Open Radar

 
Sometimes iTunes Match recognizes a song incorrectly and instead of distributing my local version it will distribute the matched version, even though this version is not identical to my local one.

What I'm missing here is a way to tell iTunes "Sorry, you matched the wrong song. Please upload my song and distribute this version, even if you think you found a match, because you are wrong!"

Please see my attached screenshot: On top is the song that iTunes believes to have matched correctly, on bottom is the actual song on my computer. That the volume of the iTunes version is lower is no issue, I could live with that, however, please have a look at the *END* of the song. The matched song has a fade out at the end, my song has not; and that has a reason: My song is from a gapeless album! In the end the track mixes into the next track, which is very important for a nice playback experience.

Most annoying is the fact, that iTunes doesn't even know this album, since that one song is the *ONLY* song of the whole album it believes to have matched correctly.

I'm sure Apple will do its best to constantly improve the matching algorithm and false matches will become less common, however, there will always be false matches and all I'm asking for is a way to let iTunes know that a match is wrong. I want that my version is uploaded to the cloud and downloaded on all my other devices, not the matched one.

I'm actually paying for this service, so I really think I do have the right to "overrule" iTunes decision when I feel like doing so; and of course I would only do that if iTunes is really wrong.



Update added 08-Feb-2013:


I ran into another case, where this feature would have been very helpful. iTunes Match has correctly matched a title (correct song from the correct album), but the AAC version in the iTunes store is corrupted. It has a "glitch" (like a short gap) within the last 10 seconds of the song. I do have this song in an error free version, but since iTunes Match believes to have found a perfect match, the song is not uploaded and whenever I download it on one of my other Macs, I get the broken AAC version from the store. Very annoying. I reported this problem to the store support, but they said they cannot do anything about it, since this is the only version of the song available and Apple seems to have no way to create a new version or request a new one from the record label.

If you are afraid that people may misuse this feature and force plenty of uploads instead of relying on matched songs (after all uploads will waste more server bandwidth and of course server disk space at your data centers), you could limit the amount of "forced uploads" to something like "at most 50 songs per iTunes Match account". That would be more than sufficient for most people. After all most of the time iTunes Match works very well and gives no reason to complain. It's just the tiny exceptions that are very annoying.