Forcing iTunes Match to "Re-Match," and Successfully Changing Uploaded to Matched

I posted this as a reply to another thread, but it's such a common issue, I thought I'd share my solution in a newly titled thread.

This solution, involves creating an edited and updated AAC conversion of a song that will only "upload. HardRock4 & tmksnyder also share a method involving creating a playlist, which seems solid. But this method is handy to know, as it pertains to matching but also, it's good to understand how to edit song length, etc. I had a Frank Sinatra in concert disk given to me, and it had no breaks on the CD, so I was able to pull up the information on Wikipedia for that album, see the start and stop times, and manually carve each song out of the one long song on the CD.

To help increase "matchability,"

1. Bring up on the web the song and album in iTunes (EX: search "Nicotine & Gravy, iTunes"{I search for the song title, before adding album, because iTunes may prefer it in a Greatest Hits or Compilation for matching purposes....more on that later})

   Peruse the details of the song and album to see if anything is different from the version you have. Look for song length, hyphens, "featuring (insert artist), as well as other small details.

2. Change any tagging details that are different. One that frequently is different and usually solves my matching issue is....
   1. The time length of the song, this is a primary source I find of errors in matching.
   2. A song in iTunes is 3:35, but the version in my catalogue is 3:38,
      1. Figure out where to cut it down. Typically iTunes length is pretty accurate, honestly 100% of the time I've been able to identify dead air at either the beginning or the end of the song (sometimes both) that I can eliminate to get the length to match.
         1. Listen to the beginning and end, and determine exactly how much you can cut. For example purposes, let's pretend you determine that to shave the needed 3 seconds, you can shave 2 seconds at the beginning and 1 second at the end, without effecting the song at all.
         2. Click "get info," to bring up the song metadata.
         3. Click the tab for "Options."
         4. Click/Check both the "Start," and "Stop," boxes. (you have to click both, leave one unchecked and it won'twork)
         5. Song start time will always be "0:00," so edit the start time to say "0:02." Remember you've predetermined there's a few seconds of dead air at the beginning so this won't impact the vocals or intro.
         6. Repeat and apply the same process for the end of the song. The end will look more like "3:38.045." This comes in handy, because if it's a really tight shave but you need to cut 1 second, you can edit the end to say "3:37.49." By adding the ".49," at the end, the length will still show "3:37," but you give an extra half second, and in my experience this can be a big difference in cutting a song early. The timer will round, so if you go up to "3:37.50," then your song time will show "3:38."
      2. Feel free to play with it a bit, if you need to. DON'T YET DELETE THE ORIGINAL!
         1. Listen to the original before you proceed to convert. It will start and end at your edited times, but the length at the top of the UI will still display the full (previous/incompatible with iTunes Match) time length. But it will be starting and stopping at the times you edited. Listen to it to make sure that it's perfect not the start and stop.

            If you need to edit it further, remember the "3:37.{***49} option. This is where adding that half a second may make the difference.

         2. If it's determined that the start and stop time edits are perfect then proceed to click "Create AAC Version."
      3. Listen to your new version and double-check it's accuracy.
      4. If it sounds right, Voila! You can now safely delete the original version.
      5. No reason to do anything to make it match, once the AAC version appears, it will automatically go on "waiting," and iTunes match will start to match it.

**As I mentioned above, this method for editing the start/stop times of a song also comes in handy when you need to carve songs out of a full CD with no breaks.

As I also mentioned above, iTunes may want a song to be in a Greatest Hits or a Compilation if it's a one-hit wonder from the 80's or similar. So you will have to choose between having it match in iTunes, or keeping it with the metadata of the original disc. I am picky, and prefer to have all my songs tagged with the original song data, instead of being tagged in a Greatest Hits, or "Hits of the 90's," etc. Pick your poison, accurate, original tagging? Or match?

This is by no means foolproof, as some songs just won't match for whatever dumb reason. But in my experience this does the trick more than half the time. I'm linking the thread where HardRock4 shared a solution provided to him by tmksnyder. Between what tmksnyder suggests, and my above method, I've gotten every song in my library to match!

Re: Poor iTunes Match Matching

It also comes in handy when you need to carve songs out of a full CD with no breaks.

I hope this is helpful, if you have questions feel free to reply and I'll do my best to reply and help anybody out. I'm by no means a technical guru, so I know what it's like to try and figure this stuff out. I'll help in any way I can, but you may have to bear with me and be patient a bit.

GOOD LUCK!