Can't upload songs to library for iTunes matching

I have had the same problem for at least two weeks, a few songs match from a new import, the rest take days. It used to take minutes. I have tried this running iTunes 12.8.3.1 on a mid 2012 Macbook running High Sierra 10.13.6 (old one I use for importing cds), but when I first had the trouble I copied files across and imported to Music 1.1.6.32 on a mid 2015 MacBook running Big Sur 11.5 with exactly the same problem.

Definitely no network problem, I have done plenty of uploading large files to Box and Dropbox, Zoom meetings etc during this time. I'm in Australia.

I’m having the exact same issue. I went so far as purchasing a new MacBook Air M1. The songs literally takes days to fully download, if I’m lucky. I can see the albums I’m trying to dl on my other devices, but most songs are grayed out and tells me they aren’t synched across all devices. I spoke with Apple Support 2 days ago and thought I resolved the issue. I switched my import setting from Lossless to MP3 high quality. Instantly imported CDs synched. The Rep explained to me that since Apple just in the process of updating Apple Music to Dolby Atmos and full Lossless that this was the issue. He said they’re hoping to have it run smoother this Fall. However, today I imported a few CDs using MP3 and the same issue is happening. I’ve loaded out and in. Quit and restarted. Reimported using a lower quality. Logged out of iTunes Match on all my devices and nothing. This has to been occurring on Apples end. They seriously need to address this ASAP because we pay for a service and it’s blatantly broken. I also subscribe to Apple Music, but I reply on iTunes Match for hard to find and rare tracks that are not available anywhere else.

Same problem here since last week. It looks like iTunes isn't matching anything anymore, but it is at just an incredibly slow speed. It took about 24 hours for it to match 10 songs over the weekend where I'm used to 10 songs being matched within a few minutes at most.

Sucks because I caused all sorts of damage to my library thinking that something was wrong on my side. Signed out of iTunes, signed in again. Disabled iCloud Music and re-enabled while holding Option. Ended up getting all sorts of duplicate playlists and tracks which were originally matched now listed as duplicates—I haven't even started trying to clean up that mess yet since matching is going so slow.

And as others have said, downloading track is no problem at all. That goes nice and quick like usual. Also, any edits I make to playlists get synced immediately. It's only a problem with matching tracks that I add to my Library.

The problem is located exclusively in the process of matching the local song with the itunes store catalogue. Is there a way to skip it: you just have to oversample your audio file to 96,000 Hz and then it will upload incredibly fast (you will also see a genius problem that you have to dismiss)

Not much to add regarding the issue except that I'm experiencing it too. I hadn't uploaded music to iTunes Match in the past weeks and last Friday (30/07/2021) I tried adding one album and in 4 hours it uploaded 1 song. Since then I've tried uploading the album again several times and the maximum songs that I it uploads to this day are 2 of the 12 songs.

Hoping this thread gets enough visibility to warrant a response for Apple.

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 damndest 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.

So I tried the upsampling trick (96kHz AAC), and it updated the library as quickly as it used to. I then deleted the upsampled file (in Finder [macOS]), and when (Music app) asked to locate that now deleted file, I directed to the original mp3. Had to add cover art to it as well, and it updated just as quickly (was using my iPhone's Music app to see that the file & cover art appeared quickly). My network is a little over 500Mbps down / wireless. M1 MBP.

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.

Yesterday I've contacted some well known and influential german internet magazines and asked them to post this topic on their site. Only one guy answered and was very rude to me. I've sent him the link of this community which includes all information and he was not understanding what my problem is. He tried to create some playlist with already available songs and it worked for him. Then I've asked him to upload eg. a new album and he uploaded some self made songs which are not available on iTunes and as it worked he sent me some screenshot with the remark "just done"...

So OK I am very glad for him that he is the only one with iTunes Match working...

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'