If you use iTunes Match, that might cause issues since you effectively pay Apple to match the music in your library with their versions and thereby make that piece of music available to you on your other devices. (A lot like synchronising your iTunes Library to your devices...) I'll take a guess, based on my personal technical knowledge, that Apple doesn't actually upload a copy of the music from your library, but instead matches it to their copy, hence the name.
The limitation of this is that if the artwork that Apple have for a given piece of music is different to your CD, you'll see their copy of the artwork. Why should it be different, you ask? Several reasons;
- artists and record companies sometimes use different artwork in different countries
- sometimes the artwork is changed simply because the artist felt like it (or perhaps a copyright issue relating to previous artwork)
- re-issued albums sometimes have revised artwork, perhaps because the track listing has been changed
Effectively, it will be similar reasons that the year of release is not correct. That said, you have to remember that it's not Apple that decides any of this, it's the artists and the record companies. Often, those people think differently about the relevance of the release year etc. than I do, as a collector. I've come across several artists who never tag their music with a genre of any kind and make their music available through artist-centric retailers such as Bandcamp. Bandcamp in particular, seem to take the artist approach and not be concerned if there is no genre listed, whereas outlets such as Amazon and the Apple store always have a genre. Since I use the genre as a method of listening to my music collection, I have to add the genre in myself on those specific tracks. I have also changed the genre of music when I'm not happy with the choice made by whoever prepared the album (i.e. artist or record company).
Compilation albums are a nightmare; I have many that use the year the compilation was released as the year for individual tracks.
I'm not sure that there is anything you can be do, except perhaps question your future use of iTunes Match.
If you do not use iTunes Match, I don't think there is any reason why (or method by which) the existing information would be changed once you have it the way you want. But once again, the information about a CD, which is not on the CD*, is filled in by bored record company employees, who are thinking about their holiday, not whether you care about the correct year. That version of the information is then made available to the public, and if that is wrong when you copy the CD into your iTunes Library, that's what you get. I do not believe that the copy you make is subsequently changed by anyone. If it's wrong now, it was wrong when you copied it into your library.
* iTunes uses Gracenote, an online database, to complete the information about a CD that you are copying in to your iTunes Library. Gracenote, in turn, gets that information from:
- record company employees, some of whom are less motivated to getting the information correct, or simply don't understand what is required
- the artist
- fans of the artist (and even they can disagree on release year etc.) What happens if a fan from a distant country fills that information in, and the album was released in their country in a different year to your country and with different artwork?
Not everything is Apple's fault (and no, I do not believe that Apple is perfect).
