Is it just me, or is iTunes Match a "scam"?

It's probably a good idea for anyone having issues with iTunes match to take a look at these links. There's a lot of good information here. There is a FAQ at the bottom of the page, so scroll down.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

There is also this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4914

Everyone is hating on this service and making up conspiracy theories at this point smh...

I can personally vouch for the service and say that I have had few issues, and the good FAR outweighs the bad... The service will get better as time goes on.. It's a finnicky thing bc very often no two files are exactly alike, so it's going to take a while to iron out these things. To expect less is to be incompetent.

I can also vouch for the fact that this is not a scam as I have upgraded MANY songs from 128 to 256 and they sound great. I have had times where my original file was louder than the matched iTunes version, but that's simply a matter of encoding preference and there's always a volume button to turn it up when that happens 🙂

I agree that the service not living up to the expectations.

I have a few older tracks in my library,which have been ripped from scratched CDs and for which the "Match" was the exact same scratched version! (I deleted my whole library after performing the initial match and redownloaded all the tracks from the cloud.) And we are talking about albums, which are available from the iTunes store! Even the download to my iPhone was the exact same scratched version. What's the point in matching if the tracks are still flawed!!!

I'm really disappointed...😢

patrickfromblacksburg wrote:

I can personally vouch for the service and say that I have had few issues, and the good FAR outweighs the bad... The service will get better as time goes on.. It's a finnicky thing bc very often no two files are exactly alike, so it's going to take a while to iron out these things. To expect less is to be incompetent.

I can also vouch for the fact that this is not a scam as I have upgraded MANY songs from 128 to 256 and they sound great.

Totally agree I have around 6000 songs in iTunes only 1000 of these were "uploaded" i have deleted all the matched tracks below 256kbps and downloaded them from the cloud. So far im very happy with the results and expext the service to improve over time.

If you dont like teething issue with technology products, simply don't buy/participate in them until they are well established.

ESMP wrote:

I don't know why, but I feel like we're being tricked, say... iTM matches a song, you delete your original bad quality file, you ask iTunes to download the higher quality version of it and iTunes, on demand, transcodes OUR OWN SAME file to AAC. That is what I feel that is happening... I don't feel like I'm getting a brand new song here... just our song with some "make-up" on it... haha.

How are you checking to see if a song is matched or uploaded? You can right click the top headers in iTunes and get two new ones, one with cloud icons and the other with text saying Matched/Uploaded/etc.

If you're deleting and a download gets you the same file then it was probably uploaded instead of matched.

"I thought iTunes Match was all about cleaning up messy / imported songs and getting the iTunes Store version of it! At least that's what I understood from all that marketing! But I seem to be getting my own files reencoded at a "higher" bitrate..."

That certainly isn't what iTunes match is all about.

The purpose is to make your library available to access online on various devices. As it uses matching to the iTunes store, it means that the songs matched will be available at 256 bitrate.

I don't recall Apple advertising anywhere the ability to clean up your library as a feature of the service, and it is just an incidental benefit of the matching process.

As for the issues stated here about getting the old song back, it has been raised a number of times on this and other forums and every time it is discovered that it was indeed an uploaded file rather than a matched one. I'd be surprised to find that isn't the case here, but I suppose you never know.

"Obviously Apple won't explicitly say it... "

Exactly, so that is not what their marketing says, which was my point.

As for the second point, as I said, you do never know, and it could be in this case something odd is happening for you. However, in every other case that I have come across like this, it has proved to be the case that the file was actually uploaded rather than matched. I very much suspect that is the case for igu74, above.

What song specifically is the one with 5 minutes of song but 8 minutes including silence at the end?

Sounds like either there's a glitch in your iTunes and it's showing an uploaded song as matched, or the version in iTunes really is just like the one you downloaded with the silence at the end. Whatever the case, this seems to be an issue with a single file that nobody else has seen with other songs.

It wouldn't make any sense for Apple to convert files instead of matching them, not to mention that how would it be able to convert a file that has been deleted? Also, those files are available for download on mobile devices and other computers, those have to be downloaded from Apple's server.

I tried testing this. I had previously bought the album Octavarium by Dream Theater. I also have the album Elements of Persuasion by Lames Labrie. I only imported the second album into iTunes, but before doing so, I renamed all of the tracks to the first album.

I used iTunes match and checked each song, which indicated they were MP3. I deleted all of them and redownloaded from iCloud. All of the songs said 'Matched AAC' now. Except they were all the incorrect songs I had originally renamed them from.

Shouldn't iTunes have either: a.) renamed the files to the second album, if waveform matching really is happening or b.) downloaded the correct songs from the first album?

I definately feel as if I've been scammed. I hoped to improve the quality of my older songs, but they are all marked as "ineligable'. Seems like only the songs I got from iTunes are eligable and I don't need those matched and available.

Definately dissappointed with this service and iTunes in general.

faltobelli wrote:

I definately feel as if I've been scammed. I hoped to improve the quality of my older songs, but they are all marked as "ineligable'. Seems like only the songs I got from iTunes are eligable and I don't need those matched and available.

Definately dissappointed with this service and iTunes in general.

You can try to get your older files to "match" by creating higher bit-rate AAC versions of those files then updating iTunes Match. Check your import settings in iTunes by going to Prefs > General > Import Setting. Set the settings to what you want (I suggest AAC Encoder+iTunes Plus). Then go back to your "ineligble" files, highlight them all, right-click (or Control+click) and choose "create AAC version."

Once you've done that pull down Store > Update iTunes Plus and let it do it's thing.

I'm not promising this will work, but it has for many people.

probably will work, but this completely erases the value of iTunes Match for me. I saw the $25 as a fair exchange for me not having to spend time re-importing those songs.

I have a MacBook Air without a cd drive. It's a pain to use my wife's iMac to import hundreds of songs.

So while this will likely work, it's a royal pain that ITM could have handled without much effort. For $25 I'm at a loss to see the value.