Apple Music: not the right song

[pedzsan]

I have Apple Music (the subscription). I'll cite a particular example but I've had the problem many times.

I started out with Yes Yessongs from CD, ripped it, added it to iTunes. Then I joined Apple Music so Apple Music knows I own that particular album.

Now, on my iPhone, I can see and play a particular song (Your Move) and its not the right version.

I have since reloaded my Mac and it too is playing songs that is has downloaded and it too has the wrong version. (The original ripped files are squirreled around on a backup somewhere.). On the Mac, if I search for the song on Apple Music, and play it, it is the "correct" version.

As I said, this happens all the time. Different versions (usually ones I don't prefer) are in my downloaded Apple Music.

My basic question is if there is a general solution to this? I've not tried deleting the download and downloading it again but that is going to be my next test.

This happened on my iXxx devices (iPhone / iPad) even back when my Mac still had access to the original content.

My secondary question is if others have noticed the same issue?

 

[Spectrum1013]

This sounds like an issue where when you started Apple Music subscription, it "Matched" the tracks you already had in your library with tracks available on Apple Music.

I've actually found the matching to be pretty good, occasionally not being able to match 1 or 2 tracks from a whole album, but run into more problems when matching older, more I guess you'd say, significant albums?

Probably what has happened is, it's matched most of the tracks in that album with the actual matching tracks on Apple Music, but for that particular track, it has matched it up with that same song but from a different release, such as a greatest hits comp, or remastered version, anniversary reissue, etc.

One somewhat annoying way to try and fix this is, look on the apple music page for that Yes album, and see if that particular track is listed as a different length, like say 3:37 where your original file is 3:38. There may be .5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning or end of the track, that you can trim off by right clicking, get info, Options, and offset the start or stop time, then go to the File menu, and convert that track. This will make a duplicate of the original, while trimming the file by the amount you specified.

Sometimes this gets it to match with the right track from the right album. I'd say for me, it's maybe a 50% success rate.

The other, obvious fix is, delete that track. and from Apple Music, just add the proper track from the proper album to your library and download that file to your library. Downside I guess is, in the event you decide to cancel Apple Music, your remaining library will be missing that one track, unless you rip it again, or find your backups.

Myself, I ultimately decided to just leave my old iTunes library stored on an external drive, and not "Match" anything. I have a new Music library for Apple Music, where I add what I want directly from Apple Music, no matching, no uploading of albums I've had for years. If it's something I want to listen to, I just add it from Apple Music.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Over the last few years there are multiple posts on this Apple Music matching issue. I had it myself. The only way to fix it is to NOT use matching for albums that are on Apple Music…even if the Apple Music album isn't exactly the same (some sort of reissue/remaster/different country release).

I backed up my ripped library, wiped my Apple Music library clean, and then added what I wanted back to the library via Apple Music.

 

[pedzsan]

Thank you for the replies but I don't understand. Lets assume I start with a fresh library with just my ripped CDs in it.

1. How do you not "match" to Apple Music?
2. How do I get music on my iOS devices?
3. Are you suggesting that I have two separate libraries but how do I switch from one to the other on iOS?

In the past, with iOS, I would turn off Apple Music, sync (which pulls what is on the Mac over to the iOS device) and then turn on Apple Music and that sorta worked but it seemed to have various pitfalls (that I can't recall right now).

 

[BrianBaughn]

Thank you for the replies but I don't understand. Lets assume I start with a fresh library with just my ripped CDs in it.

I am advising that you do NOT use matching unless your adding something that Apple Music doesn't have. Matching is what caused the "wrong song" issue for me.

I backed up my Old-iTunes-Pre-Apple-Music library in case I needed to retrieve something from it. Then, I started a new, clean Apple Music library...adding albums/songs from Apple Music (and in my case not downloading anything to my Mac). This was a PITA but eliminated all of my mismatches…and there were quite a few.

For songs and albums that are NOT in Apple Music I DO add them to my library on my Mac. These get uploaded to the Apple Music servers and are available on all my devices. This is the main reason I'm still on Apple Music as I have unreleased music that I have created and others have created. I also have some obscure albums that are not on Apple Music that I've added…and in these cases, if any of the songs from one of those albums appears on a different Apple Music album I halfway expect mismatching to occur.

The downside to this is that I can tell the difference between a lossless CD rip and the compressed versions that Apple Music has.

Also, I did a trial month of the HiFi/Master quality version of Tidal and was impressed with the quality there.

As for iOS devices, you can download what you want on there on the device itself.

 

[pedzsan]

I see... I did a brief test. I deleted the album of the particular track from my library. Then found it in Apple Music, "added" it, downloaded it, and its the proper version. When you said "I started a new, clean Apple Music library" -- you meant "in the cloud" ... or to rephrase, you had to delete your existing library that was already in Apple Music.

The reason I say this is because I installed Catalina from scratch and just opened iTunes and started listening (without using my old library on any local disk) and still had issues. Also, after this experiment, my iPhone now has the correct version and it was there that I first noticed the issue.

Also, I had thought that I had the "other" version somewhere in my library and that is where the confusion was coming from but it turns out I don't. The "mistake" happens at the time of the "match" and once that mistake is in the cloud (in you library inside Apple Music), it propagates to other devices.

Thank you again for your help. I think for now, I'm going to "fix" the albums that have problems as I find them unless I can figure out how to bulk "add" a list of albums.