iTunes Match keeps replacing similar songs with the original

Question

iTunes Match keeps replacing similar songs with the original

This is a little complex to describe, but I get songs that I need to play at church each week and I import them in to a speciic iTunes playlist. So far so good. Many times I have to transpose those songs in to other keys so I upload (they are all .mp3 files) them to transposr.com, pick the new key, it does its thing, and I download the song in it's new key. I then double click on the song in Finder, iTunes starts playing it, and I add it to the desired playlist.

This is a copy of the song that I already imported in to iTunes, but the name will be altered. For example, I import a song called "Joy To The World" and then import the transposed version once done as another song in the playlist. It's name will be something like "Joy To The World in D." So far all is still right with the world - I have 2 songs in the playlist with different names, they are different files that were imported.

Eventually the song "Joy To The World in D" will chage back to the original. It will still look like "Joy To The World in D" in the playlist, but when you play the song it has changed the source file back to the original file for "Joy To The World." It's easily reproducible - I've unfortunately done it a lot over the last week or so. Last night I thought it finally stuck, but today I went to play "Joy To The World in D" and the original key was played instead. Extremely frustrating.

I have worked this way for years without any issue and I have used iTunes Match since it came out. Something changed recently and I wonder if it's not tied to the 11.1.3 release that came out recently. I'm not clicking anything to add the song to iCloud or update Match or any of that.

For now I just keep importing the transposed ones so I can get my practicing done, but I know I'll have to go through it all again either in 5 minutes or tomorrow - you never know when it will happen. I've had it swicth songs int he middle of one being played. The song just stopped and when I clicked it to start playing again the original version started playing. I haven't change the behavior of what I'm doing for years so I'm thinking it has to do with the latest release and/or something new with Match.

Sorry this is so long - I know there are other threads that are similar but I didnt want to step on those ones. Thanks for any ideas anyone may have.

Posted on Dec 4, 2013 5:38 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 4, 2013 7:49 PM in response to Michael Pardee

You have described a unique problem. Let's see if we can't help you sort it out.

I don't think I've ever observed the behavior you describe, but my question is are you playing an actual, physical file that is stored on the HDD or are you playing a streaming track? Your description leads me to think you're playing a streaming track.

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Answer 2

Dec 4, 2013 7:58 PM in response to Michael Allbritton

Physical file. No streaming. I'm tempted to just copy any existing mp3, rename the file, import it in to iTunes and see if it still happens or if it's something strange that happens when I get the file from transpose.com.

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Answer 3

Dec 4, 2013 8:02 PM in response to Michael Pardee

I don't have an explinatiion as to why it is happening but a possible workaround is to change the Media Kind of these tracks to podcast or audiobook so iTunes Match won't process them. Then you will be able to sync them to iOS devices via USB.

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