Scottyboy99:
I am having the same problem as you with metadata mismatches in iTunes Match with an iMac mid 2011 27" i7 running MacOS 10.10.3 and an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.3. Here is what I sent to Apple:
*****
Apple Tech Support
(877) 416-4271 x******
********
****:
I sent you an email this morning, which is restated below.
Since I emailed you, ANOTHER iTunes Match problem has popped up - several songs by different bands (The Lumineers - Gale Song, Bruno Mars - It Will Rain, Madonna - Who’s That Girl?, Whitney Houston - I Have Nothing, Blondie - Heart of Glass, Talking Heads - Life During Wartime) are now being listed by the Artist - “The Rascals” (as opposed to the correct Artist).
I thought you should know this as this is a big problem now.
Please call me to discuss or have an iTunes Match engineer call me.
Thanks.
J.P.
HERE IS THE EMAIL I SENT TO HER BEFORE THAT ONE:
*****
Apple Tech Support
(877) 416-4271 x******
********
*****:
I have not heard from you since we spoke last week on June 19.
My problem with iTunes Match has actually gotten worse. It seems as if Apple has had some sort of software update in the iTunes Match database and has cancelled many of the changes I made to the metadata for songs I uploaded to iTunes Match (I had previously thought that it was just for songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store, but it is happening with songs that I imported into iTunes from other sources - CDs and Amazon Digital Music). Needless to say, this is a pain - for example, this problem has resulted in a single album being “split” into two or more albums, which means that you can’t listen to the entire album straight through from the first song to the last as the artist intended). Also, some artists are now listed as “Various Artists” which ***** when you are looking for a particular song by U2 and not a particular song by a band named “Various Artists.”
I would be happy to talk to an iTunes engineer to help them figure out what is wrong because if it is happening to me, it will be happening to many other people, and as an Apple shareholder and fanboy, I don’t want Apple to be maligned.
Please follow up with this.
Thanks.
J.P.
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL EMAIL I SENT TO HER:
*****
Apple Tech Support
(877) 416-4271 x******
********
*****:
Thanks for taking my call today.
The reason for my email is that I have iTunes Match (for which I pay $25 per year) and when I buy a song on iTunes, the metadata for the song purchased frequently does not match what I want the metadata to reflect (for example, the song “Will it Go Round in Circles” by Billy Preston shows up as being from the album “20th Century Masters” (which is a best of album). I want the metadata for this song to reflect the original album in which this song appeared, “Music is My Life” so I made the change manually in my ITunes library on my iMac running MacOS X 10.10.3 and iTunes Version 12.1.2.27, then I click on “”Update iTunes Match” under the “Store” menu in iTunes on my iMac and after the matching process is done, it changes the changes I made back to what Apple wants to call the song. Another example is the album “Handel: Messiah (Remastered 2014)” by the Academy of Ancient Music (which, oddly enough is “Mastered for iTunes”). It makes more sense to designate this album’s artist as Handel (the writer from the 1700s) rather than by the orchestra who performed on this album, so I changed the artist to “Handel” on my iMac, but when I click on ”Update iTunes Match” the metadata will not update through to my iPhone 6. What makes this particular Handel album even more irritating is that there are different performers on this record, so the “Artist” is listed as the “Academy of Ancient Music” sometimes, “Emmy Kirkby” others and “Choir of Christ Church” on others. Thus, when this album is viewed on my iPhone, the album is actually split up into several different albums based on who Apple considers to be the artist - in other words, there are separate albums for “Academy of Ancient Music”, “Emmy Kirkby” and “Choir of Christ Church.” This is super irritating since when you buy Handel’s Messiah (one of the most famous operas in history), you do so to listen to the whole album in order. The way Apple categorizes this record is that listening to each song in order is impossible because of the way that Apple has identified the performers “Academy of Ancient Music”, “Emmy Kirkby” and “Choir of Christ Church” and split them into separate albums.
This problem has occurred sporadically over the years since iTunes Match was introduced, but the problem was pretty much fixed until this week when all of the songs I purchased in the iTunes Music Store started replacing the manual changes I made with the song names, artist names and album names that Apple wants to call them (which, as I explained, in many cases are wrong or don’t make sense).
When Steve Jobs introduced iTunes Match in June 2011 and when Tim Cook talks about Apple and Music today, the mantra is that Apple has Music in its DNA. I believe that this is true, but someone in Apple needs to fix this irritating problem which is not just happening to me (type “iTunes match metadata problem” in Google search and you will see that many other people have the same problem as me.
This problem only occurs with songs bought through the iTunes Music Store (not where songs are bought on Amazon in mp3 format or where the songs were imported into iTunes via physical CDs.
I will be happy to work with Apple Engineers to figure out how to fix this problem as I love the concept of iTunes Match and want it to work as much as Apple does since I use this product every day. I suggest that when an iTunes Match user manually makes a change to a song purchased in the iTunes Music Store, that the system default is that iTunes Match NEVER reverts back to the old data.
Again, thanks for taking the time to review this issue.
J.P.
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