Itunes Match fiasco!

Question

I want to caution everyone about the so called service called Itunes Match, as advertised in the Itunes store.  This feature is promoted as a backup source, a place from which to stream all of your personal music (if desired).  And more importantly, the service is also promoted as a way to upgrade all of your personal music library to 256 kbps regardless of whether it was purchased from Itunes or any other source.  Itunes Match is advertised for 25 bucks on an annual basis.  And once your personal music library has been upgraded to 256kbps, the songs remain yours (as they always were in the first place) no matter whether you continue with the annual iCloud service or not.
I just spent (literally) all of my Saturday evening on the phone with Apple!  The big fat problem is Itunes claiming that the music was successfully matched and uploaded into iCloud and also available for upgrades to 256kbps from my lower compression rate songs.  This did not happen and no one could show me any record of how (or what manner) in which my personal music library was actually backed up through the Itunes store or otherwise.  There was also NO opportunity to upgrade my personal music library to 256kbps.
I only share this experience on this member forum to warn others that you just might encounter a lot of aggravation if you think you're merely going to pay $25 bucks for a nice backup of your entire music library along with upgrades to all personal songs up to 256kbps.  Apple needs to fix the problems that prevent the correct archiving and upgrading of songs or simply STOP advertising this so called Itunes Match service in the Itunes store.

Answer 1

Yes, you are correct in stating that it not really a 'backup'.  But Apples does clearly promote it as a way in which you can play personal music on a device without having the personal music stored on your local hardware.  So in that sense, it is an archived version of your personal music....albeit with the quirks as the article you reference clearly described.  And it goes without saying that everyone should backup their personal data (including music) to an external hard drive and/or other devices to ensure you always have a backed up copy of everything.
But the main point I wanted to drive home with my earlier statement was the troubles I had in attempting to accomplish something that I thought would be so simple....as well as to caution others to be prepared if they chose to purchase Itunes Match.  Having said all of that, here's a few suggestions that I hope could help others who may find themselves in trouble with Itunes Match.
If you choose to purchase this service, let it do its thing and scan for all matches and complete any uploads that the system determines it needs to upload to iCloud.  Once this is done, here's the part I want to get at.  If (like me) one of your main objectives is to upgrade the bit rate quality of your older music, consider the following:
Click on Itunes Store and then click on Itunes Match
You will see the Itunes Match screen...now click on 'add this computer'
Once this is done, type in your Apple ID and password
Click on Itunes Preferences within the Itunes program and make sure the box is checked (under the Store tab) for 'show Itunes in the cloud purchases'
Now, when you go back to your library (song or artist view), you may encounter the same problem I did!  That is, you are looking for the cloud icon next to the song (obviously so you can download the higher 256 AAC version from Itunes).  If you don't see that option it's because Itunes isn't showing the cloud version because you've already got a version of the song on your local computer (albeit-perhaps a lower quality version!).  This is why I really got stumped and no one could seem to help me! 
To get around this problem, log out and go into Itunes as a guest user on your computer.  Basically, you want to get a clean view of Itunes without it having the option of reading any of the existing songs it previously saw on your hard drive! 
At this point, following the previous steps of clicking on the Itunes Store and then Itunes Match
Add the computer again to Itunes Match
Enter your Apple ID and password and ensure preferences is checked appropriately as described above.
Now, view that library screen again.  This time the system is forced to show you the cloud versions only since there are no local/hard drive music files for Itunes to read in your guest account.  From this point, you can right click and start downloading each song at the 256 AAC.  I found the easiest way to manage this is to then storage these songs on an external hard drive or thumb drive.  You can later merge these songs into your hard drive music library once you ensure that Apple Itunes has not screwed up by providing an incorrect song or no song at all. 
I hope my feedback helps others (in some way).  This was one big exercise in frustration for me; and was initially made far worse by a Apple rep who had no clue how to assist me.  But is has now been worked out.