in apple music why are explicit songs playing as clean versions and how can I change that?

UUnfortunately this is an ongoing bug with Apple Music - the way it matches your songs to its library. Most complaints - including my own - have been studio tracks being played instead of the live ones. It apparently is an issue with the software logarithm that they are using to "match" your library. Since I assume your iPhone's library was where you initially set up iCloud music library, that has your own music files. But any devices - like the computer you are using at work - that is streaming the "matched" tracks from Apple Music gets the wrong ones. They are trying to solve this issue - I have been dealing with a senior tech at Apple - but it has not been completely solved yet.

I've encountered the bug swandy is talking about, but I think OP is describing a new issue that I just witnessed yesterday myself. I have a song added to my library from Apple Music that has the red Explicit tag in the song title that played the explicit version for many weeks up until my Apple Music account went in to paying subscriber status. That same song, which was saved for offline mind you, began playing the clean version. Now I thought because of the match bug from before I could just delete and redownload, nope. The explicit version in Apple's library is playing the clean one regardless of the very visible red explicit tag.

Being so frustrated at this, I simply canceled my account and my match. I've spent far too much time trying to mold my library into my perfect music sanctuary to deal with uncontrollable and unexplainable issues that have existed in these music services for years. I'm at a loss of what to do myself because I wanted this to work so bad, but all it does is waste my time and infuriate me.

Swandy,

Please advise whether Apple has provided you with any foolproof solutions to the faulty matching that the Cloud Music Library is doing to our songs. I've got tons of mismatched songs due to the outdated algorithm Apple insists on using. Thankfully, I've had Amazon Music and the $50/year 250,000 song max cloud library for the past few years. There, no mismatching occurs at all. They use an audio algorithm, so when the match isn't exact, Amazon knows to upload my audio. It amazes me that Apple doesn't offer as good a cloud music library for customers. For me, rather than being able to consolidate all my music at Apple Music, I use both Amazon and Apple, the latter mainly for new streaming, finding new old music, and interesting playlists. Your thoughts?

- Mark I.

ISKOWITZ63 wrote:

Swandy,

Please advise whether Apple has provided you with any foolproof solutions to the faulty matching that the Cloud Music Library is doing to our songs. I've got tons of mismatched songs due to the outdated algorithm Apple insists on using. Thankfully, I've had Amazon Music and the $50/year 250,000 song max cloud library for the past few years. There, no mismatching occurs at all. They use an audio algorithm, so when the match isn't exact, Amazon knows to upload my audio. It amazes me that Apple doesn't offer as good a cloud music library for customers. For me, rather than being able to consolidate all my music at Apple Music, I use both Amazon and Apple, the latter mainly for new streaming, finding new old music, and interesting playlists. Your thoughts?

- Mark I.

Sorry, but as far as I know there is no "foolproof solution" at this time. They are well aware of the issue and hopefully there will be a solution soon.

I waited until the recent update to try my full iTunes Library (over 50,000 tracks) but made sure I had a full backup first. I did try to re-do the matching on some of my live albums (where the mis-matches are the most glaring) by completely deleting the songs from iCloud Music Library and my iTunes Library and then re-adding them from my backup drive. Some of the albums matched perfectly, some still had issues. Now, perhaps that is because I did not want to take the time to completely wipe out my iCloud Music Library and start fresh. It was not that important to me, but I think that might be necessary if Apple does ever solve the matching issues.

What I - and the two Senior Apple Techs that I have been corresponding with - found funny is that the logarithm that iTunes Match does not seem to make as many errors as the one for iCloud Music Library. Now perhaps it is because they are "matching" different libraries (iTunes Match uses iTunes and ICML uses Apple Music) but you would think they would work very similar.

Swandy,

Any update to the mis-matching Apple Music situation we've discussed here? Like you, I'm not bothering again with this huge task unless assured that I won't get further mismatching when copying my PC music to the cloud library. I don't mind testing with a small group of songs, but that's the most effort I'm willing to make without guarantees.