How Free Your Music matches songs

Music services do not share one catalogue, so Free Your Music searches the new service for every song you move and picks the closest result. It tries the exact recording code (ISRC) first, then the title, artist and album.

Step 1: the ISRC code

Most commercial recordings carry an ISRC, an international code for one specific recording. When the song has an ISRC and the destination lets apps search by ISRC, Free Your Music looks the code up first. An exact hit is a 100% match.

ISRC search is available when you move to Amazon Music, Apple Music, Boomplay, Deezer, Spotify and Tidal. For other destinations, matching starts at step 2.

Step 2: title, artist and album

Without an ISRC hit, Free Your Music searches for the song title, the artist and the album together. If the album name is the same as the song title (common for singles), it leaves the album out of the search.

If that finds nothing good enough, it searches again with fewer details: first the title and artist, then the title alone. It keeps the best result of all the searches.

How the match score works

Each result gets a score that shows how closely its title, artist and album agree with your original song. The artist counts the most, then the title, then the album. Free Your Music compares the main artist and the first album only, because some services list every contributor and others list only the main artist.

• A result is good enough to stop searching at 80% or more.
• The best result found is used when it scores 10% or more.
• Below 10%, the song is treated as not found and shows as "Could not match".
• Song length is not part of the score.

In the transfer details, each matched song shows its score, such as "92 % match". A song you picked yourself shows "You chose this match".

What is a low-confidence match?

A low-confidence match is a song that was added, but whose score is low. It may be the right song with a slightly different title (a remaster, a live tag, a featured artist), or it may be a different version.

These songs show "Check" in the transfer. Choose "Check songs" to go through them, and fix the match with "Use this match" where it is wrong.

Why does a song not match?

• It is not in the new catalogue. Every service licenses different music. Some songs exist on one service only.
• It is not available in your country. A song can exist on the new service but be blocked in your region.
• The details differ too much. Very different titles or artist names lower the score below the floor.
• The service did not answer. A temporary error at the music service can stop a song from being found or added. These songs show as "Failed" and you can retry them.

Every song that did not make it shows "Could not match" or "Failed" in the transfer, and you can export them to a CSV file.

Moving from or to YouTube

YouTube is a video service, so video titles often mix the artist and the song name ("Artist - Song (Official Video)"), and YouTube has no ISRC search. Free Your Music uses a simpler comparison for YouTube, so check the matches after a YouTube transfer. YouTube Music, which has proper song data, works like other music services.

Frequently asked questions

A song keeps matching wrong? Contact support with the song title and both services.