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How can I get iTunes (11.3.1/Mac) to stop changing my genres?

• This is new behavior. Older versions of iTunes never did this. If it's relevant, I use iCloud. My main way of sorting music is by genre, and I've made up my own genres for this purpose. For instance, I sort all sorts of songs under "jazz" that many people wouldn't think of as jazz. Which is fine, because it's just a way to help me find stuff. As soon as I buy songs, I change their genres to fit my quirky classifications. I've done this since iTunes first came out, and so, for years, I've known that song (or album) X is in genre Y, because that's where I put it. Now, all of the sudden, whenever I buy anything in the iTunes store (whenever iTunes connects with Apple's servers), new genres appear. I suddenly see World Music, Vocal Jazz, and so on showing up. And I think, "What? I didn't buy any 'World Music.'" So then I click on the new genre and there's random stuff in it that I already owned—sometimes stuff I bought six years ago. iTunes has changed its genre from my choice to it's own. So now, after every purchase, I have to spent ten minutes changing all the genres back. Oddly, sometimes when I right-click a "World Music" song and check the genre, it says "jazz" or whatever I set it to. (It shows up, in the Interface, under "World Music," but "World Music" isn't listed in the song's info. "Jazz" is.) And when I click OK, it goes back into the jazz category. Other times, the listed genre (in the info window) really has changed to Apple's classification it. How can I get iTunes to stop messing with my already-purchased music? Ideally, it should do nothing to stuff I've already bought.

• Answer:

  Unfortunately, iTunes match creates links to the original items in the iTunes Store thus disabling you from changing the genres of content that belongs to the iTunes Store. As an alternative to achieve what you want, have you considered creating playlists (and naming them, say "Jazz") to sort your music?