Apple launched its iTunes Match service back in November, a month later than was originally promised. Although the reason for the short delay was never revealed, Apple might have done well to use that time to run a few extra tests on the service, as a new bug has been revealed that has vexed many users who subscribe to it for $24.99 a year.
For that price, iTunes scans your entire music collection – that’s music you’ve bought from iTunes, from other online stores, purchased on CDs and even music that you “don’t have the receipt for” *wink wink* - and then matches your tracks with the iTunes database of over 20 million songs. The songs are then automatically made available via iCloud for you in 256Kbps quality, so that you can download or stream them to any of your supported devices.
The problem, highlighted by Cult Of Mac, is that although most users report that the service is doing a great job of matching their tunes up to the cloud, in some cases, it’s matching the wrong versions of certain tracks. Some songs that ordinarily have explicit lyrics are being completely replaced with censored versions, that either carry alternative, less colourful language, or just have the words removed entirely.
Credit where it’s due though – 9to5 Mac reports that Apple has already acknowledged the problem and is hard at work on a fix for the bug, although there"s no word yet on when that fix will come. There’s also no workaround to resolve the issue in the meantime, so if Match has replaced one of your treasured profanity-laden tracks on iCloud, you’ll just have to sit tight and wait for Apple to sort its **** out.