iTunes 10.6 released, lists Match improvements

Good work, Mike. I was just going to post this. Here's hoping they fix the metadata syncing issues with playcounts I was seeing.

I'm late to the party. Too busy playing with the new iPhoto! Downloading the iTunes update now and crossing my fingers.

I'm just trying it out with the Beatles Mono box.

I'll report back in a bit, but first impressions are that it may show an improvement, although it still isn't perfect. It matched Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (the track), but seems to be uploading the rest of that album. The number of uploads suggests it's doing the whole of Magical Mystery Tour as well, although obviously it's possible there could be just artwork included in that.

Does anyone know how much of Sgt Pepper matched previously? Roebeet previously reported 3 tracks from Magical Mytery Tour matched, but I haven't done them myself.

KeithJenner wrote:

Does anyone know how much of Sgt Pepper matched previously? Roebeet previously reported 3 tracks from Magical Mytery Tour matched, but I haven't done them myself.

I'm just turning Match back on after having it off for a few weeks. So I don't know what the previous ratio was.

Well that is... interesting. Just turned Match back on and it synced all the previous last played dates to everything. And marked a bunch of tracks as dups that aren't. Great... looks like I may have some work ahead of me. *sigh*

Nope, the three tracks that Roebeet previously reported have just matched.

Oh well.

So about playlists... my date and item limited Smart Playlist that I use to sync my iPhone now respects those criteria on my Apple TV, but Comments are still ignored. Which means the playlist is still not the same in iTunes and on my iPhone or Apple TV.

OK, I grabbed a half dozen CDs that were a mix of match and upload, deleted them, ripped new copies, and put them to iTunes Match. I did this using two laptops just to speed things up. In some cases I re-did the entire album, others I just trashed the uploaded tracks.

I really can't say I got any better results, and I made sure uploads were actually going on, that Match wasn't just re-linking. I confirmed that several albums were in the store (of course they have my wife's Madonna albums!) and that the problem tracks were for sale too. I only can report that on some of the albums, Gracenote came back with more than one result, asked me to choose. Sometimes they really were duplicate names, sometimes not. I also got wrong art or no art at all for some of the albums (Led Zeppelin's first album, disk four of a Zeppelin compilation got wrong art, a Bonnie Raitt that's in the store came up with nothing). So I can't say everything was just perfect even before Match did its thing.

I have noticed one thing that if it holds true for the Apple TV I'll be happy about. I was pretty much maxing things out and at one point was playing a track from the cloud. It started to stall, but after a few seconds it started back. My experience to date has been that streaming hasn't resumed after a stall I always had to intervene.

Perhaps the "improvements" are going to end up being something like the explicit/clean problem?

I have my "unmatched" stuff in its own area, so I'll report back as well tonight / tomorrow if I see improvement. Plus one explicit / clean problem I can test out (my Jay-Z album).

Explicit / clean problem.... still there. 😟

Remember, I test with a clean library. Can't believe they haven't fixed this yet! Arrghhh hulk smash!!

And...just tried about thirty previous "uploaded" files. These are one-offs, where 90% of the album matched, except this one file.

Result? No improvement. So far, it's a whole lotta' nothin'. 🙂 I'll keep trying at another time -- still have about 4.5k tracks left to Match, believe it or not. Getting there little by little....

I'm also noticing the "ghost track" problem is still there in iOS 5.1 as well. Where are the improvements?

KeithJenner wrote:

Does anyone know how much of Sgt Pepper matched previously? Roebeet previously reported 3 tracks from Magical Mytery Tour matched, but I haven't done them myself.

Here are my results for the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour 2009 Mono Remastered albums prior and after the iTunes 10.6 update (IOW, no change)...

I tried deleting all of the songs on both albums (without deleting them from iCloud) and downloaded them again...and everything remained the same. However that may be because all of my Beatles albums were ripped at 320kbps, so other's results may vary.

BTW, I have both the 2009 Mono and Stereo Remastered versions of these albums. 100% of the stereo versions were matched (not uploaded) prior to iTunes 10.6.

IIRC one of the odd "unmatched" tracks others reported right after iTunes Match went live was the Beatles Abby Road "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window". I never experienced that bug however.

I have noticed that since the iTunes 10.6 and iOS 5.1 updates, cover art that would sometimes go missing on my iPhone 4 and/or iPad (or even my Apple TV2) now seem to show up without fail...including cover art that I had added myself.

Hope that helps!

Another album a lot of folks reported as having numerous unmatched tracks was the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds". I tried completely deleting the album from my library as well as iCloud. I reloaded it and ran "Update iTunes Match" (from the iTunes' "Store" menu) and the results were identical to pre v10.6...the same songs were matched while others had to be uploaded.

So no improvement...at least for this album. Maybe they just need a little more time? I realize there must be a bazillion tracks and numerous variatons of the same track from different albums to contend with, but I really hope they get this ironed out sooner than later.

I'm gonna wait before getting Match until they fix these issues with albums not fully matching and especially the explicit/clean... that's a real let down!