itunes match - Anyone use this? A bit of a rant here and I need some help

[phillai]

I've just subscribed to this and I need some help!

Firstly, it's screwed up my 'MP3' folder. I had all my MP3 albums in folders and its changed my 'MP3' folder to all artists instead!
Now, I can't use winamp (My prefered MP3 player) to play an album I want, singularly... I now have to rely on itunes to find the album to play it.

Anyway of changing this back, back to how I had it before all albums rather than artists? Or is the itunes way, really the 'correct way' in tagging all my MP3's.

Also, I'm a bit pissed off that there's only a 25,000 track limit for itunes match, having only discovered about this after finding that I have 31,000 tracks in my MP3 folder.

Thirdly, I've had to split my MP3 folder in half due to the 25,000 track limit. How long should this take for itunes to match and upload around 16,000 tracks? I've left my PC on for almost 2 days now and it seems like its not even half done!

Lastly, once its matched, how do I actually get the matched track to my computer?

All replies really appreciated on this. I know I sound like a true NOOB here but it's really made me mad has all this and I worry that my lifetime full of MP3's is all screwed up.

[EJG1980]

Not sure about most of your questions but once iTunes has "matched" a music file:

Select it in iTunes and delete it (but make sure you don't select the box that says delete from iCloud!!)

This gets rid of your old MP3 version and make a little cloud symbol appear next to the track.

Press the cloud symbol and it downloads the upgraded matched version of the track from Apple.

Obviously if you still want to keep your old MP3 files as well as the new matched files, you'll need to back up your MP3s before you do the above.

I have heard that people with quite big music collections are having problems with iTunes taking ages to upload all the tracks. I only had 4,000 songs in my iTunes library and they were uploaded in a few hours.

[Taka]

I subscribed to this before Christmas because I had the time to tinker with it etc. Big mistake and huge disappointment from Apple.

It crashed repeatedly when trying to scan and only after an hour did it begin to work. The matching process is buggy as hell, with albums ripped in the same session by the same encoder reporting odd songs as unmatched. I tried to upload around 8,000 songs and after 48 hours, it still wasn't complete and I've given up.

I have managed to upgrade a number of older albums which are now mine to keep, so not a total loss but a poor implementation and maybe a year ahead of its time.

[EJG1980]

The matching process can be very hit and miss. My library had about 300 songs that were unmatched (from around 4,000 total so that's not a bad success rate) but as a bit of a neat freak it's very annoying to see a whole album matched with one or two songs unmatched!

I've been going through each song one by one, having to resort to downloading random MP3s of each song from the net and trying to rematch them. Often this does work though and I'm gradually reducing my list of unmatched songs. Other tricks sometimes work, like making an AAC version of an MP3 file and trying to match that instead.

They definitely should have spent more time getting the matching algorithms to work better before launching it though, and maybe give some kind of option for manual matching where you can select the song from the iTunes store that your MP3 should be matched with (although I don't know how they'd do that without it being open to abuse).

Haven't had any problems with downloading or uploading songs yet though, the initial matching scan and upload went through pretty quickly and smoothly.

As most of my older albums were encoded at 128kbps I can't say I'm too unhappy at paying ?22 to legally upgrade 90% of them to 256kbps, but they'll definitely have to sort out the service if they expect another ?22 from me next year.

[dataDave]

Look for a freeware piece of software called MP3Tag. You might have to spend some time manually inputting data such as artists and album names, as well as locating cover artwork.

I hate iTunes.

[EvilBoris]

I've just subscribed to this and I need some help!

Firstly, it's screwed up my 'MP3' folder. I had all my MP3 albums in folders and its changed my 'MP3' folder to all artists instead!
Now, I can't use winamp (My prefered MP3 player) to play an album I want, singularly... I now have to rely on itunes to find the album to play it.

I presume that like the standard itunes music folder it has an artist folder, then inside that the albums of that artist?

Either way, folder structure is irrelevant as ou can ask winamp to display by album or by artist or by genre or whatever. Just set it to display by album

How long should this take for itunes to match and upload around 16,000 tracks? I've left my PC on for almost 2 days now and it seems like its not even half done!

It will only upload the tracks that aren't on itunes, anything that is on itunes can be matched and doesn't require to be uploaded.

Although if the mp3 isn't properly tagged, it may not be matched correctly/at all.

For anything else it will take as long as it takes to upload the appropriate amount of data, lets say none of your songs were matched (unlikely) then at 4mb x 25,000, that's 100GB of data, so it all depends on your connection really.


If you go to the list of every song in intunes and right click on the bar at the top of the list where it says artist, rating, time album etc you can choose the option for itunes match status and that will show you which are matched and which are uploaded/uploading.

Lastly, once its matched, how do I actually get the matched track to my computer?

When you delete it from your itunes library the song will remain and you will get the little cloud logo which you can click to download.

Any matched songs will download a 256kbps itunes plus file and anything that you've uploaded will just be downloaded again.

[phillai]

EvilBoris, you really made me understand it a bit more now. It's really confusing but as with anything I guess it will become second nature when given time...

[phillai]

Trying to get my head around itunes way of structuring my MP3 folder is given me a headache.
The problem is I've got 31,000 tracks in total and itunes match only supports 25,000 tracks, so I've temporary split my 'MP3' folder in two to do this itunes match thing...
The problem lies with compilations with 'mixed' music...
There's no way of telling if the track in the artist folder is an the 'odd MP3 that I've downloaded' or if it's from a compilation CD.

[112]

Bloody hell Phil, i was thinking of trying this match feature, and i can do without the time consuming headache! Ima just stick with what i have now... Sounds like a right mess you got there, id say start all over again from scratch, may be time consuming, but is probably way more simpler in the long run. Plus you get to edit some of the tracks you have no need for anymore.

Good luck dude!

112