attempt to "re-match" tracks

Another idea is a "Sure Match" feature, where iTunes could ask you to hold a CD's bar code up to your computer's camera and then scan it for a match against their database. That would increase the probability that the user really does own the CD.

The matching test could be performed while the CD is in the drive and then all tracks could be automatically matched against Apple's master version of that exact CD, rather than on a track-by-track basis.

Of course you could still spoof this system by printing a downloaded bar code or by inserted a burned copy of the CD. But obviously you can spoof the matching test today anyway by simply copying the song files from someone else.

I'm sure Apple probably considered this...

Back in Black just happened to be the first album in my library. And yes, clearly matched songs are a superset of what's for sale in the iTunes Store contrary to popular belief -- that's a good thing. But Apple is not testing for matches against all releases of a track and I hope they will quickly expand their database by analyzing tracks that had to be uploaded.

An interesting idea for sure, but I don't see the labels going for it for the reason you cited. I can see pirate sites cropping up with UPC scans, and a JPG/PNG is much harder to control than a bunch of MP3 files, given its ubuquitous nature on the web and the small file size.

While I don't think the whole thing is as simple as you make it out to be, they should definitely be able to improve it, particularly things like songs not matching because the length is off by a second or two.

And I do agree that in the case of an album matching all tracks but one or two, it would make sense to relax the matching algorithm a bit on those remaining tracks if that's what it takes to get those to match properly. The overall rate of matching doesn't bother me (and I'm getting lower than 80%) but the albums that partially match are particularly irksome.

This service has been out months, seriously no real improvements in that time? Or are we going to see the fixes 11 months after release so Apple can try to get people to renew the service?

Signed up for itunes match today and spent many hours letting it do it's thing matching & uploading. Sure wish that I had read through these forums before signing up as I am not real happy with the results. About 500 out of 3000 songs did not match. I expected there to be maybe 100 or so, since I had a few vinyl rips, and some more obscur 60s/70s/80s pop songs in my library. What I was not expecting was to see mainstream albums get chopped up. Things like Pink Floyd The Wall and Wish You Were Here; or Genesis Duke and Abacab, to name a few. On those albums and many others, 2/3 of the tracks matched, and the other 1/3 did not and so they got uploaded. These were rips from store-bought CD's, purchased back throughout the 90s. If ALL the songs on the album did not match due the itunes store carrying a higher-quality remastering of the album, I could understand it. But having 2/3 of an album match? Come on. Apple needs to MAJORLY tweek their matching software, and there needs to be a way to select inividual songs and say something like "attempt rematch with rest of album"!

I agree, eegad. Having unmatched tracks with no pratical method to fix them is bad enough, and it's especially frustrating when the those two unmtched tracks are on an album you bought through iTunes itself!!

I understand they need to be careful about allowing people to arbitrarily say, "This is the song I want," and simply taking their word for it. But there should be a way to say, "Look, this song is my library is the same as this song in yours," and have the system compare the tracks directly, saying, "Oh, not only is it the same song, it's the exact copy I sold you three years ago. My bad."

I finally decided to take the plunge into iTunes Match after using Google Play for a month or so. I really didn't like their UI and we are pretty Apple centric. To my dismay 3739 of 15574 tracks (21%) have to be uploaded, and like many these are "onsies and twosies" of full albums.

I am glad at least about 50% of those songs I had ripped at 256k rips so the uploads will be of higher quality, but there are still some that just make no sense that after nearly a year they have not made public any improvements to the matching quality.

I am happy that the majority of my 2nd generation ripping effort back some years ago at AAC 128kbps have been mostly matched. Seems my decision to flip to VBR mp3 is more at issue.

im thinking im going to get a media drive and chuck itunes into touch as i spend more time and effort fixing it than is worth it and i have also lost about 10 percent of my music and after having paid for itunes match why should i have to keep re adding tracks also the ubove problems

APPLE .. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS??? in 2040?

So far I have found that the failure to match some songs from a given album is a mismatch in their time length. After I import the CD using Apple Lossless Compression, I review which songs were uploaded instead of matched. Then I go to iTunes to find the time length listed. After that I open the track in Garageband and trim or extend the track. After that and importing it back to iTunes, iTunes performs a Match update and matches the track instead of uploading it.

Hey Charles Cunningham,

I'm not having much luck with this method. Can you describe your steps in detail as well as your success rate? Thanks!

I know this is an old thread, but I was going to say this is what I do to force them to "re-match." But it doesn't always work.

What has helped is....I bring up on the web the song and album in iTunes (search "Abbey Road, iTunes"), and then peruse the details of the song and album to see if anything is off from the version you have. If I have tried to create new AAC several times and it's still not working, then I'll even work on the song length if it's a bit different. Say a song in iTunes is 3:35, but the version in my catalogue is 3:38, then I can go in and figure out where to cut it down. Usually maybe start it at 1 second instead of 0, then end it at 3:36 instead of letting it run out. Next create new AAC version, and your new version will be 3:35. This is also a good method if you somehow get a disc that has no breaks between songs. It's tedious and time consuming, but you can manually create each song. (If you ever need to do this, I recommend pulling up a time calculator app online, some even will let you add multiple items; in which case I'll add each songs length one after another, then I know where in the whole 1 hour and 12 minutes of tape, each song begins and ends).

Sometimes I've learned that I have the option of either having it match in iTunes, or keeping it with the metadata of the original disc. I am picky, and prefer to have all my songs tagged with the original song data, instead of being tagged in a Greatest Hits, or "Hits of the 90's," etc. But with one-hit wonders and others, iTunes may keep them tagged in their system related to the GH or Compilation version. So pick your poison, accurate, original tagging? Or match?

Hi Tyler,

I wouldn't even mess with GarageBand. Simply click "get info," to bring up the song metadata. Click the tab for "Options," and check both the "Start," and "Stop," boxes. Then you can change the time for the song to start and/or stop. Say there's some dead air at the beginning, then figure out how much you need to cut, and how much you can and start the song there. Then repeat and apply the same process for the end of the song. Between playing with the beginning and end, you can usually get it to the time you need to match with iTunes. And as long as you don't delete the original version until you've double checked your new AAC version for accuracy, you can theoretically keep creating a new version as many times as you want. I've had to do this before..until I learned that once you have altered the start and stop times, if you simply start the original version pre-AAC convert, it will play from the start and stop times you added, even though it will still show a full song length time. Once you've converted to new AAC, the song length will be fixed.

Dang, rereading this, I'm not sure if it's going to be all that understandable 😉. If you have questions or need help, I'll keep an eye on my inbox for replies and try to help as much as possible.

Thanks. Well Said!