iTunes Match backup questions

[kylera]

While I understand some of iTunes Match's services, let me see if I get this part about uploading and downloading right.

Suppose from my collection, I have songs A, B and C, and A and B are 128kbps MP3 and C is 320kbps MP3. iTunes Match determines that it has a copy of song A and C, but doesn't have B.

Question 1: If my understanding is correct, song B will be uploaded to the cloud, while A and C will not be uploaded, right?

Question 2: Suppose my hard drive crashed, and I need to restore my music collection. At that point, I will get song A at 256kbps ACC, song B at 128kbps MP3 and song C at 256kbps ACC?

 

[drvdijk]

Correct completely

Note that you can actually try this by (make a backup of original files!) deleting the files from iTunes and selecting to download the songs.

Nevertheless, the MP3 of song B will not be exactly the same if you compare every bit. I've not yet seen what changes exactly though.

 

[jackrv]

Many people, including me, do this intentionally. I have many albums ripped from CDs years ago at 128 bit MP3s. ITunes Match (fortunately) matched the majority of my library. I deleted everything and redownloaded so now most of my songs are 256 AAC.

As said before, make a backup before doing this just in case.

 

[wonderspark]

Yes, keep a backup, as you'll find many songs incorrectly matched like I have. Examples:
INXS album, random song in middle replaced with a live recording version.
Dr. Dre, Eminem, Beastie Boys and more... several songs replaced with "clean" versions, cussing bleeped.
There are reports of some clean versions replaced with explicit versions.

The weird thing is that in most of the erroneous versions I have, the wrong version remains in the cloud even though I replaced the correct version on my Mac in iTunes... so the right one plays at home, and the wrong one plays from my iPhone. The only way to assure the right version is to turn off iTunes Match and transfer song to iPhone, or skip the iPhone and use an iPod.

Proceed with caution.

 

[Bob Coxner]

Here's a good trick to upgrade the quality of songs that you ripped at 80kb or less. Those won't upload to Match. I had a lot of songs from long ago that I had ripped low quality because I only had small storage space on my iPod.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/20/one-trick-for-getting-itunes-match-to-recognize-older-tracks/

This works quickly and easily. I'm steadily upgrading my entire collection.

 

[kylera]

Hmm. I just tried to download a song that wasn't matched, and it is originally 320kbps MP3, and it downloaded as 320kbps MP3. Was there a change I didn't hear about?

 

[Menel]

Hmm. I just tried to download a song that wasn't matched, and it is originally 320kbps MP3, and it downloaded as 320kbps MP3. Was there a change I didn't hear about?

No, working as intended

 

[SuperCachetes]

Hmm. I just tried to download a song that wasn't matched, and it is originally 320kbps MP3, and it downloaded as 320kbps MP3. Was there a change I didn't hear about?

If it isn't matched, then there is nothing different to download from Apple. Assuming you are doing the delete-then-download method of upgrading your files, you just downloaded your own 320kbps file iTunes had uploaded for you.