Update meta data glitch?

That's odd. You're not supposed to have to do it that way. But, if you're satisifed with the results that's what really counts.

I've had what seems to be exactly the same problem. A 'best of' album would let me remove the compilations tag, but something keeps putting it back, I'm assuming something in iTunes Match hence searching here for a solution as the album doesn't show up with the rest of the albums by the same artist on my iPhone, just under compilations.

I may have fixed the problem a different way though:

I left the compilations flag in iTunes checked, but updated the 'Album Artist' for all the tracks to be the same as the 'Artist' - My iPhone then almost instantly updated without me having to do anything and the album now shows up in both the Artist view with all the other albums, and on it's own under compilations.

That works just fine for me.

I have 'Group by Album Artist' turned on on the iPhone Music Settings, which I guess is what makes this work.

Maybe I spoke to soon, this only seems to work if there's already something in my library by the same artist, if not it just gets left in the compilations section. Which is becoming increasingly infuriating.

Will have to keep playing about with it I guess.

Can you import your screen shots into a this thread using the 'camera icon'. Since your first comment in this area I've completed extensive meta data update across my library - all has been promulgated correctly across all libraries and all devices - it would be good to see a specific illustration.

Pity to learn that the coaching direct from Apple has not resulted in a solution.

This is a very exhausting problem. One day I spent the whole morning correcting all my classical tracks so that the Artist was the composer rather than the performer. iTunes Match later decided to replace all the corrections and revert to the original metadata. Hours and hours of work lost.

I am repeatedly having this problem. I cannot work out any logic as to why it happens sometimes and sometimes not.

Today I have had an album where the track names were wrong. I have corrected them multiple times and each time they revert.

A few comments:

(1) Yes - it is crucial that the "matching" is not in process while you alter data. This is a major cause of loss that should be warned about. You have to watch out for it starting by itself. Even if you manually "stop" the matching, it still decides to restart. You really have to turn it completely "off" in the main menu.

(2) Yes - changing other metadata - especially artist name for album and track seems to help encourage an update that sticks.

(3) Yes - deleting local files and updating the matched version sometimes helps a correction to stick.

A hint:

Open your iPhone / iPad Music app while you are working on updating metadata on your computer. You can watch if it updates or not. Sometimes it happens within seconds. Sometimes within minutes. Sometimes not at all. At least it can warn you if it's worth your work. Now, I never do more than a few tracks at a time until I see it updating on my phone.

A speculation:

I wonder if the information coming from our PCs to Apple tries a limited number of times to get through. Having failed, it then does not update - and then the Match reversion updates back to the PC.

I wonder if a factor in this might be that people further away from the US storage centre are having more problems in getting data to stick.

Jimscriv wrote:

I am repeatedly having this problem. I cannot work out any logic as to why it happens sometimes and sometimes not.

It's a bug in the service, that's why it happens. Apple is going to have to fix it in their end.

Submit your polite feedback here <http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html>.

I'm going to throw something out there that may or may not be important, but say you have the same song local in more than one library, particularly if it's local on more than one computer that is set up with Match.

If you change the metadata on one copy, Match may see that change, but if it runs on the other copy, well, I don't think Match would "push" the change down to that library.

More than likely, it would do what it did on the copy you changed - it would read the old metadata, update the cloud version, and you'd be back where you started.

Just a thought.

In my case, I only have one computer running iTunes and just one library.

There is a problem somewhere in the communication of user changes to the Apple servers. Some stick. Some don't. The ones that don't get "corrected" back by Match.

I strongly suspect it is connected to the problems more users (including me) seem to be having with album cover art repeatedly reverting to older versions (Don't get me started on that one ...)

It may just be that more people change cover art than go fiddling around changing track names etc - so this problem has been less widely noticed so far.

Despite so many problems, I really love Match. It's great to have all my music wherever I go.

It's really just not ready to be rolled out to the world yet. We are beta-testing.

Seeing this thread continue with the obvious frustration, a thought occurs ...

... in each case it is clear that multiple versions of the Song files exist on local library, iDevices and in iCloud.

To achieve truly clean metadata, reducing to a single instance of the Song file, correcting it with iTunes Match off, then allowing iTunes Match to promulgate the result would force the corrected information.

Leaving multiple Song files all under the influence of iTunes Match for any given Song is asking for trouble since Match effectively uses its own algorithms to decide what to replicate and when - trying to second guess it seems unlikely to be successful.

The implication is painful since post secure backup you would have to remove all instances of any given Song file prior to the attempt to refine it and allow iTunes Match to distribute the result. For iCloud deletions worth leaving 12-24 hours to confirm that any Song file truly has been removed since any large load balanced infrastructure will need time to synchronise all of its servers.

Well, months after this discussion and the problem goes on. Metadata is over written back to the previous state. I have done everything, clean library, erasing iPad/iPod, etc. Nothing. I even delete som playlists and they come back alive again. Any clues if this bug will be fixed soon? Cheers mates, not alone.

I wish I had read this before I spent most of yesterday morning correcting my meta tags. I must have corrected the genre on about 2 or 3,000 songs and today I noticed that nothing was saved. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with connecting Apple TV to itunes match. That's the latest change I have made to my set-up. I have now disabled itunes match on ATV and my iPhone and disconnected from it on my PC. Will see if any changes I make again today will stick. I do wish we could either choose to overwrite all existing versions saved in the cloud or default to any updates saved most recently. It was very frustrating to realize that all of that work yesterday was wasted. Even more frustrating is that the tired old genres are back on my music tags like a bad smell that won't go away. "Adult alternative pop" is not a proper genre to assign to any part of one's music collection. It's a radio format used for marketing purposes. I guess that's what I get for going with the default genre that is assigned to a CD when I rip it through iTunes.