iTunes Match - Force Upload

[nosaj72]

I've been playing around with iTunes Match, and while there are some things I really like about the concept, I think it really isn't for me. I have a large library (24269 songs, whew just under the limit!), 22402 of which are lossless encodes from CD. I have spent years organizing and getting my metadata and artwork just like I like it. I don't mind that the lossless files are converted to 256k on upload, but what bothers me most is that I can't control what a file is matched to. It has already been mentioned about songs from the Beatles Mono box set being matched to stereo versions. I am finding similar problems with matching being confused about alternate mixes and remasters.

What would make it much better for me is to have a simple option of "Force upload to iTunes Match" for a song. That would make iTunes upload my version of the song to the cloud no matter what iTunes thinks it might match. Maybe I'm a control freak when it comes to my music library, but I can't switch to using this if I can't get the song I want to my device.

 

[Lopes]

I'm having this problem for the exact same reason. I turned off iTunes Match because of it, and I noticed other live recordings I have were getting mysteriously matched to tracks on the iTunes store, which I know do not exist. But borking my Beatles mono tracks was the biggest affront.

 

[milo]

Absolutely. The feature should also include the option to send a message to Apple letting them know their match is wrong (similar to letting you type a message and let Apple know when an app crashes). The system needs a lot of improvement and in the meantime they need to let users override mistakes as well as report them so they can make the fixes on their end.

Also, an "attempt match again" feature to have it try matching files again without having to delete and re-add to the library.

 

[Menel]

absolutely. The feature should also include the option to send a message to apple letting them know their match is wrong (similar to letting you type a message and let apple know when an app crashes). The system needs a lot of improvement and in the meantime they need to let users override mistakes as well as report them so they can make the fixes on their end.

also, an "attempt match again" feature to have it try matching files again without having to delete and re-add to the library.

this!

 

[paulbee]

Absolutely. The feature should also include the option to send a message to Apple letting them know their match is wrong (similar to letting you type a message and let Apple know when an app crashes). The system needs a lot of improvement and in the meantime they need to let users override mistakes as well as report them so they can make the fixes on their end.

Also, an "attempt match again" feature to have it try matching files again without having to delete and re-add to the library.

Everything you write here is what needs to be in the next version of iTunes Match. Actually, it needed to be in the first version. But yeah, they're having enough trouble matching things accurately that some sort of error reporting is definitely called for.

 

[RTW]

Also, an "attempt match again" feature to have it try matching files again without having to delete and re-add to the library.

This would be BRILLIANT if it were to point the match algorithm to whatever second choice it finds as a second possibility. I am suspecting that when the match algorithm runs, there are obvious times when it sees more than one possible match result and it chooses the wrong one based on which it encounters first, etc. It might be as simple as matching choice B instead of choice A but without any kind of user intervention there's just no way to do that.