Force "upload" instead of "match"?

[mrblack927]

So iTunes match is somewhat of a bust, for me at least. Most (read: more than half) of my songs were matched to clean/live/acoustic versions instead of the correct version (explicit studio version in almost all cases). After trying several proposed "solutions" like changing ID3 tags and even re-ripping them the the original cd at a higher quality, I've come to the conclusion that nothing can really fix this problem... the "match" algorithm is simply flawed.

However, there is one case in which my music makes it from my computer to my devices perfectly every time; when the song is "uploaded" instead of "matched". I know Apple's intention is to only do this for songs it can't find in it's library for the sake of reducing upload time, but given the fact that match doesn't work, I would gladly take the hit in upload time instead. This I think would be well worth the $24.99 and still reaches what Apple is trying to do with the service. That is, bring all of your media to the cloud.

So, simple question, has anyone found a way to force itunes to "upload" instead of "match"? It seems silly that I can have all of my lesser known music in the cloud but my mainstream music I have to sync manually.

 

[RollTide1017]

Nope, no work around I've found.

I have a similar issue. I collect mostly film scores and buy many albums from specialty labels like LaLa Land Records, Film Score Monthly and Intrada who release expanded and remastered score albums. I continue to have a problem with iTunes Match not uploading these and matching some of the tracks to the old non-remastered track that is in iTunes. Some have a huge dip in quality, especially if it is an older score that was remastered.

It also sucks that you I can't manually add these to my iPhone if iTunes Match is enabled. So you either have to deal with lower quality tracks or turn iTunes Match off.

Apple really needs to find a solution to this and I'm really surprised that they didn't consider this when creating the service. Then again, they just added a delete option to PhotoStream, which you'd think would be an obvious inclusion from the beginning, so maybe they are not as smart as we think they are.

It's really annoying that Apple thinks I want to listen to a 20 year old version of a track even though I just bought a remastered CD released last week.

 

[Bob Coxner]

If you rip/convert to less than 96kbps you can only upload, not match, those songs. I believe the same thing happens with rips higher than 256kbps.

 

[RollTide1017]

I believe the same thing happens with rips higher than 256kbps.

Nope, I rip all my CDs @ 320kbps mp3 and, if they are in the iTunes Store, they get matched. Now, I've never tried 288 or 320kbps AAC but, I honestly don't have much hope.

 

[Bear]

There are several reasons why I'm not using iTunes Match. One of them is the thought of the mess that could be made by mismatched tracks.

So since disk is now more plentiful and less expensive, I'm going back through my CD collection and re-importing them all at 256K. It will take a while, but that will get almost all of my music to 256K.

 

[PNutts]

10.6 is supposed to match "better", but it sounds like some folks are at a full stop with no solution in the foreseeable future.

I suggest this at the risk of being run out of the forum on a rail, but I looked at Google Music and it isn't bad as an iTunes Match alternative. I uploaded one album last year to check it out. Besides Safari they have a basic iOS app, and it lacks the iTunes Match features that are causing heartburn.

And if you'll excuse me, I'll be sitting on the floor in the shower rocking back and forth muttering, "Never be clean. Never be clean."