iTunes Match - Album Art And Album Name Question (Beatles)

[boltjames]

<--US

<--UK

I'm a longtime Apple vet but never thought I'd want any of the Cloud media services until iOS7 and iTunes Radio which is a gamechanger. In reading about Match, looks like I can use my iPhone with zero resident audio tracks and get access to my 15,000 song iTunes collection, my 300 iTunes Playlists, and now iTunes Radio, it's a potential dream come true.

I am very particular about my iTunes MP3/AAC library and have all my ID3 tags and album art the way I like it. I am worried that iTunes Match will overwrite my physical library and destroy all the art and ID3 data that I have worked so hard to get right. As an example:

I purchased the 2009 Beatles remaster, the boxed set of CD's with all 16 LP's on it, ripped it nicely at 160k. I grew up on the Beatles, loved the American versions of the collection, so I rebuilt my rips using the US albums that weren't configured that way in Europe and changed the LP titles ("Something's New", "Yesterday And Today", "Beatles VI", "Beatles '65") and using the different US album art as well ("Help", "Rubber Soul", "Hard Days Night").

So my question?

If I have the following....

The Beatles > Rubber Soul > I've Just Seen a Face

And iTunes only knows that as....

The Beatles > Help > I've Just Seen a Face

...what happens? Does my custom LP name and LP art on my physical library get over-ridden by Match and ruin my cool setup? Or does my physical library remain unchanged but my Cloud library revert back to the UK versions that iTunes knows/sells which would mess up my Playlists and LP listings when I stream?

TIA

BJ

 

[Rigby]

Match never overwrites the meta-data of your original files. And your meta-data is uploaded too, i.e. once matched/uploaded, matched songs in the cloud will have the names and album art that you gave them.

The only thing to watch out for is that it will sometimes match to a different version of a song, i.e. what you stream from the cloud may not be the exact same release as your original file. For example, I have the Beatles albums in mono (ripped from my CD boxset) in my iTunes library. Match has matched a few of the songs to the stereo versions that are available in the iTunes store. My original mono files are not touched, but when I stream the songs from the cloud, I get the stereo versions.

 

[boltjames]

Match never overwrites the meta-data of your original files. And your meta-data is uploaded too, i.e. once matched/uploaded, matched songs in the cloud will have the names and album art that you gave them.

The only thing to watch out for is that it will sometimes match to a different version of a song, i.e. what you stream from the cloud may not be the exact same release as your original file. For example, I have the Beatles albums in mono (ripped from my CD boxset) in my iTunes library. Match has matched a few of the songs to the stereo versions that are available in the iTunes store. My original mono files are not touched, but when I stream the songs from the cloud, I get the stereo versions.

Perfect, thanks.

So if you have a "Best Of The Beatles - Early LP's" Playlist on your PC that includes, say, the Mono version of "I Saw Her Standing There" are you saying that instead of uploading your mono file to the cloud to stream back down to you that it replaces that file in that specific playlist to the stereo version?

BJ

 

[Rigby]

Perfect, thanks.

So if you have a "Best Of The Beatles - Early LP's" Playlist on your PC that includes, say, the Mono version of "I Saw Her Standing There" are you saying that instead of uploading your mono file to the cloud to stream back down to you that it replaces that file in that specific playlist to the stereo version?

Yes, this happens sometimes but not always. Most of my mono songs were actually not matched but uploaded (i.e. when streamed you get the original mono), but a few were matched to the stereo versions that the store has. If you enable the "iCloud status" column in the song list in iTunes, you can see if a song was matched or uploaded. It doesn't matter if you play the song from a playlist or individually, BTW.