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noone

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 4, 2006
304
514
So I know that back in the day you could "upgrade" your lower quality songs using iTunes Match. But this was back in the days when it was still iTunes and before Apple Music.

As an Apple One subscriber, is this still possible? If so, how? I can find plenty of articles on how to do it circa 2010s but nothing recent. I realize that it's largely redundant if you have access to Apple Music but I'd still like to upgrade some locally stored music for archival purposes.
 
Last edited:

Reggaenald

Suspended
Sep 26, 2021
864
798
What do you mean with „upgrade“? I can‘t find any reference to this, only descriptions of iTunes Matche‘s rather limited feature set, which is basically the possibility to upload your music to iCloud to stream or download it on other iDevices. I also don’t understand how you’d like to use these (cloud) files to archive them.
iTunes Match has become part of Apple Music and seems to not be a separate subscription service anymore.
If you mean the possibility to match a song from your local library with an AAC version provided by iTunes/Apple Music, you’re out of luck there, too. This feature does still exist and is part of AM, but these AAC files are linked to your Apple ID and subscription of AM. You don’t own these files and can’t access or modify them like your local files.
 

noone

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 4, 2006
304
514
What do you mean with „upgrade“? I can‘t find any reference to this, only descriptions of iTunes Matche‘s rather limited feature set, which is basically the possibility to upload your music to iCloud to stream or download it on other iDevices. I also don’t understand how you’d like to use these (cloud) files to archive them.
iTunes Match has become part of Apple Music and seems to not be a separate subscription service anymore.
If you mean the possibility to match a song from your local library with an AAC version provided by iTunes/Apple Music, you’re out of luck there, too. This feature does still exist and is part of AM, but these AAC files are linked to your Apple ID and subscription of AM. You don’t own these files and can’t access or modify them like your local files.
It used to be (and may still be) that if you had a song in your library that was also matched in the iTunes catalog, you could delete your copy and re-download it from iTunes at a higher quality than yours. Here's and old article explaining the process: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-use-itunes-match-to-upgrade-audio-quality/
 
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Reggaenald

Suspended
Sep 26, 2021
864
798
It used to be (and may still be) that if you had a song in your library that was also matched in the iTunes catalog, you could delete your copy and re-download it from iTunes at a higher quality than yours. Here's and old article explaining the process: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-use-itunes-match-to-upgrade-audio-quality/
Ahh yes, now I remember. Well, it seems that that’s gone now, too. But, should you find this to still be accessible somehow, feel free to correct me.
 

WebHead

macrumors 6502
Dec 29, 2004
472
104
I haven't tried it since iTunes became Apple Music, but I can see all my previous playlists are still there, including matched songs.

Can you not create a similar playlist then delete and redownload those?

Incidentally, matched songs from your own library were DRM-free last I checked. It's only other Apple Music downloads that have DRM.
 
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