Macworld's Jason Snell has written up a quick way to force your local Windows or Mac iTunes library to upgrade all your songs to their 256kbps iTunes Match versions.
While iTunes Match makes often higher-quality tracks available in iCloud, your local—often lower-quality—track remains unchanged unless you say otherwise. If you have thousands of tracks to upscale, that could be a long and arduous process.
Snell's tip involves creating a Smart Playlist or two and having the courage to delete your local versions, trusting that iCloud Music Library will replace them. If that doesn't scare you off, hit the link below and get your upgrade going fast.
Source: Macworld
Reader comments
How to use iTunes Match to upgrade your local, ripped music to 256Kbps versions
idk...the whole thing makes me so nervous! I have worked so hard on my library. What if something goes wrong because they make a mistake....I'm not sold on the benefits of iTunes cloud matching. Maybe if I hear more from other users. Tell me your experiences people. Is the quality that much better? I can never tell myself. Probably since I don't have a fancy stereo system. I just listen on my computers or my car...
Works great. 7000 songs now 256. Some ripped in 2001 when Internet was sooooo slow. Did whole library in less time time than 10 discs took. Yeah.
Btw. The sound is so much better. Wow. Like hearing again for the first time. Just wish it took up less space. But ya get jay ya pay for. Super cool apple. Well done.
You can also just "select all" of the playlist of old copies and drag-n-drop them to a backup file anywhere you have room. Then you can always go back if something was mis-matched.
How do you do this on Windows versions?
How do you get the 'Any' (of the following are true) to come up? Cannot see this as an option in my Smart Playlist list...
?
hold down option as you click on the "plus" sign.
It works!
when i do this, no songs come up, but if i dont do the whole icloud matched/purchased then all the songs that are less than 256 kbps come up
thank you for that. if not it wouldn't match or backup any songs that were short / intros so great idea