but no idea from what album.

2.) Renamed WAV to "The Beatles - Yesterday.wav" and converted to 128kbs MP3.

3.) Dragged and dropped the MP3 into iTunes where it was matched right away.

4.) Went to another machine and fired up iTunes. Sure enough I found it, under the name I had given it--not its actual name.

5.) Downloaded it to that other machine and it downloaded as "The Beatles - Yesterday.m4a." It is the Blondie song though, naturally.


So it DOES indeed use wave analysis but it did NOT correct a single thing. I was under the impression it would add the appropriate metadata but it did not. Not happy about that actually.



Michael

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Starhawk said:
Yes. Gwen Stefani The Sweet Escape matched to the clean version when the original track was explicit. There are probably others but that's the one I caught yesterday.
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So far I am 1 for 2. Bartender Song was the explicit version. But Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend was not. Yet the title on ATV still showing as explicit.

They need to fix the danged metadata or at least TITLES if they are going to change them.



Michael
 
I also noticed that play counts are not being updated when played from the Apple TV or the iPhone. Is that how it has been in the past?
 
OK, I have been working with it all day yesterday and here are some things that I have discovered.

1. You can delete from the cloud. It is a little kludgy but it works. When you are in iTunes you can delete songs from your library and there is a check box to delete from iCloud as well. So, with things that got moved up that you didn't want moved you can get them off the cloud. However, if you add it back to your library, it will get re-uploaded unless you turn match off. And when you turn match back on again, it will find it again. So, no way to just say "ignore these songs in my library". Not great, but a step forward.

2. The matching is still really buggy. First, I found that the names that iTunes gives when ripping tracks doesn't always match what is in the store. Second, random songs on very mainstream albums don't match. I even tried re-ripping the album and got the exact same result. This is frustrating for me since I rip mostly in lossless so I have nine tracks in 256k and one lossless in the cloud. Not what I want.

3. Anything below 128k seems to be excluded, although there were a few weird exceptions.

4. It appears that you can no longer manually cut & paste artwork, or drag artwork. You can still add from the info window, but that is by track. I always embed my artwork in the file so that it transfers correctly to other devices. I have seen this as a bug in previous updates (10.0 from 9) that got fixed, but I verified that this is true for both the Mac and Windows versions at the moment.

Here's a suggestion for managing your library. Use one iTunes library as the master. Set-up a separate, empty iTunes library to see what is happening and to manage the cloud. You would have to make sure that it is not pointing to your other library. For example, you could use a second user account on a Mac to do this, or a windows machine (I'm using my Parallels to do this). Once I have uploaded from my main library, I go to Parallel and see how the files are in the cloud. Since nothing is downloaded, I get to see exactly what the cloud looks like. Then I can remove any titles from the could without messing with my library.

While I criticized the matching, most of my library matched well and the functionality is getting better. I know this thread is a little old now, but Apple is working out the functionality and I'm sure that they are getting valuable feedback from seeing what gets matched and what doesn't as well as feedback about the user experience.

Hope this helps some of you.
 
Nunyabinez said:
4. It appears that you can no longer manually cut & paste artwork, or drag artwork. You can still add from the info window, but that is by track. I always embed my artwork in the file so that it transfers correctly to other devices. I have seen this as a bug in previous updates (10.0 from 9) that got fixed, but I verified that this is true for both the Mac and Windows versions at the moment.
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Highlight all tracks in the album, do a Get Info and drag the artwork in from there to add to all tracks at once. I think that is what you are talking about, and I believe this embeds it to the file.
 
I wonder if there is a way to force particular tracks to upload and not match? My copy of Metallica's Death Magnetic is of much better quality than the official album version (it's a rip of the Guitar Hero disc with much, much better levels and does not clip like the official album does) Right now iTunes match is matching about half of the tracks on that album, but I'd love to upload them all.
 
I'm liking it.

I really like how it works with other iTunes machines. I cleaned up a few playlists while logged in remotely to my main iTunes box. By the time I switched out of the remote app to iTunes on the macbook I was using to remote in the playlists were already updated.

It is basically like Mobile Me for iTunes now.

Yes it still needs work, but it's getting there!


Michael
 
I've read almost everything in the thread - thank you guys!

But still, what's about "error" status? It randomly fails to match/upload one track from some album, what's the point? Did anybody figure out the situation?
 
Probably the most blatant Clean/Explicit error so far:

I have the Explicit version of "**** You" by Dr. Dre on The Chronic 2001 and iTunes Match matched the clean version. I think we can all agree how different these two wave forms probably look.

What makes it worse is the two versions also have different metadata on the iTunes store. The explicit version is The Chronic 2001 while the clean version is just 2001.
 
Starhawk said:
I wonder if there is a way to force particular tracks to upload and not match? My copy of Metallica's Death Magnetic is of much better quality than the official album version (it's a rip of the Guitar Hero disc with much, much better levels and does not clip like the official album does) Right now iTunes match is matching about half of the tracks on that album, but I'd love to upload them all.
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There is a workaround to keep your version if you don't mind having a local copy on your iphone/ipad. While match is turned off sync all music that is different to your device with your itunes machine. Next, turn match back on again and the songs you synced will still remain "downloaded" to your device.

This is how match currently works but there's no guarantee that apple won't change this behavior in the future.
 
sotie said:
There is a workaround to keep your version if you don't mind having a local copy on your iphone/ipad. While match is turned off sync all music that is different to your device with your itunes machine. Next, turn match back on again and the songs you synced will still remain "downloaded" to your device.

This is how match currently works but there's no guarantee that apple won't change this behavior in the future.
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For 'sed' users, it's "s/workaround/kludge/g".

You shouldn't have to take extraordinary measures to keep an application from corrupting your files. (And replacing one version of a song with a different version is definitely "corruption".)

An even worse scenario is that "daddy" Steve, even from the urn, is protecting you by replacing songs with "potty-mouth" lyrics with cleaned up versions.

If I want to keep the original version with the occasional "f-word" let me - I don't want Apple to convert everything to the "Disney" version.
 
Well, they sell tons of Explicit material in the store so I don't think they are trying to censor our music.

If there's a technical problem with trying to figure out which one to match, the explicit or clean version, I wish there was a switch in Preferences where I could just say "Always Match the Explicit Version".
 
Sounds like Google Music is the way to go at least for now. Although the current apps for iOS seem to be in beta form as well.
 
Lodoss said:
Sounds like Google Music is the way to go at least for now. Although the current apps for iOS seem to be in beta form as well.
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If all of us here were instead beta'ing Google Music we would all still be waiting for our collections to upload.




Michael
 
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Mine just completed matching 20k songs (after 2 days). I stopped it from uploading until I get to a location with better upload speeds. In the beginning Match froze. I opened iTunes again and it appeared to resume.

I created a smart playlist for "matched" items, and it shows both songs that are Matched and also Waiting. But, Match finished its matching process, so I am not sure what Waiting really means. I think the system froze on these files--they are the A-C artists, which must have been before the system crash. the D-Z files are working fine, and I had great success matching (70% was expected with a lot of mix tapes and live recordings in my library)

I tried "convert to Mp3" and also re-adding individual tracks to my library, and this actually was successful. Match picked up the tracks and matched them in the cloud. So I know how to fix it.

I don't want to do this for 3k tracks. Is there any way to trigger a rematching of selected tracks?
 
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Well I am still uploading tracks, which is taking a while. I still don't have a clue how many were matched because I wasn't awake when it started the original upload a few days ago. I have 8100+ songs that say waiting even though they have been matched or uploaded. It hasn't changed. My upload crashes every so often and I have to restart it.

Was hoping the waiting would change but it appears I might to be stuck with them like another users as none of the tracks I watched upload changed. I think turning off match and turning it back on might do it, but I don't want to run the risk of re-uploading everything. We are still in a beta which still isn't perfect.
 
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TexasTexan said:
Well I am still uploading tracks, which is taking a while. I still don't have a clue how many were matched because I wasn't awake when it started the original upload a few days ago. I have 8100+ songs that say waiting even though they have been matched or uploaded. It hasn't changed. My upload crashes every so often and I have to restart it.

Was hoping the waiting would change but it appears I might to be stuck with them like another users as none of the tracks I watched upload changed. I think turning off match and turning it back on might do it, but I don't want to run the risk of re-uploading everything. We are still in a beta which still isn't perfect.
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I noticed on my upload it would get stuck on a song every once in a while. You should quit iTunes and re-launch it. It will pick up where it left off and will go much quicker.
 
rstark18 said:
I noticed on my upload it would get stuck on a song every once in a while. You should quit iTunes and re-launch it. It will pick up where it left off and will go much quicker.
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That's what I do but I have done it at least 20 times so far. Seems like it just stalls and notice nothing going out on the network. Must be an issue somewhere. Just hate when it stall just after going to bed instead of uploading all night.

One thing I have noticed that even though the track was uploaded, some of the tracks labeled waiting can not be played on the Apple TV. I should see if I can play then on the iPad after I am done setting up the new one I picked up today.
 
TexasTexan said:
That's what I do but I have done it at least 20 times so far. Seems like it just stalls and notice nothing going out on the network. Must be an issue somewhere. Just hate when it stall just after going to bed instead of uploading all night.

One thing I have noticed that even though the track was uploaded, some of the tracks labeled waiting can not be played on the Apple TV. I should see if I can play then on the iPad after I am done setting up the new one I picked up today.
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In my experience when the tracks are in the "waiting" status they aren't ready to be played on devices yet.

I can't believe how great match is. Last night I imported 3 new albums into my itunes collection (collection previously matched/uploaded). All tracks on the new albums matched. I immediately checked my iPhone and they were there! From start to finish it was less than 60 seconds.
 
Nunyabinez said:
1. You can delete from the cloud. It is a little kludgy but it works. When you are in iTunes you can delete songs from your library and there is a check box to delete from iCloud as well. So, with things that got moved up that you didn't want moved you can get them off the cloud. However, if you add it back to your library, it will get re-uploaded unless you turn match off. And when you turn match back on again, it will find it again. So, no way to just say "ignore these songs in my library". Not great, but a step forward.
Click to expand...

What about changing files from "music" to something else like audio book (or podcast, voice memo, or itunes U)? If you do that does Match ignore the file or still try to match/upload it? I still think it's idiotic if they release it without a way to ignore chosen files, but a hack that works around it would be better than nothing.
 
I had the issue of Match not allowing me to continue to upload. I tried turning it off but then I couldn't turn it back on. I had to do a system restore to a few days ago on my Windows laptop to get it back up. iTunes wouldn't even connect to the store either.

The strange thing now is that besides the few error and not eligible tracks, they all say waiting, 18,000+ of them.
 
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