Updating Cloud Music Library

Hello rustymusic and welcome to Apple Support Communities. It appears you are having some difficulty moving content between your Mac and iPhone via iCloud using iTunes Match.

The most important issue here is exactly what is being added to the library. The way iTunes match works is when you add a song to your library, the system looks for the same song in the iTunes Store. If it finds the exact same version of the song (i.e., all things the same including artist name, album name, etc) then it "matches" it which allows you to access the track from any device. In most cases, this kind of matching is pretty close to immediate.

If a match is not found (as can very much be common with BandCamp tracks), then a version of the track has to be uploaded to your library. Depending on factors including the format and length of the song (as these both influence the file size) and how you are connected to the Internet, this can take quite a bit of time. Your best shot is to try to update the library only when connected to Wi-Fi and power.

Cheers.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/05/itunes-match-users-report-long-running-issues-uploading-and-syncing-files/

I’m so glad you posted this.

I downloaded an album to my Mac (vinyl download card), and it shows in my Cloud library within minutes, but none of the songs play on my other devices. The message “This Song is Not Synced Across Devices” appears. On my Mac, the “Updating Cloud Music Library” shows in the bottom left and goes on FOREVER (exaggeration, but for a very, very long time).

A song or two might show up on my phone in playable form, but I’ve had to re-start the process many, many times in order to get an entire album to show up. It’s been insanely frustrating and inconsistent.

It used to be a very efficient and problem-free process…no more, it seems.

Also, album art will initially appear, then disappear a few minutes later, and the songs remain unplayable across devices.

Also, I have Apple Music, too. Same problem persists.

The only “solution” I’ve found is to wait until the process finished and ***** what’s correctly synced. In this latest case, only 2/10 tracks synced with both Apple Music and iTunes Match activated (On my mac, the tracks all show as uploaded / available in my Cloud Library. However, on my phone, the two successful tracks are in white and play whereas the others are grayed out and do not). I then go to my Mac and select “Update Cloud Library” and repeat this process.

If tracks still won’t sync from my Mac to my Cloud Library, I remove those specific tracks from Cloud Library on my phone, go to my Mac and re-add the files to the Cloud and keep trying.

I was able to get this to work with an album last week after many attempts, but it was insanely frustrating and time consuming.

Hopefully the issue is acknowledged and addressed soon. It was not fixed in the most recent 11.5 update…