Q: How do I get MY iTunes back from the cloud

What do you mean "iCloud ate all my iTunes"?

Itunes match scans your iTunes library on your computer to determine what is match or uploaded. Otherwise, it does not do anything to your music. It's original location will not be change - it should still be on your hard drive.

Please provide more info.

Jim

Hi,

i am not sure I follow your problem. If your music is grey out, how are you able to download individual tracks. Is your music no longer on your hard drive?

Have a read at this iTunes Store: Troubleshooting iTunes Match. Does this help.

Jim

My experience was this:

1) I had a collection of 3000 songs on my hard drive of my Windows computer. 

2) I started a subscription to iTunes Match. 

3) The Match service scanned my music collection, and as far as I can tell it uploaded a number of my songs to the service cloud.  (based on the cloud status indication in the iTunes GUI)

4) But judging from the cloud icons none of the songs remained on my local hard drive.  For each of the 3000 songs the cloud-with-down-arrow icon indicated that the songs were only in the cloud, not on my PC. 

5) I had evidence that the songs were not deleted from my PC, because the size of the iTunes library was the same and in the Windows file system I could still see the song titles, but as far as the iTunes GUI was concerned all the songs were in the cloud and not in the hard drive. 

6) When I tried to play the songs, there was a startup delay, as if the song was being streamed from the cloud and not being played locally. 

7) When I tried to play the songs without a WiFi connection they would not play. 

8) I had to painfully download all 3000 songs one by one to restore them to the original state. 

I'm left with a very bad taste about iTunes Match.  It's the worst experience I've had with any Apple product or service.  I'm seriously considering jumping ship from iTunes to some other music service, and I've been a loyal iTunes customer since it's inception. 

-timmccar

Hi,

Sorry to read of your problems with iTunes Match.

This is not my experience of iTunes Match. Match has not deleted music from my iTunes library or hard drive. iTunes scanned my library which has around 24900 tracks plus a further 7/8,000 tracks purchased from iTunes Store.

I don't have any tracks with download icons as the music is still on my hard drive. I deleted tracks with bit rate less than 256 Kbps and downloaded matched tracks.

timmccar wrote

 

5) I had evidence that the songs were not deleted from my PC, because the size of the iTunes library was the same and in the Windows file system I could still see the song titles, but as far as the iTunes GUI was concerned all the songs were in the cloud and not in the hard drive.

 

-timmccar

If the tracks were not deleted from your PC, why could you not reimport the track? Did you by chance create another library which only showed music in the cloud?

Jim

Hi Jim:

Thanks for putting some energy into this.  I checked my hard drive and I only have one library file, with the "consolidate library" settings turned on. 

I did not try to re-import my library after signing up for Match.  Is that what I should have done? 

-TimM

Hi,

If the tracks were still on your hard drive, you could have reimported files or try to open the original library itl file.

As you have now redownloaded, I suggest that you back up your music on an external drive.

Jim

Thanks Jim:

Yes, I've backed up to external drives already.  Here's a new wrinkle.  Over time iTunes Match seems to be picking songs and making them inaccessible from the local drive.  Songs that were playing from the local drive are now unable to play.  The evidence is that the songs skip when I'm playing them on iTunes for Windows 7.  One day I can play them normally, the next day they skip.  Sometimes 3, 4 or 5 songs in a row are skipped.  When I delete these songs and the cloud with down arrow icon appears I can play them again.  When I download them I can play them locally in most cases.  But in some cases even after re-downloading they still wont' play. 

It seems like iTunes Match is deliberately de-authorizing my songs.  FYI, the songs involved are often songs I purchased from iTunes very recently. 

How do I scrub myself clean and fix this once and for all? 

BR, TimM

timmccar wrote:

 

It seems like iTunes Match is deliberately de-authorizing my songs.  FYI, the songs involved are often songs I purchased from iTunes very recently.

I don't think that this is true.

However, to see if I can help you, i have a few questions.

How do you manage your iTunes library? Do you allow itunes to keep your library organised? Do you normally keep all your music on your computers hard drive or do you delete the tracks and stream from match?

iTunes: Understanding iTunes Media Organization

iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads

Jim

Thanks Jim:

My iTunes library settings are: 

E:\iTunes Library

Keep iTunes Media folder organized is checked

Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library is checked

I normally keep all the music on the computer (drive E) rather than streaming.  This is necessary because my classic iPod that I still use can't sync any songs that are only available on the cloud. 

BR, TimM

I have the same problem as you, timmccar. Most of my purchased music appears in iTunes as being "on the cloud" as denoted by the little cloud icon download icon beside it, just as you have described. Then also, I go to play the tracks and there is the lag between my clicking on them and them starting, which does appear to be the time taken for the track to be downloaded from the cloud. But I used to have all this music locally on my hard drive. Somewhere, somehow, iTunes has, removed my local files to the cloud.

When I try synching my phone with iTunes, I am only able to listen to a fraction of the music that should have been synched to my device, and most of it is greyed out in the playlists, skipping automatically until it finds the next track that was held on my local drive. Why is this so complicated? I had no issues with iTunes withholding my music until the cloud features came along.

It seems as though with the latest updates to Apple IOS they are really trying to move us to "the cloud" which ultimately is a revenue generator for Apple. I understand the motivation there but it is inconsistent with Steve Jobs philosophy which took the users experience and set it as first and foremost, then worked the system around what would be best for that user. Now it is Revenue generation first,  then measure the impact on the users (also known as customers).

Regardless of the obvious, could we please have a simpe option more clearly available with future updates which asks something more explicit like:

would you like your information, media, movies, songs, contacts, phonecall history etc on your  own hardware? Or would you like to rent Apples hardware and keep it or a portion of it there?

I have the same request. I do not want my music going to the cloud. I want it on my device. I paid for it so I should be able to put it where I want it. I don't live where the internet is avail 24/7 so I can't listen to my music unless it is on my device.

Did you get any answers???

No and my music is quite valueable to me.