iTunes Match - I don't get it!

[Jmclark]

I have a 3,000ish song library (growing all the time), but I bought a 16GB iPhone 4S. I thought that I wouldn't need all my music on there, opting to not sync a lot of my music. However, I still ended up with like 10.5GB of music, which doesn't really leave me much room for apps/videos/pictures. Therefore, iTunes Match is a no-brainer.

Also, $50 for 2 years (assuming you have your 4S for only that long before upgrading) is cheaper than getting a 32 or 64 GB iPhone. Hooray for saving money.

 

[irish2110]

I've looked everywhere and can not get a clear explanation between the difference between matched and uploaded...(stupid question) does this simply mean that uploaded songs are songs that were unable to be matched and count towards the 25,000 limit?? There are uploaded songs that I know are definitely in the iTunes store but not matched?? Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[verwon]

I've looked everywhere and can not get a clear explanation between the difference between matched and uploaded...(stupid question) does this simply mean that uploaded songs are songs that were unable to be matched and count towards the 25,000 limit?? There are uploaded songs that I know are definitely in the iTunes store but not matched?? Any ideas? Thanks!

If they didn't match, some of the information was probably wrong, so they weren't properly identified.

And anything you didn't purchase through iTunes counts against the 25,000.

 

[urkel]

If they didn't match, some of the information was probably wrong, so they weren't properly identified.

And anything you didn't purchase through iTunes counts against the 25,000.

If thats the case where info was off and it uploads then is there a way to fix the error and try again?

My frustration is that many times a ripped album (i own) only matches a few tracks so the rest get uploaded at a lower quality. Id prefer to fix it but with nearly 1000 guilty files then im not looking forward to troubleshooting each file or digging out the CD box from the attic.

I know I said it before but its frustrating that my illegal files did a better job at matching than my legal stuff. This is a heck of a lot of work for something advertised to be so simple.

 

[verwon]

If thats the case where info was off and it uploads then is there a way to fix the error and try again?

My frustration is that many times a ripped album (i own) only matches a few tracks so the rest get uploaded at a lower quality. Id prefer to fix it but with nearly 1000 guilty files then im not looking forward to troubleshooting each file or digging out the CD box from the attic.

I know I said it before but its frustrating that my illegal files did a better job at matching than my legal stuff. This is a heck of a lot of work for something advertised to be so simple.

You can fix them, then update iTunes Match, under store.

You can bulk select songs and edit all their info, at once. It's what I did to make the details on certain albums all match up. I just looked at one that was matched and used that to fix the others.

 

[Tinmania]

Nope! I had a couple with screwed up tags that had to be uploaded, once I correct the tags and updated match, their status then changed to matched, so it doesn't appear it reads anything but the tags. They were common songs, so if it checked other stuff, they would have been matched to begin with.

Something else probably happened... it most definitely does use waveform analysis for matching.

You can take a song, change all the metadata, and it will still match to the correct track. I have done this and that is exactly what happened. I have a "Beatles" song that has the Beatles album art, all proper Beatles tags, etc. But it is in fact an old Blondies song.

Moreover, it would be stupid to use metadata for matching as all people would have to do is make 10,000 copies of the same song, change the metadata, and have them all replaced with actual songs.




Michael

 

[verwon]

Something else probably happened... it most definitely does use waveform analysis for matching.

You can take a song, change all the metadata, and it will still match to the correct track. I have done this and that is exactly what happened. I have a "Beatles" song that has the Beatles album art, all proper Beatles tags, etc. But it is in fact an old Blondies song.

Moreover, it would be stupid to use metadata for matching as all people would have to do is make 10,000 copies of the same song, change the metadata, and have them all replaced with actual songs.




Michael

I don't know what all is used, but it certainly wouldn't match a long list I had, until I corrected all the tags.

 

[urkel]

I don't know what all is used, but it certainly wouldn't match a long list I had, until I corrected all the tags.

How do you know when a tag is corrected? I have a few songs ripped directly from albums where spelling and titles are perfect yet they wont match. So there really has to be some sort of trick in getting a song recognized.

 

[Tinmania]

I don't know what all is used, but it certainly wouldn't match a long list I had, until I corrected all the tags.

I doubt that was it. I have re-attempted many songs without changing anything and there have been many instances where another attempt worked where the first one did not.

You could match the same track with 100% incorrect data. I have done it. Metadata means nothing as far as matching to the correct song.

Have used Match since it was first out in beta and it has always worked this way.


Michael

 

[verwon]

It doesn't seem anyone really knows, yet. Just play with the files and data, try to see what works.

 

[verwon]

I doubt that was it. I have re-attempted many songs without changing anything and there have been many instances where another attempt worked where the first one did not.

You could match the same track with 100% incorrect data. I have done it. Metadata means nothing as far as matching to the correct song.

Have used Match since it was first out in beta and it has always worked this way.


Michael

And why on earth do you have it in to argue with me? I've not posted any ideas, or theories that are different than what most other people have posted.

 

[BubbaMc]

Can anyone tell the difference between 128, 192 and 256 on mobile devices anyway?

Most certainly, yes.

 

[Tinmania]

And why on earth do you have it in to argue with me? I've not posted any ideas, or theories that are different than what most other people have posted.

Argue? WTF? Uh ok.... lol




Michael

 

[irish2110]

alright cool...thanks for your help..

so basically there is no difference between uploaded and matched other than iTunes was unable to find it?

 

[MBHockey]

alright cool...thanks for your help..

so basically there is no difference between uploaded and matched other than iTunes was unable to find it?

"Uploaded" will be whatever your original song file is. So say it's a 128 kbps AAC, that's what gets uploaded. If a 128 kbps AAC file gets matched though, you'd have access to a 256 kbps AAC version and you don't have to upload the actual file to the cloud from your computer.

 

[urkel]

I doubt that was it. I have re-attempted many songs without changing anything and there have been many instances where another attempt worked where the first one did not.

I still dont get it. How exactly do you re-attempt a match other than restarting the whole lengthy detection process over and over?

My problem may be that I'm not done uploading unmatched songs yet since my Cable provider (COX) assumes I'm a pirate due to the large upload/download rates which causes my entire network to halt until I reboot or call in to have them manually reset me. In the last 24hrs I've only uploaded 400 of 1600 unmatched songs so IF there's a way to avoid uploading a song that I KNOW is in the iTunes database then I'd like to take advantage of that.

 

[Tinmania]

I still dont get it. How exactly do you re-attempt a match other than restarting the whole lengthy detection process over and over?

Well in my case deleting the uploaded file from iCloud and local iTunes library and then adding it back to iTunes. This causes iTunes to do another match.



Michael

 

[Rob9874]

I noticed tonight I was streaming songs from iTunes on my PC, without downloading. I double-click the song to play it, and it played (while it buffered), but when it finished, it still had the iCloud download icon, indicating it was not on my harddrive. I thought it downloaded/streamed simultaneously. Or is that just on the iPhone?

 

[nealh]

So how do we get the higher bitrate of 256.

Most of my music is 160 in iTunes. I thought iTunes Match automatically updates them to 256.

Iam so confused on how this works. TIA

 

[verwon]

I noticed tonight I was streaming songs from iTunes on my PC, without downloading. I double-click the song to play it, and it played (while it buffered), but when it finished, it still had the iCloud download icon, indicating it was not on my harddrive. I thought it downloaded/streamed simultaneously. Or is that just on the iPhone?

Just phone, iPad, iPod...

 

[verwon]

So how do we get the higher bitrate of 256.

Most of my music is 160 in iTunes. I thought iTunes Match automatically updates them to 256.

Iam so confused on how this works. TIA

It doesn't change the files on your computer. To do that, you'd have to delete and dl new copies from the cloud.

 

[nealh]

It doesn't change the files on your computer. To do that, you'd have to delete and dl new copies from the cloud.

Thx but how do you know the file on the phone is the 256 bitrate. I had assumed when iTunes Matched the songs would have a similar quality and play the same loudness.

I noticed my poor quality MP3s, play a lower volume and my higher quality tend to play louder.

 

[endless17]

bitrate has nothing to do with volume, only fidelity.

 

[nealh]

bitrate has nothing to do with volume, only fidelity.

thx, but how do I know if the iP4S has the songs in 256 bitrate.

 

[Mak47]

It appears that Apple is being purposefully vague about what exactly iTunes Match does.

I got all my music in the cloud last night. That was a bit of a nightmare--that part of the software is obviously not quite ready for prime time--but what's done is done.

All day today I've had access to my entire library on my iPhone and iPad as long as I had an internet connection. The service is a streaming/downloading/caching service--it seems.

At the Keynote, Eddy Cue mentioned something about how your music is intelligently cached with iTunes Match. Meaning the songs you listen to most stay downloaded to the device so they don't have to be constantly fetched. As you run out of space, the songs that you listen to least are deleted from the device. At least this was my understanding of his comments.

This actually makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like Apple TV. Those units only have a few gigs of storage, and just stream and cache the content you're asking for--then push out the unused stuff. It seems that iTunes Match is supposed to work the same way, except it can be pulled from the cloud instead of your home computer.

At least that's how it appears. Time will tell I suppose.