iTunes Match Confusion Explored

And for the tracks it does match, you can download Apple's copies to replace your own poorly ripped MP3 files from a decade ago.

Sounds simple enough, but we've received dozens of questions regarding iTunes Match. Here are answers to a few of them.

Too many tracks

I have more than 25,000 songs that have accumulated over the years from the iTunes store, CD rips, and other sources. How can I prevent some songs from being matched to allow others to sync without removing the excess songs from my library. Many artists are in the form of discographies and I don't need all of them to sync.

Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat as you (something I lamented in an earlier article). Apple offers no way to exclude certain tracks-if your library tips the scales, you won't even be able to sign up for iTunes Match.

(Image Caption: Having more than 25,000 tracks is a no-no, but there are workarounds.)

But perhaps the best solution for now is to create a second library to use just for iTunes Match purposes, or to put your iTunes Match library on a second computer (which is what I did).

I sincerely hope that Apple will add a tag to iTunes to let you exclude specific files from iTunes Match.

Syncing playlists

If I subscribe to iTunes Match, will my playlists be available on other Macs or iOS devices as they are on my "home" computer or do I just see a list of all of my music?

iTunes Match syncs and displays of your playlists on all the computers/iOS devices (up to 10 devices in total) on which you've enabled iTunes Match. Well, many of them-if you have playlists that contain podcasts, videos, or music videos, they won't sync (even 1000 songs and one music video, say). But all your music-only playlists should be available on different computers and portable devices.

Matching problems

(Image Caption: Don't worry about your tags preventing your music from being matched.)

iTunes Match does not look at the tags in your music files. You could call David Bowie's "Heroes" something like "Four Score and Seven Years Ago," and iTunes Match will ignore the title and merely look at the music, creating an acoustic fingerprint that it uses to match against its catalog. So even if you change tags on your own-something I often do with classical music-this won't affect whether or not they match. Also, if you match songs whose tags are incorrect, iTunes won't fix them for you.

Losing lossless?

I spent a lot of time adding CDs to my iTunes library in either WAV or Apple Lossless formats. If I understand correctly, I will lose this quality level if I use iTunes Match. Is this correct?