Can't upload songs to library for iTunes matching

Just tried with a genuine 24bit 96khz flac album, converted to Apple Lossless (no down sampling or bitrate conversation) and it worked! Uploaded in no time.

Sadly this only confirms what we already know that the problem is with the matching. Also not willing to resample all my files just to get round an issue that should really be fixed ASAP.

Not sure how we answer this question amongst us: we’ve determined that the issue is not tied to age of hardware (M1s impacted), not specific to iTunes Match (impacts Sync on Apple Music), MacOS version (Big Sur is impacted), or, with Windows, not even restricted to MacOS, and it looks like sample rate might have an influence; how can we determine if this is impacting ALL users, or are we here just a subset of all iTunes Match/Apple Music Sync users? Are other people having no issue at all?

We have to remember that in these days of streaming, not EVERYONE is constantly uploading new music; many will just be relying on streaming of their existing library, and that seems to work pretty much flawlessly.

One further, depressing thought… iTunes Match was introduced in 2011… it’s possible the core code dates from back then. 10 year old code is going some; Apple may not even employ those responsible for developing iTunes Match; delving in to support new Apple Music standards may have severely broken something… think also that development sprints are generally two weeks in length, and a lot of SaaS maintenance takes place on a monthly cadence; even if Apple are working to resolve this, we MIGHT be weeks away from a fix… and that’s if they’re looking, if they know how to, if they even want to! (Which is why finding out if this is universal would be so interesting; they probably couldn’t afford to ignore a universal issue).

All good points. As we know, the start to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one in the first place! It’s very frustrating Apple is keeping silent on this, but it beggars belief they aren’t aware of it. But perhaps they don’t care - $25/year for a complicated sync/storage product vs $120 for a simple streaming service - Apple may have made its decision to sunset Match. But they should say so and put us out of our misery. Or acknowledge they have a problem and they’re doing their ******** to fix it for their customers.

Hi,

Uploaded lossless tracks are still transcribed to AAC. The tracks will remain lossless whilst on your computer but will be 256 AAC if you remove download and stream on your devices.

Tracks that are matched will be 256 AAC but with Apple Music, some tracks will be available as lossless and when you remove the original track, you will be able to download or stream them as lossless.

I have discovered that not all tracks on the same album have lossless versions when trying to stream or redownload matched tracks. Tracks played directly from the Apple catalog are okay.

Like most contributors to this thread, I an have problems adding files - matched or uploaded files are taking forever.

Jim

I can confirm that upsampling a lossless apple file to 96.000khz does the trick and bypass the current buggy/slow matching process. But the songs are not matched and are uploaded instead, although the uploaded albuns are available at the itunes store.

Go figure... :-/

As said previously, what is being suggested must be disabling the match process; when a lossless file is ‘Matched’ a copy is made by the iTines/Music client and that is uploaded to iCloud for streaming playback. Perhaps these issues are due to the adjustment to lossless streaming for Apple Music subscribers (something that was previously stated as having no impact on iTunes Store music purchases or iTunes Match - which would continue at 256 Kbps AAC). Who knows, maybe iTunes Match will also support lossless streaming in the near future - though I think less likely than perhaps offering lossless purchases in the store for a premium price increase.

So it still suggests the match logic is ‘broken’ currently and a high sample rate for some reason bypasses that.

Sadly, iTunes Match subscribers all up-sampling and then flooding Apple’s servers with song uploads is unlikely to improve the already dreadful performance, but it’s a useful observation; hopefully someone still engaged with @AppleSupport can convey this to them.

iTunes match was working beautifully for me until Saturday (07/31). Now it's taking hours to match a 6 track EP. I initially thought it was me/my internet service. I did all the usual troubleshooting. This includes power cycling my network, rebooting my machine, running a speedtest (no issues there), uninstalling/reinstalling iTunes, and finally downgrading iTunes versions to see if this made a difference. Spoiler alert, it did not. It got so bad that I asked my parents if I could come over and try it on their machine. I was able to recreate the issue using their network and their laptop. I did some digging and it turns out this has been affecting people since mid-July. Apparently Apple is aware of it and has "fixed" it multiple times, only for it to keep coming back. Seems to only be a Match issue because I have tons of movies in my iTunes library and we were able to stream them on the Apple TV app on my parent's Firestick on Saturday.

No clue what's going on but they better get it sorted. Just like everyone else, my patience is beginning to wear thin.

I find songs that CAN'T be matched upload quickly (The majority of time) - It's worth asking this journalist to copy some songs that CAN be matched, then he'll find that they don't match and sit there 'Waiting'

Hi @andyfx

the way he was responding yesterday was not OK and instead of reading some of the posts of this topic it was like telling me that I don't know how Match is working - I am using this tool from the first moment. If he is not interesting in such an interesting article it's his problem...

I’m glad that I found this discussion thread and realise that the problem isn’t at my end! I’ve done all the usual troubleshooting, unchecking and rechecking relevant boxes, signing out and back in, etc. and it has made no difference! In two days, only two songs have matched.

The cynic in me thinks Apple are trying to nudge iTunes Match users into subscribing to their much more expensive Apple Music service.

I have been having this problem for the last 10 days (since Monday 26 July). After ripping a CD into my library, the upload has progressed at snail's pace.

It took a week to match 10 of the 16 songs. I managed another two overnight, and am still waiting on the final four.

I've tried all the listed solutions - turning my iCloud library on & off; using a different internet connection; rebooting my router; updating all devices to latest OS; even reinstalling the Apple Music / iTunes apps on my PC and Macbook. Nothing seems to work.

Hugely frustrating, especially as songs purchased on the iTunes store & added from Apple Music appear with no issue.

Just to add that the upsampling trick (96kHz AAC) works for me, not really sure what that means in terms of anything but at this point I'm not fussed. Used MediaHuman Audio Convertor to do the conversions, free and easy.

Holly gwackamolie - i added a voice memo from my phone to my music library and clicked 'update library' - it uploaded and finished within 5 seconds. wow..... so its deffo a 'matching' issue. Forgive me if i'm stating the obvious but i actually thought it was an 'adding to the library' issue rather than just matching.

So I tried the upsampling trick mentioned previously on this thread and to my surprise it did work. It uploaded 11 of the 12 songs from an album I had in queue; the other thing is that it was fast, like abnormally fast. Had to re-add the song that failed on the first pass but in the end it worked.

For me this work around is ok for now but the issue with matching still persists, it's extremely slow. It's a shame that this service broke this way, it used to work almost flawlessly and now we have to jump through hoops to make it work.

I hope that itunes resolves this. I do not get the impression that they are too engaged with finding a solution. I spent several hours today, several hours on Monday, several hours on Tuesday, and several hours on Wednesday working with Apple technicians. Each one was polite and patient, but none of them has been able to find a solution. The fact that this has been going on since mid-July and, according to what several of the Apple people from whom I've been seeking help have told me, Apple knows, but, even so, either cannot or will not fix it, is a concern. Let's cross our fingers.