iTunes Match and Overseas Imported Albums

[MVallee]

The majority of my music library is not available on Canadian iTunes (where I live), but is available on UK iTunes. I assumed that running iTunes Match from my Canadian account would be pointless since it would only match the few songs I have that are available on the Canadian store.

I noticed a user on Apple's support fourms saying that he has had a bunch of songs match that arn't available in the US iTunes store, but that are available in international stores. https://discussions.apple.com/message/17008488#17008488

Can anyone else confirm this? Do songs that arn't available in your country still match?

 

[wackymacky]

that depends what you mean by pointless.

It will upload the non matched songs so they are available to your devices. But you're right, it likely won't match them, or up the bit-rate.

 

[TomHouTX]

It's really hit or miss. I matched several albums and song not in the US store, but some albums do not match any songs.

 

[hpman247]

I've been matching with the Korean and Japanese stores perfectly

 

[MVallee]

Just an update for anyone wondering about this. I signed up for iTunes match and so far, I can't see any rhyme or reason why certain things match and other don't. I have had a full album match that I know is only available in iTunes New Zealand. I also had a few full albums match that are only available in the iTunes UK store. But then other time albums that I know are in the UK store don't match at all, or 1-2 songs will match and the rest get uploaded.

Alot of what has matched has surprised me. Alot of stuff not in the Canadian store does match (sometimes in full, sometimes just a few songs), but then some stuff does not. I've only done about 1/4 of my library so far and I've had 1282 songs match and 345 get uploaded. Some of what was uploaded though never stood a chance of getting matched (demo's or unreleased tracks).

To anyone else in my shoes I'd say its worth a shot.

--Update--
So the matching process completed. I have 8621 songs in iTunes. 6488 songs matched and 2133 uploaded. Not bad considering more than half the songs do not appear in the Canadian iTunes store. Even some bonus track from albums matched and I notice more often than not that Japanese bonus tracks usually matched but UK ones did not. Maybe alot of the non-Canadian stuff is coming from iTunes Japan, I don't know.

I've encountered some problems where 1 song on a album wouldn't match and more than half of an album I bought from iTunes didn't match either. (A Madonna album which obviously they have).

 

[blevins321]

FWIW, there's a Ruby applet floating around that resets the metadata of your matched songs with what it matched with in the iTunes Store. Not foolproof..sometimes albums get split up if the song was put on a compilation. I have a lot of African ethnic music, and more than I thought was matched.

One thing I noticed is that Match also switched out some of my music with foreign language versions. This happened with my Hercules (Disney) soundtrack in particular. Went from Donnie Osmond to a thick Spaniard