Apple Music incorrectly matches my music to their library and pushes wrong version

My understanding is Apple music uses media labels to identify songs. Change the names of your tracks. Add something like [Live at xyz]

Try changing the name of a few tracks. If that does it then you know how it is done in reality versus what they say on their web page. I just recall people complaining about Match mismatching items from one album with similar tracks from another album. If it works then look into using a script to rename your tracks in bulk. Or you can berate Apple for how it does things but I know which one will likely produce a quicker solution.

Unfortunately this is a well known and discussed problem with Apple Music. (And yes, the techs at Apple are well aware and trying to fix it. It has gotten better with each subsequent update BTW from what I have seen.)

The logarithm that AM uses is based primarily on the ARTIST'S NAME and TRACK TITLE. You can try what Limnos suggested. I did that successfully with the albums that I had in my library from The Who (changed the artist name to The Whoo - which obviously AM did not recognize).

But as I said, they seem to be getting better. After the last update I deleted several live albums by The Allman Brothers and Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield. (Meaning deleted from my iTunes library but did not delete the music files on my hard drive) and then added those albums back to my Library. When I then went and listened to the albums on my iPhone and iPad, many more of the tracks that were mis-matched earlier were now playing the correct live version. Again, not a perfect match as there were still some errors, but much better than when I initially set up my iCloud Music Library.

It is getting better. Some new albums that I added to my library through iTunes (not purchased from iTunes but added via iTunes on my iMac) seemed to play perfectly when I played them through my iCloud Music Library on other devices. But the older mis-matched tracks are the same. What was advised was to delete the albums NOT on the computer with the original files but on another iOS device and then re-add them to your iCloud library on the computer where the files are residing. Have occasionally tried that with mixed results - but not in the past several months. At this point I will probably just wait for the iOS/MacOS updates to be released in the fall and try to do the entire library again.

But as I said - definitely getting better - just don't want to waste a lot of time re-doing the library again. But if I was starting fresh, I would probably have less reservations about it working better now.

Quick follow up. I recently added two live albums (one purchased from an artists website and one from another site) and after adding them to iTunes on my iMac I played them both through iCloud Music Library on my iPhone 6 and they both played the correct versions. So obviously progress is being made.

(1) No - you misunderstood the information I found in another thread. What they suggested - and seemed to work better for me on the few albums I tried it with - is on an iOS device (like an iPhone or iPad) remove the album from your iCloud Music Library NOT on the computer that you initially set up ICML. Then when you go to the computer where the original files are located, you tell the computer to Add the album back to your library. As I said, it worked on a few albums that I tried it on and were mismatched before.

(2) When you turned off ICML it removed your tracks from ICML. When you turned it back on it "should" have re-added them back in automatically. If it didn't you can either (1) try going to FILE/LIBRARY/UPDATE ICLOUD MUSIC LIBRARY or (2) highlight and right click on the tracks with the little cloud/x symbol and select Add to iCloud Music Library. That should force iTunes to add them back.

Little follow up for people following this thread. I decided to try the advice I quoted above (deleting the mis-matched live tracks from my iPad and then re-add them from iTunes on my iMac) and **** if it looks like all the live tracks/albums that I previously heard the wrong versions when streaming to my iPhone and iPad were playing the correct versions.

Now I don't know if this means that Apple solved this issue - and as I generally don't have any explicit tracks, I could not test those (and I did not bother with studio albums yet) - but it certainly seems like they are making progress.

Though I will admit it is a pain to do the deletions because I have to make sure I don't accidentally delete albums I added from Apple Music itself, because those I will have to remember to re-add.