Box Set Name doesn't match

Metadata has very little, if any, affect on the matching process. If it hasn't matched then there is very little you can do about it.

However, if it is in the iTunes store and it hasn't matched any of the tracks then that would be quite unusual.

What is the box set?

One thing to be aware of is that match does retain your songs in the cloud for a while after deletion, so if you deleted and re-added it will just have restored the deleted files. If you want to try. Rematch then you have to leave it. While before re adding it.

You are not going to get everything matched, even if things are in the iTunes store. Depending on your library, anything over about 80% is respectable.

Can you confirm that none of the tracks on these albums are matching. If you have whole albums which don't match but are in the store then that is unusual. If some tracks on albums are matching and some aren't then that is as I would expect.

When I talk about removing and re-adding, this is the only way of getting iTunes to attempt a rematch. Even if metadata was a factor (personally I don't believe it is) then changing it wouldn't make it match, as iTunes won't try it again.

The only way to get iTunes to attempt a match again is to delete the song from your library (making sure you keep the file and that you delete it from the cloud) and then re-add it after waiting a few days to ensure match has forgotten about it.

If you do have a number of complete albums not matching when you believe they should then this may be worth trying, as there may have been problems during our initial match. If it is just odd tracks then I think you are just going to have to live with it.

To follow up on Keith's excellent advise, you also need to turn on the iCloud Status column in the iTunes Browser by pulling down View > View Options, select "icloud status" and click OK.

My advise... if you want these tracks at a higher bit-rate.... re-rip them from the CDs. Right now, at 128 Kbps the waveform of the tracks is just too different from the version on the iTunes store. That's why they didn't match. A track encoded at 128 Kbps, and a track encoded at 256 Kbps have very different amounts of information in them. And depending how long ago you ripped the tracks, the ripping engine in iTunes has gone through several improvements, so this can affect whether a track is matched or not as well.

A major selling point of Match is that songs which are matched are available in the cloud at 256kbps.

They were quite careful, in my opinion, to avoid explicitly promising that you can upgrade all your music like this. That possibility was picked up on by blogs, etc.

In my opinion, given different versions that are available of most CD's, it is pretty well impossible to get matching accurate enough be able to upgrade everything. I re-ripped my collection late last year at 256kbps whilst in the knowledge that match was coming. I was never expecting it to be accurate enough to be able to rely on. If you have to check every song is the correct version it is quicker to re-rip.

By the way, that 80% plus figure is the total you should expect from your whole library. The proportion of songs that are in the library and match is generally significantly better than that.

I'm just going to second everything Keith said.

There are a lot of factors that can affect whether a song is matched or not, so it is difficult to say just why the tracks from that cd might not have matched. But if you want the best quality, then, really, the best course of action will be for you to re-rip the tracks from the CD.

This KB article will tell you more about the "quality criteria". http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4914

lso, take a close look at that second highlighted sentence in the marketing language you copied. It says " ...all the music iTunes matches..." "Matches" is the important word and nowhere does Apple ever claim iTM will match 100% of tracks. Thats why the upload feature is there. So, since those particular tracks did not match (for whatever reason) they will not be available in 256 Kbps DRM-free tracks from the iTunes store.

And the short answer is, as Keith and I have tried to explain, that not all tracks will match.