Apple Music plays wrong version of a song when playing an album

This is a KNOWN PROBLEM that Apple doesn't like to talk about that they quietly fixed about 6-8 months ago. The problem is, you will need to upload you library to iCloud again because the problem was the algorithm that Apple used to approximate song matches was incredibly dense, and would substitute songs of the same name from another album if it could make a match rather than upload your version of the song. This was particularly a problem over a year ago when Apple Music still had some noticeable gaps in their catalogue like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and I do believe, U2.

Anyway, I made a huge stink about this to support and after about 3 months of arguing with multiple support engineers, they finally acknowledged that there was in fact a problem with how they were doing Match and have since fixed it so it doesn't do that anymore. Unfortunately, the only way to fix your existing iCloud library is to upload all of your music again. Of course you only need to upload albums that are affected, but since you really have no idea what albums those will be, you may as well just start fresh to be sure.

To delete your entire iCloud library, follow this article and then upload all of your music again. Yes, it will take a will (depending on your collection size, of course) but you really should do this as there were some other quality improvements made over the past 18 months as well.

This is still an issue, I sure wish there was a better option. I'm sure Apple figured so many people loved itunes and had their libraries built and didn't want to remove that so they gave the option to match, a smart idea but it has created a lot of issues for a lot of people. This isn't the end of the world, but Apple prides itself of simplicity and the system we have is far from simple. We are also slowly getting music taken away from us by not actually owning copies or even our own MP3s, I've noticed I just download from the cloud into my library. In 10 years will anyone actually download Mp3s or whatever the format of the day is?

CharingIssueDude wrote:

We are also slowly getting music taken away from us by not actually owning copies or even our own MP3s, I've noticed I just download from the cloud into my library. In 10 years will anyone actually download Mp3s or whatever the format of the day is?

Personally I still just buy the CD - load it into ITUNES and transfer songs I like at the time to an IPOD to play.

Down side of equivalent of mixed tapes in Itunes -- it always starts at the first song rather than where it left off.

There is a sci-fi story published in the 1970's about a new generation getting tired of having their every move dogged by tech devices that they dump them and revitalize Shaker religion (quite funny parents worried because their children are not constantly using devices).😉

Your song is likely being matched to the wrong track ... I have seen other people say they have removed the song from their iCloud and edited the title and album tags etc replacing them with something like ’!' ...this then forces the song to be 'uploaded' rather than being matched and then they rename the tags back.

Not tried this myself, but it maybe worth a try?

Just to clarify is that when you switch between ALL and MY Music as shown in middle of this screenshot. The 'ALL' is Apple music but 'MY Music' is your ICloud populated via ITunes Match... If it's the one on the right (My Music) that plays wrong version, you would still need to upload your file and NOT match it... I hope that makes sense!

I guess the iTunes Store must either have a different version ... or more likely it's a mistake in some way. You might want to feed it back to Apple and see what they say. I'm sorry I couldn't help on this occasion.

I am having the exact same problem! I tried to add a new Phish live album to my library from Apple Music and it cut out certain songs because it thought they were already in my library, when in actuality they're versions from other live albums. Whenever I try to play it from Apple Music without adding it to my library it just plays the other version that it thinks it is. The same thing happened when I added an album and it excluded one song because I had a remix of it in my library. As far as I can tell there's no workaround unless you delete those other versions, which worked when I deleted the remix since I didn't really care about it. But I would hate to delete loads of live shows I want just to add this new one. I really hope they fix the relevant issue with this soon, it's making it tough for me to use Apple Music to my advantage.

EDIT: And I don't think it's that the iTunes store has another version as KGriff suggested. When I try to play the 1997 Phish concert from Apple Music it replaces one song with a version off a bootleg I have of a 1995 show, which couldn't possibly be in the Apple Music system since it's an audience recording.

Just out of curiosity rudiger10, when you added one of these albums that missed off some tracks because they were already in your library, do you have an option at the bottom of the music album to 'show complete album' similar to this (see screenshot) and if so does that then show the missing songs and if you play one of them, is it the correct version of the song?

Sorry KGriff, should've mentioned that in my OP. It does give the "show complete album" option at the bottom, but it still plays the wrong version. Just tried again with the Phish live album I mentioned, and it still plays the wrong version from that 1995 audience recording.

OK .. It was just a thought it might work. Clearly there are quite a few 'issues' with the app and with iTunes v12.2 aswell. I have spent so much time on the music app that I am still yet to look at the rest of iOS 8.4.

My guess is we will see one or two updates before the release of iOS 9.

Its like the music app has been rushed out, before being fully 'signed off' as being fit for purpose. Not like the Apple software I have come to know and love. I hope they can sort some of these things sooner, rather than later.

Yeah there's definitely some bugs they need to work through, if it doesn't get fixed in the next few updates I'll start complaining directly to Apple, but I'm willing to give a pass since it works overall pretty well. They really do need to get this resolved by the release of iOS 9 or I'm gonna have a hard time committing to using this service over Spotify, which I had hoped I could drop by now but won't until I can be sure I'm getting the right songs when I want them. Thank you for your help though, I greatly appreciate it!

Yeah this is a big problem for anyone who has live music. KGriff thanks for trying to be helpful but looks like you have not seen this problem. If anyone hears of a solution please post here. This doesn't just effect full albums but Apple's curated playlists as well. I listened to the "Inspired by Neil Young" playlist yesterday and when Pearl Jam came up.. the playlist wanted to play Alive from the album Ten but instead it grabbed a live version of Alive from my library but still displayed it as the album version. I tried to play the Pearl Jam double album Lost Dogs but almost all of the studio tracks were replaced with various live versions from my library but still displayed as if it was the Lost Dogs studio version.

It's almost as if for every track played on Apple Music, it first checks your library to see if you have it before streaming it. Seems like a good idea. But it's really horrible execution to not cross reference the album name and just grabbing the first version of the song it sees by the same artist.

Having the same issue, tried removing albums which included incorrect live versions of songs but whenever I add it again, it populates with incorrect tracks. I'm loathed to go through any track name workarounds as I firmly believe Apple music should be able to differentiate between two totally different audio files of the same song