Ineligible song issues with iTunes Match.

I have several albums of mp3′s that iTunes Match claim are ineligible albums for iTunes Match that I have no idea why they have been marked as such. They are CD’s that I have ripped, I own the CD, and I know they are are available in the iTunes Store.

I also noticed that iTunes suddenly had two of the songs listed with the incorrect times on them. Instead of being 4 or 5 minutes in length, they were now listed as being 29 or 30 minutes long! I thought maybe this was just an error, so I clicked the play button in iTunes. They actually played fine for the length of the actual tune but then iTunes kept playing, in silence, for the rest of the 30 minutes! I dragged the song out of iTunes and opened the mp3 in several other programs, QuickTimes, SoundStudio and Audacity. No other program had issues with the length. So I figured that possibly these mp3′s were corrupt in some way or another.

SOLUTION
I went back into iTunes, went into my preferences, and made sure that my import settings were set for AAC. I then  went back into the iTunes library, selected several of the songs that were ineligible, and created an AAC version of the song. After iTunes had updated my iTunes Match results these songs became eligible! They were now marked as being Matched! I went through and did all the other songs in this album and they are now all Matched. If you take a look at the screenshot from below you can see where some of the files are mp3′s still and are marked ineligible, whereas other songs have been converted into aac’s and are now Matched. You can also see that after going through this process of converting the files you will need to wait for iTunes to re-post the iTunes Match results – or you can force iTunes to update by going to the store menu and selecting update iTunes Match. After getting the results you want… Matched files… then you will of course want to go through and delete the bad files. If you want to make sure to get the best file possible after getting your tunes Matched in the Cloud then you will want to follow my previous post where I talked about how to get iTune Match’s better file.

iTunes Match Issues

I just ran into an issue with using iTunes Match and having tunes that are ineligible. I have a list of songs that for one reason or another are not being uploaded to iTunes Match Cloud. I’m sure Apple has a list of reasons why songs may not be eligible, I’ve seen it. That list explains a few of the songs on my list but not all. So at first I wasn’t concerned. No big deal, who cares if they are in the Cloud or not right? Well, the issue came in when I wanted one of those songs on my iPad to use in class. iTunes will not let you put an ineligible song on your iTunes Match enabled iOS device.

This could be a huge issue. For instance, I have songs that I have recorded accompaniment tracks for the choir for, using my keyboard and laptop at home in my studio. Those are songs that I would obviously like to be able to have on my iPad so that when I am at school I can use them. For some reason some of these accompaniments that I have created are in that list of ineligible songs.

The solution I found was easy enough. I simply put those songs into a playlist, burned a CD of them, deleted them from my library, and then imported that CD of songs back into my library. Issue gone. You could get into a pickle though if you need a certain song FAST and it is on your ineligible list though so it would be a good idea to make a SmartPlaylist of all songs that are ineligible for iTunesMatch and check through so you know what all is on that list.

Good luck with your conversion to the Cloud… it will be a journey full of twists!

Updating your iTunes songs to the higher quality using iTunes Match

So I have turned on iTunes Match, as I’ve mentioned in several other posts here. Apple has made an attempt to give a good description of what the service is and how to use it – check this out from them… and then there is even more here “Learn More About iTunes Match.” They even have a nifty “Understanding the iCloud Status Icons“

There are gaps though. I consider myself a pretty good reader and I consider myself someone who digs around for answers – more so than the average person trying to figure this stuff out! For instance I had an icon show up in my iTunes Library that is not listed on the above page. Another question i had was how to get the better quality file from iTunes Match that I had read about in all the advertising.

I had to dig around on the web to find an answer. I still can not find the answer on Apple’s web site. CNET gave me the answer. Follow along here and I’m going to go a bit more into depth.

Apple told me that iTunes Match would upgrade the quality of all those songs I recorded into my laptop from all my old cassette tapes. I have a ton of tapes that I simply put into the old tape deck, hooked an 1/8inch cable to RCA plugs, then pushed record on an audio program and proceeded to record all those old tapes – TOOK FOREVER! Plus at the time when I did it I made the choice to save the files as mp3 files. (I was thinking – save space and it’s about the same quality sound) Well, when I read that Apple would match those old mp3 files and upgrade their quality to the files they sell in the iTunes store, I liked that idea! I liked it even better when I realized that I would be able to keep those files in a year if I choose to not pay for iTunes Match again! Plus many of my tapes were WELL worn out – so the quality of sound coming into the laptop was questionable many times! But at least I had a digital copy of my tapes and I could listen to them from my iPod. I was happy, was being the key word here! So let me give you the short version….

• MP3 files recorded from old worn out cassette tapes that barely played at times
• Upgraded to 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality
• I keep the better files at the end of the year!
• SCORE!

So, like I said, I signed up. Took two days for Apple and my laptop to upload and match songs. (Short in comparison to Google Music’s 2 weeks!) Now I want my upgraded songs! Here’s how I did it…

We will look at one of my my cassette tapes that I had worn out so you get the picture of how this works.

First thing I want to bring up here is that when I knew I was going to turn iTunes Match on… I went to my iPad and deleted all the songs off my iPad. I did the same thing with my iPhone and iPod Touch. I had a ton of songs on there that were “Just in Case” songs. You know… the ones that I “MIGHT” want to listen to but probably never have or will (like at the end of an album – I mean with 6 kids when do I ever get to listen to an entire album?!) So on my iPad every time I listened to a song I was automatically downloading the newer, better quality file from the Cloud. So everything below here is simply so I could get the better quality file on my laptop and have a permanent copy of it on my hard drive.

SHORT VERSION

On my laptop, in my iTunes library, I had to…

1. select the songs that I knew iTunes had Matched,
2. delete them from my iTunes library but keep them in the Cloud
3. re-download them
4. Enjoy the better songs!

LONG VERSION WITH PRETTY PICTURES

STEP 1- So here is a screen shot of my album…Notice that some of the songs under iCloud Status say Matched and some simply say Uploaded. Why some songs on this album got Matched and some didn’t is a question for another day.

Take a look at the bottom two songs – You see that these two say Matched – that means iTunes has a better quality file in the Cloud waiting for you. Look over in the rectangle – you can see that Track 9 is a MPEG audio file. Track 7 is a track I already downloaded and updated, that’s why it says Matched AAC audio file.

STEP 2 – So the next step is to select the files that say Matched, then delete them from your iTunes on your computer but not on the cloud! Look below and you will see the pop up dialogue that appears when you hit the delete button, along with the check box that you DON’T want to have checked!

AGAIN – DO NOT DELETE these songs from the Cloud!

Then you can move these files from YOUR library to the trash. That pulls those old yucky files out of you iTunes library. You don’t want duplicates around wasting space.

I would not go empty the trash though. After downloading the better quality files you will be able to listen to the better files then listen to your old files – In my case it was very refreshing to actually make this comparison – HUGE difference!

STEP 3 - After deleting the files you will see that a Cloud, with an arrow in it, icon shows up next to those songs. That icon means the songs are in the Cloud waiting for you to download them.

Click on the little Cloud Arrow Icon….. Now the file starts to download and you see a little pie, progress icon that starts to fill up as the track downloads. It is a very fast process!

After the file downloads you can now see the songs will say Matched next to them and the file types have now changed…

Step 4 - Now all you have left to do is sit back and listen to your better quality files! Like I mentioned earlier – go pull those old version out of the trash and listen to the new version first then the old version. You will realize how much your were missing before. $25 bucks well spent I think if you have as many old file in your iTunes as I do!

By the way….

The screen shots I used in this post, you know… the ones with the pretty pink arrows and boxes…. were created in Skitch. Skitch is a free app for your Mac, Windows, iPad and a few other things too I think. It is a part of the service that Evernote offers. If you have not downloaded Skitch on your iPad especially, go do it now!