Will itunes match attempt to re-match tracks which were not matched in the first go-round and ended up being uploaded? For example, on Abbey Road it matched all tracks except for She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. Now I have almost the full album at 256, and one track at 128. Not ideal.
itunes match-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
Sometimes in a discussion you have to realise that no matter how many times you say something, or how many different ways you say it, a person is either unwilling or incapable of understanding your point.
I have reached that point. That's enough for me on this thread I think.
Could it be that the Spain Store is not included? I just try a new CD which is not on the US store yet but it is on the Spain Store. I´m sure that it will soon be on the US Store, will check back later and let you know
Now I´m positive 100% sure that my US ITM account does not do match against the Spain Store.
I have tried many albums which are not on the US store and can´t be able to match them, but today I got this CD
La Orquesta del Titanic by Serrat y Sabina
which still is not available in the US store and only got two songs matched. It´s not a coincidence that these two mathced songs are the only songs available in the US Store,
However, I can also assure that I´ve been able to match songs not available in the US. I think Apple used only some stores, may be the 9 that are on top in Itunes Instant.
Is there anybody here with an Spanish account on ITM? If so, I´d like to do some testing. I do not discard buying an Spanish Account but I want to make sure it works.
Buenas Noches
I'm exhausted. I was SO excited about this - I've lost 2 iPods and have been lugging around CDs, and for the past few years have been trying to consolodate to DVDs... it certainly has not been easy to get matches. You guys expressed yourselves way better - but I think a method to reattempt matching would make me feel so much better.
Here's to the future of iTunes Match!!! 🙂
IMO iCloud is very good/excellent even - to have all of my iTunes music safe all in one place accessible to all my iDevices. So now I don’t actually need to carry around an iPod Classic 160 anymore because the 16gb on an iPhone/iDevice is enough. I think this facility is good good value for the subscription into iMatch.
The iMatch process on my collection matched around 90% of all songs. But that does leave some 10% just over 1,000 unmatched or uploaded.
When Apple decided to introduce iMatch, they must have had a huge battle with the record company boys to get agreement. And I suspect the agreement was only given on the basis that Apple could prove that the match process would be strong.
Strong: Not getting an Oz Pink Floyd book-leg mixed up with an original version of Brick.
And I think that's why I'm seeing 1,000 plus song as uploaded.
Now I ask myself is uploaded such a bad thing? Well the answer from an iCloud customer POV is no, that’s fine. I have access to MY tracks/albums in the iCloud just as they were before in my itunes lib. It works as you'd expect away from home you can download a track you don’t have - and have it just the same.
The only limitation is that you can't ever upgrade the bit rates etc of uploaded tracks. For me that’s not as important as having access to tunes in the Cloud. It’s a nice feature but not why I signed up.
So now I ask why might an album fail on a match process. Why did I have to sit and wait for the upload process to complete? I have many track’s uploaded which you’d think should have been matched?
For example my Genesis / Duke CD is all uploaded. If I check the tracks Vs iTunes/Store they all look a little different is size. But my copy of Duke is ages old, and the only one the Store is the re-mastered version. What I think is difficult to understand is around the world over time there will be released MANY various versions of an album. If you buy a CD while on holiday 10years ago in the USA, then try to match it in the UK today - what chance it'll fit? None I’d say. And the older your copy the more likely it will not be found. Also I guess if your CD has any minor defects or scratches that could impact the process too.
Only if Apple catalogue every version of every album ever released in every corner of the world would you see things change. That sounds like a tall order to me. So I'm not expecting much to change regarding the unmatched/uploaded songs anytime soon.
But looking forward I believe my Match ratio will improve – CDs purchased uploaded I expect will be matched right away. So I will see the newer albums will be matched it’s just my old stuff that’s tricky to do – unless I repurchase, and I can’t justify that.
Now I ask myself is uploaded such a bad thing?
Only problem I've been having is that sometimes the Matched tracks are of a higher volume than my Uploaded tracks. So going from track to track can get (a little) annoying.
My iTunes library contains about 8,000 songs. About 7,000 matched and 1,000 had to be uploaded.
About 95% of these 1,000 unmatched songs should have been matched because they are from popular albums readily available in iTunes. I was able to get one track to match by monkeying with it Time property, but I stopped trying when others failed to match.
I'm NOT impressed with this success rate, considering Apple had to be aware of these problems before launch.
Like everyone else, I'd like to know how and when Apple plans to fix this-- or will there have to be a class action suit?
By the way, Jim. The proper metadata for that song is "ABACAB," not "Abacab." ABACAB is an acronym for the pattern of phrases used in the initial version of that song.
While that might be accurate, Apple doesn't agree on their iTunes store which is where I was trying to match it. They have four versions of the track and all are labeled "Abacab" not "ABACAB".
Scenario wrote:
Like everyone else, I'd like to know how and when Apple plans to fix this-- or will there have to be a class action suit?
Oh, please. Get over it. You're getting an over 80% match rate and you're complaining?
Amen to that, getting 7 out of 8 matched is a decent result, the big problems with Match are things like songs matching incorrectly with no way to correct or upload, songs cutting off, broken playlists, etc.
7 out of 8 matches is a failure rate of a whopping 12.5%, when <1% is entirely possible. If an album can be identified as a match, and the number of tracks is the same, and all the track names match exactly, and the times are within 2 or 3 seconds, it should be considered a match. If not, I agree with Mike that a prompt should appear for user intervention, or some other heuristic should be kicked off like comparing the tracks' data (or music "DNA").
This really doesn't seem like rocket science to me. And when Apple gives us the usual spiel about how we can have our entire library matched and upgraded (the only restriction being the 25,000 track limit) for $25 -- and then fails to deliver on that promise, they need to be held accountable.
"<1% is entirely possible" -- Seriously?
The problem is significantly more complicated than "match the names, lengths, and number of tracks." If you really think it's that simple, then you must think the engineers at Apple are either stupid or just trying to rip us all off.
I suggest you create a working model of your "not rocket science" implementation, go out and get some VC capital (because with a working heuristic music matching app with better than 1% accuracy, that shouldn't be hard) and create a superior competing service. That'll show 'em!
//B
Yes, seriously. Acoustic fingerprinting is not that difficult. The algorithms are well known and libraries are readily available. It's a simple matter of adjusting the threshold of what is considered a match. If Apple has it set to 99% probability, they probably need to reduce that to 98% or even 95%.
My point is that there is no plausible excuse to match 9 out of 10 songs on a clean rip of AC/DC's Back in Black, but then choke on track 7 when it's a clear match from the user's perspective. iTunes Match's algorithm consisently chokes in this way across most of my entire library. 1 or 2 songs from popular albums simply fail to match, and that's affecting everyone and painting this service in a bad light.
Another likely problem is with remasters or reissued albums. In this case, a song might have been remastered for dynamic range or even edited for length. If iTunes Match doesn't match it, then the problem is that Apple is failing to check every available release of that song.
Yet another possible problem is that Apple may be trying to be too cute with songs shared between Greatest Hits albums and the original releases. If, for example, the original song fades out at the end but doesn't on a subsequent release, it may not match due to the 99% threshold mentioned above. Just a theory...
And by the way, I have worked on digital media projects at both Apple and Microsoft. I don't think their engineers are "stupid." I just suspect that this system suffers from parameters dictated by those who own the business logic.
I've mentioned this before, but the main issue here is that Apple's process is song-centric and not album-centric. So, if a particular song isn't Matched, that it itself isn't a big problem in itself (as it's really no different than what Google or Amazon do, with their competing services). The problem is that, if you have a concept album / live album / unremastered album and that one upload now breaks the "flow" of the album because everything else was Matched, then it becomes a problem.
The fix? Apple can either 1) create an "album-only" Match process (as suggested earlier in this thread) where it's an all or nothing Match, or 2) add a "force upload" feature so at least the user has an option to fix broken albums themselves. I requested the latter via the feedback button in November/December, but so far no changes.
I say vote with your wallet - if the service isn't what you expected it to be, don't renew and make sure you tell them WHY you aren't renewing. If they lose enough users at the EO this year and get feedback, perhaps they'll make some of the changes we're asking for.
Scenario wrote:
My point is that there is no plausible excuse to match 9 out of 10 songs on a clean rip of AC/DC's Back in Black, but then choke on track 7 when it's a clear match from the user's perspective. iTunes Match's algorithm consisently chokes in this way across most of my entire library. 1 or 2 songs from popular albums simply fail to match, and that's affecting everyone and painting this service in a bad light.
It's ironic you would choose AC/DC as an example, because none of their music is available for sale on the iTunes Store, and the fact that Back in Black matches at all is a puzzle to everyone (at least it is to me). Incidentally, my 2003 remastered copy of that album matched 100%. So you've got an older master than what is in the iTunes Store DB. There are apparently some sonic differences.
attempt to "re-match" tracks
