So I just purchased iTunes match, its working great. I like to be organized but I have a bunch of songs that are missing album names. Basically my question is, is there a way to have iTunes, once it matches a song, provide the info for a song as it would when you purchased it out of the iTunes store? Or are you stuck with however the song was labeled before it was matched?
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iTunes Match Question
- Thread starter Cscottrun
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Anything you edit after running iTunes Match will be reassessed once you click "Update iTunes Match" under the Store tab at the top of iTunes, so it should update those entries to your library in iCloud.
As I'm pretty sure this is totally incorrect, I would expand on my former statement in saying that similarly to Genius in iTunes, iTunes Match works by scanning your ID3 tags. It is also more dynamic like Genius in that as it matches more songs, it will become more accurate in finding matches for the songs in your library.
I should have worded the question better. I want iTunes to match my songs, and in doing that, also fill in the Artist, Track, Album etc...as it would be if I purchased the song from the iTunes store. Hopefully that is worded better.
I'd love it if that could happen, but it doesn't fill in any of the missing information or artwork. It keeps your metadata intact.
it definitely does not use ID3 tags in any way.
this is easily proved by using wrong tags and then starting match - you'll find you get the correct song based on the file and not the tags.
the match process is similar to how Shazam etc works.
I'm pretty sure it matches by scanning the audio, like Shazam and Soundhound.
The following isn't meant to be a shameless plug:
I'm a musician and I have two rock albums available in the iTunes Music Store. In my iTunes library, I have my songs as well as their instrumental versions. Then I signed up for iTunes Match...
Naturally, it matched the album versions, but for a couple of the instrumental versions, it matched them to the full album versions and the rest were uploaded. The ID3 tags and artwork are definitely not the same.
I'm hoping there's a way to 'force upload' to iCloud.
The album is called King Friday, by the way.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/richy923/id301066330
...okay maybe a bit of a shameless plug
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There's no way to auto fill the track's ID3 tags. Your best bet would be to use an MP3 tagger (Picard, TuneUp, etc.)
There's no way to auto fill the track's ID3 tags. Your best bet would be to use an MP3 tagger (Picard, TuneUp, etc.)
After reading up from several sources, I'll retract my former statements. I guess iTunes Match works pretty much exactly like Shazam, where it takes "audio snapshots" of the files that are in your library. Huh. Interesting. No wonder it takes forever the first time.
I'll downgrade my own post for not backing up my statements with research.
Sorry. :X
I'll downgrade my own post for not backing up my statements with research.
Sorry. :X
@Kendo: A few of the sources I looked up suggested that iTunes match uses a combination of ID3 Tags as well as audio snapshots, but that is most likely pure speculation.
I really wish this were true, I know I have some metadata hosed up and if it would fix all that plus upgrade the songs that would be great. Unfortunately everything I have read sense match was announced says it keeps your metadata.
BUT I guess that would really piss off a lot of other people that like to keep it the way they want it. I would love to have the choice but apple in their typical tradition chose to go with less choices and options.
If iTunes Match matches a song then you can delete your local copy and re-download from the cloud. Once you do that it will have all the metadata from iTunes in it
That's strange - I could have sworn it replaced the metadata, but I've just done another test and you are right - it keeps the existing metadata. Sorry for the mis-info on my original post