iTunes Match Freezes in Step 2

Same thing happened to me, stayed at 5862 of 13732 checked overnight (about 10 hours). Just force quit iTunes and relaunched, and itautomatically picked up at the end of step one.

@all I have found a way to get around the "its stuck" problem (for now)

TURN OFF iTunes match on every other device and computer other than the one that you are syncing. Doing one at a time seems to do the trick

that means: turn it off on you iPad(s), iPhone(s) and other compter's iTune(s).

AppleTV 2 can stay on (because it has nothing to sync)

good luck

Clicked "stop" and then "start," and match process continued. Would be best if iTunes could detect a stuck state and restart itself, but this works at least.

I did not have step 2 error, but step 3 upload hangs. I have tried many strong repairs, including everything suggested in this post, single user mode, reinstall iTunes, check disk permissions, turn match on / off, check library dead tracks etc. It would be nice if there was a way to turn on verbose mode to find out why the match hangs up.

Same here, it freezes on step 2. Bummer, help! What's the point in paying for a service that doesn't work correctly. There has to be an answer to why this doesn't work correctly.

Mine is also freezing on step 2. According to the status it's on the last song, but it doesn't move from there. The weird thing is that at one point in time I had made it to step 3, but I stopped it because I wanted to restart it to see if it would fix some of my "error" status tracks. Ever since, I've never made it past the 2nd to last song on the 2nd step. I'm about ready to call Apple on this one. There's definitely been some frustrations using this so far, and it doesn't help that random songs are now missing on my iphone from the full albums I had on it originally.

I made the post above under a different ID...but I did make some progress and wanted to add to this discussion. I've been reading suggestions to turn iTunes Match off on all iOS devices, but read somewhere that it didn't matter if it was still turned on on the Apple TV. Well tonight I finally ignored that and turned it off on my Apple TV as well. After restarting a couple times, I'm finally into step 3. So, try turning the service off on ALL of your iOS devices, including Apple TV, and computers other than the one you're on, and try again. Not sure if it had anything to do with it or if it was just a coincidence, but it might help.

I'm having problems too, but seems to be in or beyond step 3. Last night, iTunes was well into step 3 (about 75%). Went to bed, and this morning, iTunes had beach balled (locked). I've tried force quitting and restarting... if I'm connected to the Internet, iTunes locks again within about 5 seconds. If I turn the Internet off, I can use my music library.

Very frustrating. No indication what is wrong... I've sent in a request for a refund, and to turn off Match. :-(

I agree with dcassidy, however I took another step.

It seems that when iTunes Match starts, so does the Genius play list I have (20 songs).

I removed it (iTunes - Prefrences - General tab - uncheck Show: Genius).

Of 19,000 songs, it got to the next step within :30 minutes.

Without doing this, I did several stops and starts. Left it over night, same problem. Then left it while I went to work, same problem.

As I type it seems like it's stuck at 35 of 4539. Will check the other forum for Step 3 issues.

Stuck on Step 2 over here as well.

I've completely deleted and reinstalled iTunes from scratch including prefs, the helper app etc via the Terminal.

I've repaired permissions.

I've restarted about 50 times. No dice.

About to throw ... something.

I'm also stuck at Step 2. On the last song. Tried the 'turn iTunes Match off on all related devices' to no avail. I have a question up on AskDifferent (StackOverflow's Mac board). I'll report back if I hear anything.

This cloud stuff is hard.

Check the iCloud status of all the songs, and get rid of ineligible ones by backing up and physically deleting the file. We have also had success by converting lower-bit rate MP3 files to AAC.

To me it seems as if iClould match does not have the ability to recover from several types of 'fail' in song format. So it makes sense that if we reset our file formats to AAC, iTunes match is better able to process each song's digital fingerprint in your iCloud music database.

Apple must be very sharply criticized for their grossly irresponsible online support for the many thousands if not millions of iTunes Match customers, who are getting zero information from them about the known solutions to the problems in iTunes Match updating.

If you search Apple's iTunes support, there is nothing there. Nothing about firewall settings. No tips about music formats. No troubleshooting steps. Nothing.

Many people in this thread alone have stated they are cancelling their subscription and getting refunds.

What an inept and incompetent way for a respected company to launch an important new service.

Do Apple product managers think that Apple's shiny product image means that their new prodcut software support can be among the most lazy and sloppy in the software industry?

Shocked and disgusted - Apple executives should raise **** with the iTunes Match launch team.

I'm currently talking to Apple Support via email and so far the "support" has been underwhelming to say the least. Still having the same issues crashing on step 2.

This is how I laid it out for them, the issues I'm still experiencing and what I've tried to do to fix it on my own.

Let me know if anyone has other ideas.

Subscribed to iTunes Match a few days ago and did my initial match. It obviously took a long time so I left it overnight. When I checked in the AM, iTunes had "quit unexpectedly." No bother, I started again, or so I thought. Unfortuntaely, every time Match tries to "match" my songs it gets to the very end of step 2 and iTunes unexpectedly quits. I only have about 12,000 songs, I have tried wired and wireless connections, my MBP is maxed out on RAM, I made sure that my iPhone wasn't connected to iTunes Match during intital sync etc.

Here are the steps I've taken to trouble shoot:

- Restart, log out/in accounts both user and iTunes store.

- Repaired permissions.

- Deleted all system and user caches. Interestingly, the first time I did this I WAS able to complete a match and sync. Once I added anymore songs it went right back to crashing on step 2, just about when complete with matching.

- Complete uninstall of iTunes including prefs, helper app etc and reinstall of 10.5.1.

- Ran Disk Utility and DiskWarrior in scavange mode.

So I'm kind of at a loss. I've done all that I know how to do so I'm pretty bummed that it's not working. I've been in the discussions and have tried to find answers there to users with similar problems.

I love the idea and the features of iTunes Match I just can't seem to get it to work properly. The folks at the Store near me said this was the best way to try and resolve it.

How to fix Step 2 and Step 3 Errors in iTunes: Music Media Formats, and Checking Firewall Blocks.

Step 1, 2, or 3 Hangs: Problems with Media Formats.

If you have heterogenous media formats in your music files, some of them will FAIL iTunes match, causing it to hang. This is a software error in iTunes match, which should mark the files as "Not eligible" instead of remaining stuck in an endless loop. These errors never occur if all the songs in the music library are unprotected AAC 256 kbps music files encoded by iTunes 10.5.1.

There are two basic ways to upgrade your song media formats to iTunes 10.5.1 AAC encoding - encode all of them at once, or do them selectively. In either method, you must delete the original version from iTunes and your file system. If you previously loaded them to iCloud, get rid of them there also.

You will be able to see a hung file in OS/X under Activity Monitor -> iTunes -> Inspect Process -> Open Files and Ports. In Windows you will have to use standard Task Manager inspections.

In my iTunes library, I found that certain AAC (m4a) files which were encoded in before 2011 were stuck, and m4p Protected AAC files.

You may convert all files which were not encoded at 256 kbps AAC with a right-mouse click. Find them:

1) individually in iTunes as you discover them in Open Files and Ports trace, or

2) by creating a sort smart playlist that matches their pattern. For example, a playlist with bit-rate < 256k.

After converting them, you MUST delete the previous file(s) from your iTunes library, move the actual file to trash, and delete the trash. Archive the files if you wish. If any of them were already matched to iTunes Match, you must delete them there also.

After getting rid of older media formats, your Open Files and Ports window should no longer show any music file open in your iTunes library.

If you have converted your music library and Step 3 is still stuck with no file open, it is likely a Firewall problem. Check the last line in Open Files and Ports, and use the information in the last rows to check your firewall settings. The upload port is shown in this form, 192.168.1.1:53089->72.21.214.201:https. If you see this type of row, but nothing is being uploaded, a firewall or other issue is blocking that port.

In my case the block was created by my broadband modem settings. Check with the installation guide for your modem - typically they can be managed by a http:// address such as http://192.168.1.254. Change the firewall settings as needed.

I may have a fix (after 12 hrs). I went through and found duplicate songs. One was waiting to be uploaded (had the clear cloud next to it) and one was available to download (had the download cloud next to it). Itunes did not recognize it as a duplicate song. I deleted all the ones with the waiting to be uploaded cloud and whala, i got to step three and uploaded my remaining songs.

Hope this helps