"Fix Incorrect Match" AKA "force upload" option

[B/D]

Ok, so this have been an on going issue since iTunes Match launch back in 2011, and still persists on Apple Music today. Google Music and Amazon Music have this option. Have sent feedback through the years to Apple, but to no avail.

As we all know, iTunes Match/Apple Music have matching issues when comes to different remasters. (i.e a new remastered release matches against the old one instead of upload, which cause quality and volume inconsistencies between tracks). Hence the request and the thread title.


As a collector of limited and remastered film scores editions (i.e from Intrada and La-la-land), this affect me deeply, and makes very hard to enjoy iCloud Music Library.


Any workaround to force upload of songs?

Thank you, and excuse my English.

 

[Eisselmann]

Yup.
Exactly (!!!) the same here.
For the last months however I have the impression that iTunes simply uploads all of my soundtracks to iCloud.

But whenever I ripped a CD and try to upload, there will be one or two tracks that couldn't be uploaded due to some friggin' error.
Then iTunes displays that cloud with "!" in it...
A few months ago I had the issue that iCloud wouldn't take changed tracknames.
So you had to do it twice, think about it with a 4CD album in mind.

What bugs me the most is that iTunes will start matching and uploading while I am still changing tracknames according to my nomenclatura.

Apple services are mediocre at best.
They're not very well maintained, as much as I can judge from a front end view.

And I think they won't change iTunes Match anymore since their priority is clearly on the similar but more revenue creating iTunes Music. :/

 

[B/D]

Ben-Hur FSM soundtrack box set (2012), matched against Rhino 1996 release, instead of upload.

Terrible, sound quality difference is abysmal
[doublepost=1481800205][/doublepost]La-la-land expanded Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions scores,; few tracks matched against original releases, causing quality issues and inconsistencies during playback from the cloud.
[doublepost=1481800505][/doublepost]Intrada expanded and remastered dick tracy score: All tracks from the original album matched against the original 1990 release on the iTunes Store.

Again, same tracks but different remasters; huge difference in quality playback.

This is a serious issue.

A "Fix Incorrect Match" option, like Google Music have, would solve this in a minute.

 

[BrianBaughn]

As an experiment, has anyone tried ripping these kind of CDs outside of iTunes using different software, changing the ID tags to something completely different, adding to iTunes to see if the entire CD gets uploaded and then changing the tags back?

A huge PITA, I know, but I don't have any such CDs and wonder if the process would work.

 

[B/D]

Doesn't work, because now Apple Music uses acoustic fingerprint to identify the songs, instead of metadata. It´s OK, but the matching algorithm doesn't seem to be smart enough to differentiate between different remasters, hence the mismatching.

 

[M. Gustave]

You can try deleting the album from your library, changing/adding some metadata, and then in iTunes right click on the songs, and add to library. That's worked for me.

 

[B/D]

But see my post above, monsieur Gustave. Doesn't work, because now Apple Music uses acoustic fingerprint to identify the songs, instead of metadata. It´s OK, but the matching algorithm doesn't seem to be smart enough to differentiate between different remasters, hence the mismatching. So now, even if you add some metadata, the option to re-add to library doesn´t re-appear

What use to work for me until iTunes 12.5.4 was create an AAC version within iTunes itself. Go figure. Now it isn't working.

 

[M. Gustave]

Is the album you're trying to upload available in Apple Music? Sometimes I skipped trying to correct the matching all together, and just added the AM album to my library, rather than my copy.

 

[B/D]

No, albums that are neither streamed nor sold digitally. Expanded remastered limited soundtracks, in fact. For example, Dick Tracy Score by Danny Elfman (2CD Expanded and Remastered), edited recently by Intrada. Problem is that´s the original 1990 score release is available on both Apple Music and iTunes Store, and so those particular tracks are matched rather than uploaded. Being a different remaster, this cause quality and volume inconsistencies when played back from the cloud.

My English is terrible, I hope you understand me well enough.

 

[B/D]

This is most definitely a huge problem, and the only big problem I have with iTunes Match/Apple Music, and now that I've got a library of nearly 30,000 tracks matched or uploaded, I've tested this quite a bit.


In almost NO cases have I gotten a complete remastered album intact, and that includes examples where:
- the remastered album is the only one visibly available in the store
- both the remastered and standard editions appear to be available
- only the standard edition appears to be available (i.e. instead of uploading my version, it matches about half the tracks, leaving a sort of Frankenstein's monster version of the album in my match library)


In some cases I have seen 14 of 15 remastered tracks match perfectly, with—for no reason at all—one track in the middle of the album matching to an inferior version of the song.


I will say I don't care if something is available in the store, and doesn't match, along as it uploads the version I've got. I don't want it to match my good sounding track to some older, worse quality track, ever.


The most frustrating aspect of this is Match's inability to recognize the coherence of an album. It should match all the tracks from the same source, not half the tracks from one master and half from another. If there is some way to flag or otherwise tag a remastered file to point the match algorithm in the right direction, so to speak, I would happily do it, but I have not yet successfully found any way to alter the results of a remaster mismatch. A track that is uploaded is uploaded every time; a track that is mismatched is mismatched every time.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Other than multiple mixes of my own tracks I don't have a situation similar to the OP's so I gave up on AM matching if they have their own version of the album. In the case of Frank Sinatra, the AM version of an album works great (although I'm thinking I hear glitches now and then). However, a "matched" version gets all screwed up with different versions of Frank's cuts of the same song from different eras.

 

[B/D]

Certainly this is nothing Apple hasn't heard before. A Google search on how to overcome this indicates that many support requests have been made, but I'll add my considerably insignificant weight behind the request, too.



This problem is biggest in the area of remastered albums. I'm a soundtrack collector and in recent years, many older soundtrack releases have been re-released with previously missing tracks restored, alternate versions of tracks available, and all the material remastered from original recording elements. These are albums that are limited editions, with sometimes as few as 1,000 copies pressed. On these discs will be remastered tracks that were available on the original albums, as well, but with vastly superior sound. These tracks are often matched using acoustic fingerprinting and the fingerprints are similar enough to the Apple algorithms, that they are mistaken for a match to the inferior product in Apple's catalogs. Therefore, the tracks aren't uploaded, and any time I attempt to play the music from a device other than the iTunes computer sitting under my office desk, it streams the original master. This is especially annoying when it's peppered amongst the new unmatched material, leading to a grossly spotty listening experience.



I understand that Apple doesn't want to waste space on its servers with umpteen hundred thousand copies of the same song it's got in its massive library. And that providing a force upload feature might encourage people to upload a bunch of stuff that really IS a match for something they already have stored. But I think that the problem affects enough people who collect alternate versions of popular music (remastered, live, alternate takes, etc.) that the option for forced uploading should be part of the product. MANY people are annoyed by this.

 

[B/D]

I´ve managed to escalate this issue with Apple engineering department (long phone call last Friday). I´m waiting response. I´ll keep you guys updated.

 

[Tech198]

What bugs me the most is that iTunes will start matching and uploading while I am still changing tracknames according to my nomenclatura.

Apple services are mediocre at best.

Ideally, what Apple *should* do is wait a defined period of time of no interaction with iTunes (say a minute) and if no activity,then start syncing to icloud... and have a checkbox to say "Manually sync music" . if users prefer to sync when they want.

 

[B/D]

Kirk McElhearn kindly gave me his valuable opinion in his website forum. Thank you very much, Kirk!

Digital remasters should be "different." The audio is different enough that I would expect it to be differentiable. Unless the remaster simply has volume changes, rather than changes to the mix, in which case I doubt that audio fingerprinting notes any difference (since you could have manually changed the gain on a file). But iTunes Match also mixes up live and studio versions of songs, which suggests that it's not just digital fingerprinting, or perhaps these are problems in the iTunes backend database.

 

[Brookzy]

I understand that Apple doesn't want to waste space on its servers with umpteen hundred thousand copies of the same song it's got in its massive library. And that providing a force upload feature might encourage people to upload a bunch of stuff that really IS a match for something they already have stored.

or perhaps these are problems in the iTunes backend database.

This must be an utterly infuriating issue. I think the above two quotes sum up the complexities of it.

In my eyes a feasible solution would be a report feature so you can flag mis-matched songs, and repeat flags can then be manually reviewed and the corrected.

Integrating this with AppleCare would be nice, too, so that it could be escalated and acted upon on an individual level as this is the sort of issue that could be faced by just a single person in each instance, thus rendering a report-based system ineffective.

 

[Eisselmann]

Oh man, I ****ing hate ****ing iTunes Match right now.

First the music app on my phone didn't want to download a track I uploaded years ago.
Now I reuploaded it, although I don't know why I have to reupload anything at all since I ****ing pay for that ****** service.

It still didn't want to download the track, then I reactivated iTunes Match on the phone.
First it told me it couldn't be activated at this time.
After switching it on again, it apparently activated, but now it won't download an album I just downloaded yesterday.

I don't know if it's a problem of iOS10 or again an inproperly working Apple service as always...
These are the moments when I could throw my iPhone out of the window.
It's ridiculous that this service still doesn't work properly after such a long time...
Excuse my bad language but I am angrrryyyyy right now.

 

[Eisselmann]

I´ve managed to escalate this issue with Apple engineering department (long phone call last Friday). I´m waiting response. I´ll keep you guys updated.

Any news? ^^

 

[B/D]

No, they haven´t call me back, but the senior advisor in charge of my case told me by email that engineering department are investigating the issue.

Perhaps we´ll have to wait until the holidays are completely over (next week).

Again, excuse my English.

 

[B/D]

Here I am, three months and several iTunes updates later. They never contacted me again, and the issue is still very much present.


[doublepost=1492010782][/doublepost]I can force an upload on Google Play Music and Amazon Music, but I can´t on iTunes Match/Apple Music. Go figure.

 

[Eisselmann]

Surprise.

 

[Tech198]

No, they haven´t call me back, but the senior advisor in charge of my case told me by email that engineering department are investigating the issue.

That's how it always starts.. but if its a change to how it works, i wouldn't expect anything positive. Apple is saying it matches "songs" ... which is bad idea...

It never says it matches songs *and* album, but it should....

Technically,, if i would be doing a music service,,, i would not be doing 75% only in terms of how well it works.... But that's how Apple is doing it. If enough people send feedback on this, perhaps Apple will do something..

 

[The Savage Coconut]

I used to rip my remastered CDs as WAV files. I was getting a 100% upload success rate even though the song was available in iTunes as a standard master. a few months ago after an iTunes update, this no longer worked. Its strange because I tried taking some purchased iTunes tracks and making 256 AAC files from them (thus removing the "purchased" tag on those files). I uploaded those tracks and not a SINGLE ONE WAS MATCHED...they were all uploaded. So I'm not sure what kind of algorithm Apple uses...but its crap.

 

[Eisselmann]

I used to rip my remastered CDs as WAV files. I was getting a 100% upload success rate even though the song was available in iTunes as a standard master. a few months ago after an iTunes update, this no longer worked. Its strange because I tried taking some purchased iTunes tracks and making 256 AAC files from them (thus removing the "purchased" tag on those files). I uploaded those tracks and not a SINGLE ONE WAS MATCHED...they were all uploaded. So I'm not sure what kind of algorithm Apple uses...but its crap.

That‘s what I experience for months now. Every single Track is uploaded, available on iTunes or not...

In my opinon iTunes Match is as almost every other Apple service: once it‘s set up, they don‘t really care anymore.
After YEARS you often still can‘t change album covers for albums uploaded in iCloud, you still can‘t use multiple covers for one album most of the time, not to mention albums you suddenly can‘t download because they‘re „not available“...

I think they‘re not interested in it anymore.
Apple Music offers a similar function as iTunes Match (as much as I understand) and Apple Music costs 10bucks a months compared to 25bucks a year of iTunes Match.
Well, guess where they have their priorities.

 

[nico887]

Dear All,

Any updates regarding possible workarounds to "force upload" a song in the iCloud Music Library instead of having it matched (often with an improved version) ?

Thank you very much.