iTunes Match explicit/clean music switch

Michael Allbritton wrote:

Whatever. Nothing in your insulting post changes the fact that AAC is not an audio format that is owned by Apple. It is an international standard. I won't be responding to you any more.

I'm just playing with you, man. I didn't intend to insult you, and if I did, I apologize. I was just presenting my evidence (two very long displays of factual information) to back up my counter-claim. You have done nothing as far as a rebuttal to defend your original statement. I'm just engaging in a topical debate, nothing more... I certainly had no intentions of insulting you; I was trying to make my point, but still be playful and facetious a bit at the end to let you know that it was just friendly argument/debate, not a flaming post... Like the whole talking about you got spanked... Totally being childish and immature about it, but doing so to keep it lighthearted...

So. I apologize if it was taken too seriously. I said before, I have to respect you for all the support and help you give to everyone here on a daily basis. Truly.

The original discussion had to do with clean/explicit mis-matches. Not sure why things go so off-topic here, but try to keep in mind that many of us have updates to these threads sent to us via e-mail, the idea being that if someone comes up with something relevant that will help resolve a particular problem, we want to know about it. However, in my particular case, getting long involved debates is a waste of my time, leads to my having to stop monitoring the thread.

So please, if there's something you've got that will help people who have explicit songs get the same back from match, fire away. If not . . .

JimInMissouri,

Please see my steps listed above. I have had a 100% success rate for my Explicit Songs with iTunes Match.

Kstr79

I've read your other post so I'll make the changes you suggested (with the timeframes as well - so it will be at least a day or so -- I'm a patient guy).

But still my same question -- did you have, or do you have, any known problematic songs or albums that this procedure actually fixed? Tmk only specific songs / albums are affected, so not to be pessimistic but maybe you were just lucky so far.

I really hope this works, but everything I've seen and read about Match so far leads me to believe that tags are not used for Matching. Still, worth one more try and will report back in a day or so.

I had approximately a 30% match rate prior to the steps I took above. Now, I'm at a 100% match rate. I'm working on other issues at this point. I'm trying to pinpoint the exact period of time needed for a true iCloud delete to propagate fully.

Sounds like two different things (Match vs. a Clean version showing up). How many tracks have you Matched 100%? I think the 100% Matching, in general, is actually a bigger breakthrough if your process really working to help that along.

Again, we have seen no evidence (yet) that tags have any impact with Matching. I'm at ~90%, which I found to be rather high (some stuff are things that aren't in their database, so obvously they won't Match). But 100%? That's amazning especially if we're talking about tens of thousands of tracks (I'm at ~20k, so far).

EDIT: You wrote 2000. Not sure if you meant that to be all tracks, or just the explicit ones. I'm going to mess with tags a bit more, just to see what happens (I haven't retried that since 10.6, so maybe my info is stale).

I am only talking about Explicit Versions of Songs for a 100% match rate. My overall match rate is about 80%. I uploaded 200 out of 2000 total Non-iTunes Store Purchased songs. This includes about 10 or 15 songs that I know have to be uploaded because they have no way of existing in the iTunes Store. So restating my previous statement, my Explicit Song Match Rate was about 30% until I converted to AAC and added the Explicit Tags and removed the Additional text from Song and Album Names. Furthermore, I had songs that had matched the Clean iTunes Match Version previously that are now uploaded as Explicit, which is excellent to me. *Note: These Songs are older Tupac, Notorious BIG songs that do not offer the explicit version in the iTunes Store that I have been able to locate.

Ah, that makes more sense. But again, did you have a situation where an explicit song was being Matched with a clean version, and your process actually corrected that? And can you cite examples? This would help us all.

I re-tried two songs from Jay-Z's Black Album ("Threat" and "99 Problems") -- this time ensuring that the album name and song matched with iTunes. And, unfortunately, they are still being Matched with clean versions. For "Threat" I even purchased the song at one point in iTunes, and that automatic iCloud version was Explicit. But as soon as I backed up / deleted / re-imported / re-Matched, that purchased song became the Clean version in iCloud. I went up to a L2 tech who believed, as I did, that it's something on their side that is causing this problem - probably some database glitch with certain albums / songs.

I don't know how many Explicit tracks I have, but I'll guess at least a few hundred between Punk, Metal and Hip-hop. And so far this is the only album I have that's affected, tmk.

My entire All Eyes On Me Album from Tupac was matched as Clean as well as some of my Jay-Z Tracks. Now after matching Metatags and adding the ITUNESADVISORY = 1 Explicit Metatag, they either Matched or Uploaded. I had maybe 15 - 20 Explicit Songs that Uploaded instead of matching to the Clean Version. This is out of a total of 540 Explicit Songs that had previously Matched as Clean. I am out and about right now, so I can't be more specific.

Thanks for the info. I'll keep trying this one album, but so far it's a bust with your directions. 😟 Deleted the songs and will wait 24 hours.

Btw, there's also an "ITunes Store cache". Not sure if it's used for Match, but when I deleted mine it took a good 1-2 minutes. Today is the first time I've done that.

One thing I have noticed, if you attempt a restore of your Library to pre ITM state and then proceed to turn on ITM prematurely, the iTunes Match process is very fast indicating some kind of caching as you are suspecting. I am now going to attempt turning mine off for over 24 hours and I'll have another go at it then.

Can someone tell me the name and location of the iTunes Match Cache file ~ I wanting to delete it and have iTunes Match reMatch my library.

Thanking you in advance

In iTunes: Edit > Preferences > Advanced. The reset cache button should be viewable there.

Try a app called Melodies. Its a million times better then match. you just need to setup google music and then connect your google account with melodies. Melodies doesnt replace your expicit music with the clean version and its faster loading and playing your music. You all can thank me later for the advice.

Any Update on this Issue? Same thing was happening to me and am looking to follow kstr79's method. It seems If you clear the Itunes Cloud Cache, and the files on Itunes Cloud themselves followed by retagging all your music as AAC with the ITUNESADVISORY=1 should fix the problem. I will be trying this later on today and will post an update here. As far as the people worried that essentially all your music has been F'ed up yes it can be worrying but Im not TOOOO concerned (considering i DID do a backup prior to iTunes Match). Also, even if you dont have a backup when Apple does fix this problem they should be able to just push out to you the EXPLICIT version of the songs you have as CLEAN. So the damage CAN be reversed for the most part. The wait does suck though, so hang on everyone.