iTune Match 25,000+ library

I agree, too easy to change metadata and get whatever song you want if it worked that way.

The matching works pretty well for me. I'm matching at about 87% of the time right now. And most of the stuff that doesn't match is because it isn't in the iTunes store. So, if it ever gets fixed to work like it states in those terms and I won't have a problem.

Actually using a combo of both is the best way. If songs are not tagged by iTunes or partially tagged, they should not be considered for match. Only songs that are tagged, after being ripped or imported and have the right information on them should be used, along with the song length, which is still off sometimes depending on how it was ripped.

My songs are all ripped CDs (98%) the other 2% are purchased from Amazon or iTunes. They should all be matched, as legit purchases.

Please explain to me how identifiying a song based solely on the length is a "good and efficient" way of identifying songs? How many 3:69 second song are duplicated out there, more than one I'm sure, so whats iTunes going to do then? Tag them both as the first or only 3:69 song it knows? It can't be just the song length, it has to have other data as well.

Ken and Michelle Walker wrote:

ChrisMc73 wrote:

… Meta data is the only way to go...trusting what iTunes has in our libraries and using that meta data is the best way.

Gotta say, the first thing I do when I download a song from the iTunes Store is tweak the meta data to match my own sorting preferences, anyway. (Why would anyone want Halloween and Christmas songs mixed in one genre named "Holiday"? That's just the most recent example that comes to mind.)

Has anyone tried creating a new, separate iTunes library with fewer than 25K songs in it, joining iTunes Match, then returning to the original, full library? What does iTunes Match do if a fully fledged subscriber exceeds the limit?

Tho' with only 5K+ songs in my own library, it really isn't my fight.

I don't have my iTunes library as grainular as you I guess, because all my "holiday" music is in the genre labeled, "holiday" everyone is different. I like all my songs to be as high level genre as they can be. To me it gets too messy to have "indi" rock, and "alt" rock, and "red dirt" rock, etc..so its all just "rock" to me. I really don't care about drilling down much deeper.

And I'm not saying I want iTunes match to match based on all the meta data for the entire song, again it has to be a combo...artist and song title, and song length should match up a lot. When you start throwing in the genre's and years etc, the stuff that is a lot of times wrong or mislabled, or edited, then thats when it becomes a mess.

It has to be some basic info...

ChrisMc73 wrote:

Please explain to me how identifiying a song based solely on the length is a "good and efficient" way of identifying songs?

Sorry — did somebody say track length alone was a good way to identify songs? Not sure who said that, but I certainly didn't intend to agree with them. iTunes Match is apparently scanning the actual sound data within the file to match a song, not just measuring the length. With certain rare exceptions (stereo recordings vs. mono recordings, etc.) that seems like the way to go.

The song info and metadata are just too personal. Your library sounds like a great example — "high-level" tagging works for you, so you should totally be able to use your setup with iTunes Match. Mine works for me (going back to the "Holiday" genre example, using "Christmas" and "Halloween" lets me easily set up party playlists), and I should totally be able to use my setup with iTunes Match as well.

But I certainly wouldn't recommend using my song info setup as a way to decide whether my songs match those in the iTunes Store, and your tagging system just wouldn't work for me. Scanning the actual sound data in the file is a clever solution, if you can muster the computing power — and apparently Apple believes it can.

Has anyone with >25K songs tried creating a smaller iTunes library, joining Match, then switching back to their full library? I'd be curious to hear what happens.

Message was edited by: Ken and Michelle Walker

ChrisMc73 wrote:

If songs are not tagged by iTunes or partially tagged, they should not be considered for match.

Then iTunes Match would be an extremely poor service.

What if the user did not get (or did not want) any tags?

"Sorry, your music is not tagged correctly. Please go away and come back after you have tagged it all correctly."

Only songs that are tagged, after being ripped or imported and have the right information on them should be used, along with the song length,

How would iTunes know the info is "right"? I can change it to whatever i want.

My songs are all ripped CDs (98%) the other 2% are purchased from Amazon or iTunes. They should all be matched, as legit purchases.

All songs should be matched, if possible. That is one of the benefits of iTunes Match, which doesn't care if they are legit purchases or not

Please explain to me how identifiying a song based solely on the length is a "good and efficient" way of identifying songs?

??? You ar ethe only one who mentioned song length.

But that is how iTunes (through Gracenote) currently identifies RIP'd CD album and song info. Number of tracks and length of these tracks on the CD.

Fingerprinting analyzes the audio and matches it to a database to come up with the track info.

Shazaam and Soundhound (and other) apps do this by simply listening to the song for a few seconds. No other info (length, tags) is needed.

Chris CA wrote:

Actually, this is incorrect.

The license for iTunes Match states,

"iTunes Match works with libraries that contain up to 25,000 songs which are either ℹ not currently available on the iTunes Service, or (ii) not purchased from the iTunes Service with your Account. Songs with quality less than 96 kbps or that are not authorized for your computer are not eligible for iTunes Match."

There are some issues still to be worked out so hopefully, this will get sorted.

Regardless of what it says there that's not how it works and it's contradicted elsewhere in Apple's info. I assume that will be corrected once they discover it. Their support info just says:

iTunes Store purchases made with the same Apple ID being used for iTunes Match do not count towards the 25,000 song limit.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4914

As for matching, I can see why they'd check the waveform but they'd probably get better results using the tags as well to make sure they accurately match live/studio versions, clean/explicit, stereo/mono, etc. And handle minor differences like slight differences in length. So far it's not doing a great job at those so whatever is going on still needs quite a bit of improvement.

Chris CA wrote:

ChrisMc73 wrote:

If songs are not tagged by iTunes or partially tagged, they should not be considered for match.

Then iTunes Match would be an extremely poor service.

What if the user did not get (or did not want) any tags?

"Sorry, your music is not tagged correctly. Please go away and come back after you have tagged it all correctly."

Well how is that any worse than what they are doing now to me? Sorry you have over 25,000 songs in your library, you can't use iTunes match, go delete some songs and come back again...?!?!?

If your music isn't tagged, then its just files, and iTunes match was never meant to be a file back up or file storage, thats what iCloud is. This is iTunes match, it matches "MUSIC" which should be tagged so that its a file identified as a song. If a user doesn't want tags, and has 25,000 files with no tags what good is that? So yeah if its not tagged, tag it and come back does make sense. Locking me out because I have 37,000+ well tagged and clean, and legit ripped songs is what is considered to me, POOR SERVICE. I know they will fix this however, its Apple.

Matching based on waveform does make the most sense, and if thats what they are doing then thats good, but apparently its not working that great, as neither does Shazam or Soundhound, the technology is not perfect, I know. Hoping that it gets better over time.

ChrisMc73 wrote:

Chris CA wrote:

What if the user did not get (or did not want) any tags? "Sorry, your music is not tagged correctly. Please go away and come back after you have tagged it all correctly."

Well how is that any worse than what they are doing now to me? Sorry you have over 25,000 songs in your library, you can't use iTunes match, go delete some songs and come back again...?!?!?

Wha? How is it even a little bit the same? In one case, you'd be denying a huge fraction of your potential customers, arbitrarily. As it is, they're denying a minority of customers whose libraries are at the extreme end of the spectrum.

ChrisMc73 wrote:

If your music isn't tagged, then its just files, and iTunes match was never meant to be a file back up or file storage … This is iTunes match, it matches "MUSIC" which should be tagged so that its a file identified as a song. If a user doesn't want tags, and has 25,000 files with no tags what good is that?

Maybe you're not in the best position to decide what's good for me. That's my job. 🙂

iTunes a tool for storing users' files. It's also for letting users tag their files, and change those tags, or even delete them if they want. Have you ever had iTunes refuse to store a file because it couldn't figure out what the "official" tags were "supposed" to be? No? That's because you get to decide your own tags.

Neither you nor I are in a position to announce what iTunes Match was "meant to be." I'd go as far, tho', as to say it was meant to work with iTunes. iTunes lets me tag files however I like, and iTunes Match is simply acknowledging that.

The minority is the user who has a library full of songs with no data/meta data/tags on them, sure everyone has some here and there, but most if using iTunes, the way its supposed to be used, have tags. So those who would have an entire library full of untagged music, which is just about unusable, are the minority.

Those of us who have LARGE libraries, full of songs that we've spent hours cleaning and making sure has tags and album art and meta data, are the ones who are not in a minority. I'm not an extreme case, just look around at the people in the 25,000 limit posts, look at the articles with work arounds, there are apparently more than a few of us out there.

Sure we're not mainstream, but we aren't a minority. Again, songs with out information or tags are just files to iTunes, which means they don't belong in iTunes or Match in that state, they need to be tagged and rendered into a usable file for iTunes/Match to work. Its very simple. If you want to put up files that have no informaton about them, that iTunes doesn't know what it is other than an MP3 or AAC whatever, thats not what Apple intended nor wants I'm pretty certain. I can say with confidence that there is a reason they have iCloud and Match, even if they are similar in many ways, they are intended for different types of storage. They want you to be able to use your music, from iTunes on all your devices, and to do this it must be recognizable to the tool that does this, iTunes. I don't even know what you are arguing with me now...going around in circles about stupid stuff when this isn't even my main beef.

My beef is not anything to do with tagging, I don't care how you tag your music, as long as it works with iTunes and Match, thats what everyone wants. I do too, but I also want to be able to use the service, which I can't due to some 25,000 song limit in my library, which is just dumb. Fixable, but dumb and frustrating.

My music is tagged well, I have pretty good confidence that 90%+ will be found when and if I actually get to use the service ever...

ChrisMc73 is exactly right.

Who came up with the arbitrary limit of 25,000 anyway? Why not 20,000, or 35,000, or 350,000?

It's preposterous. Serious music collectors have been working to organize their collections -- and many of them have been loyally using iTunes to do it in -- ever since (or before) iTunes 1.

Yet they are the very segment of the iTunes customer base who are now being turned away, and for no good reason.

I believe Amazon's music cloud allows an unlimited number of tracks access on an account, and they're all allowed on for free as long as they're .mp3 files. Why isn't Apple trying to "Match" that?

Ben Pilkington

To add to this. I initially had problems getting match to work. After getting through to someone (the right someone) at Apple we discover a corrupt iTunes Genius file. As a test I created a new library and add added one song. Everything worked. When I went back to the original Library it anyalized it and said New Songs could not be uploaded. iCloud can contain up to 25000 songs not purchased from the iTunes store. Recent additions to this computer exceed that limit and will not be uploaded.

I have 45000 songs in my library. 27500 are purchased from iTunes. According to the information Apple puts out. I have not exceeded my limit. I have under 25000 non iTunes songs purchased. These are legitimate music files ripped or legally downloaded. I am perplexed.

I knew having a large library was going to be a problem. I just thought Apple would reward a loyal customer.

Has anyone encountered this? They accepted my 25.00 for match but won't let me use it.

ChrisMc73 wrote:

My music is tagged well, I have pretty good confidence that 90%+ will be found when and if I actually get to use the service ever...

When you're willing to try the workaround, or if and when Apple eventually changes their rules and you're able to join iTunes Match, Many of your songs likely will be matched. Many likely will not. And your tagging effort will be preserved either way. But Apple has made it clear: Matching happens using their file fingerprinting, not your tags.

ChrisMc73 wrote:

Sure we're not mainstream, but we aren't a minority.

Cool! How does one manage that? 🙂

ChrisMc73 wrote:

… Songs with out information or tags are just files to iTunes, which means they don't belong in iTunes or Match in that state, they need to be tagged and rendered into a usable file for iTunes/Match to work. … If you want to put up files that have no informaton about them, … thats not what Apple intended nor wants I'm pretty certain. I can say with confidence that there is a reason they have iCloud and Match, even if they are similar in many ways, they are intended for different types of storage. They want you to be able to use your music, from iTunes on all your devices, and to do this it must be recognizable to the tool that does this, iTunes.

If you work for Apple in some capacity, I certainly can't argue with you. I don't, which means I can't make assertions about what iTunes and iTunes Match are meant for, what sorts of files "belong" in them, what Apple intends, etc. Someone who doesn't work for Apple — like me — is in no position to make declarations about that.

For the record, I have many untagged tracks in my iTunes Library, mostly family recordings I've made of kids and grandparents singing, reciting family histories, etc., etc. iTunes recognizes and plays them just fine, and lets me burn CDs for family. They're certainly usable (and useful), and the only tag I typically give them is a filename. If you want to tag all the files in your library extensively, iTunes lets you do that. If I don't, iTunes lets me do that, too.

And my untagged files uploaded just fine and are stored in iTunes Match now. I was tickled to see I can hear them on my laptop and iPod pretty much any time I want. Unexpected, and very cool. And useful, even if it's not what Apple intended.

ChrisMc73 wrote:

So, try a workaround, then, if you like. As you point out, lots of folks are, and many of them seem to have luck with it. Or don't. But a workaround is the only advice you'll find offered here by your fellow users. If you have >25K songs in your library, and you don't want to try the workaround, and you still want to use iTunes Match, you're better off posting here than in these forums. There's just no other practical advice other users can offer you.

Here is what I'm going to do, I have about 18,000 songs in my iTunes library on my Mac at work. Most of which are just the same music I have on my home Mac, that I've brought to another drive here at work, more of the essentials that I love. So I will try it out on this library and see how it goes, this is the best work around for me, because I don't have to do any special tricks nor dork with my library at home which has been worked on for a long time.

I'll let you all know how it goes.

This should not be an issue, you are essentially doing the same thing all of us with 25k+ libraries had to do. Rather than mess with my 'Master' library, I did 'Option' + iTunes and created a new library, imported all the songs from my 'Master' lib, without copying them, and trimmed it down to 24,950.

I started running match Wednesday morning, and by last night 21,000 were matched, and many were uploaded. This morning I had 990 left to upload, and about 500 that had 'errors' that I will need to 'convert' and re-match.

The process, when used correctly (but not on our entire libraries), is quite smooth, and works well.

J