So many problems with iTunes Match...

dlucas10 wrote:

Maybe I'm wrong, but what I did was to sync my phone using iTunes with all the music/playlist that I listen to on a regular basis. Everything was sync'd and worked as expected. I verified this by looking at the phone for the number of songs and it matched what was in iTunes.

I then went and enabled iTunes Match on my iPhone and all the music that I sync'd was there and now I see the little cloud to download the music from iMatch. I verified that the songs remained the same as they did before enabling iTunes Match. I also tested listening to music in airplane mode, and I was able to listen to the music that I had Sync'd to the phone obviously I was not able to download music!

So is that the hybrid mode you are referring to richadams?

Success! The "hybrid version" of iTunes Match as you suggested works perfectly! So now I have all of the music that I know I want on my iPad plus all of the rest of my iTunes Library available as well. The best of both worlds. 🙂 Here's what I did...

1. Turn off iTunes Match on my iPad

2. Connect it to iTunes and sync all of the Smart Playlist content to my iPad (about 5,000 songs).

3. Turn iTunes Match on the iPad back on and let it run for a while.

Now it shows all of the songs I sync'd as normal and the rest of the songs/albums that are in my iTunes library are represented with the small "cloud icon" meaning that I can stream them any time. Nice.

My iPad was acting a little glitchy so I went ahead and reset it (held the Sleep/wake switch and the Home button down together until the Apple logo appeared). After that it's working perfectly.

Again, it was a rocky start, but iTunes Match is working great...all of the music in my iTunes library on my iMac is available on my iPad, my iPhone 4 and my Macbook Air. Sweet!

It's just way to random. It matches some songs on an album and not others. I decided to do a very careful test. I have several albums that were ripped a few years go. When they were ripped from the cd the volume was not right and they play at a much lower volume than my other music. So, I decided to see if Match would upgrade the files as promised. The example is 0898 Beautiful South (The Beautiful South). I made sure that the album is available in the store. I checked the song titles to make ure they matched. Same album, same version, no "live" songs. Everything matches. In spite of all that, Match only matched some of the songs and uploaded the lower volume songs for the others. And, of course, the album art is not there. Granted, it improved some of the files for me but that's NOT what it's supposed to do. Obviously the "beta" tag should not have been removed yet.

While I only have about 700 songs, more than 500 are ripped from CDs and I've lost them when an iPhone has been broken and replaced. I'd like to have my entire library in the Cloud to prevent this next time, but all I'm reading are about the problems. Is there anyone that iCloud/iTunes Match has worked really well for? Can we hear from them too?

Sly

slyguy_28 wrote:

While I only have about 700 songs, more than 500 are ripped from CDs and I've lost them when an iPhone has been broken and replaced. I'd like to have my entire library in the Cloud to prevent this next time, but all I'm reading are about the problems. Is there anyone that iCloud/iTunes Match has worked really well for? Can we hear from them too?

Sly

You're going to have to do some reading...there are a lot of posts about successful iTunes Match experiences. In fact there are no doubt millions of folks that have had no problems and are enjoying the service.

It's common and understandable for folks to post about problems and much less likely that people that haven't had any issues will show up and post on a thread populated with complaints.

My experience was rocky at first, like a lot of people here...but I activated iTunes Match within 30 minutes of its release. Apple's servers were overloaded and there were glitches (and there still are a few) but things have smoothed out a great deal now. If you're worried or can't handle some bugs wait for a while.

Here's a short recap of my experience, but as mentioned, do your homework and read other threads or better yet Google is your friend...people that are enjoying the service aren't likely to be posting here.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3494087?answerId=16776952022#16776952022

OK, a quick followup to my earlier post. Amazingly, and magically, everything is now working perfectly! Apple apparently fixed major server problems last night. I can now play ALL files in my library on ALL devices. For those interested, btw, I also found an efficient way to fix all the files where the iCloud status was "Error," so all 12,000 of my files are now matched or uploaded to iCloud. Simply open the "error" file in Fission (a lossless editor), then go to File>Save Audio, and click Save. The whole process takes about 10 seconds. That new file will match or upload to iCloud without fail, you can delete the original file, and you're done.

Having incurred massive frustration earlier this week, I feel v good now to have a pristine iCloud library. Those of us who signed up early were clearly beta testers, as Apple still had major bugs and glitches to resolve. Now if they can truly stream to iOS devices (i.e., withOUT requiring any downloads), I will give the service an unqualified thumbs-up. 🙂

Really glad to hear things are good now! With respect to streaming...streaming IS downloading no matter how you look at it. iTunes Match streams...end of story.

I think what you mean is that you'd rather iTunes Match was more like Pandora and didn't cache the song on your iDevice. Since the files are temorary and will never be kept in lieu of other, permanent files, I guess I really don't see the issue.

You can play those same songs anytime later, with or without Wi-Fi or 3G and they will eventually be gone if you don't. They aren't taking up any space that might be needed plus if you really want to, you can delete them.

To me it's the best of both worlds really. YMMV of course.

Just glad things are getting better every day! 🙂

For those still having some issues or want to learn more, here are some links to Apple's iTunes Match/iCloud information and troubleshooting recommendations:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/whats-new/

iTunes Store: How to subscribe to iTunes Match

iTunes: How to add a computer or iOS device to iTunes Match

iTunes Match: Understanding the iCloud Status icons

iTunes Store: Troubleshooting iTunes Match

Still very buggy and not happy at all. After 3 days still have almost half music left to upload. Just over half of itune purchased music was found. Tried to play on iPhone and had at first playlist would not play. Forced download of a couple sings and it played for about 20 minutes and froze. Itune screen blanked out. Forcing shutdown of iTunes did not fix. Did soft reboot and still no iTunes. Turned off match and did second soft reboot and iTunes came back. I think I'm done with Match. Looks like I wasted $25 dollars. I really don't understand Apples problems with the cloud. iCloud is certainly not great, they are doing away with gallery and way to manually store files. Even with pages storing files, I can't retrieve from any where that does have apple product. It too bad that Jobs legacy is going to be the iCloud and Match mess.

We can agreee to disagree about the definition of streaming... Apple, for one, clearly understands the distinction between streaming and downloading in all their marketing materials. Ideally, they'll give users the option. 😉

I'm almost certain that you, richadams, work for Apple. You post links to Apple web pages, just like the responding tech support team employed by Apple does, that have information as useless as any you will ever find. It is simple minded common sense FAQ's that answer questions as difficult as "How does a light switch work?". And the argument for iTunes Match being a streaming service is like arguing that Vince Young is like Drew Brees because they are both employed as NFL quaterbacks. The service is more problematic than anything it claims to be. It is filled with glitches and clearly does not deliver on it's promise. Come on richadams come clean as an employee or own up to your cultish worship of all things Apple because iTunes Match stinks! Plain and simple.

mebpapa wrote:

I'm almost certain that you, richadams, work for Apple. You post links to Apple web pages, just like the responding tech support team employed by Apple does, that have information as useless as any you will ever find. It is simple minded common sense FAQ's that answer questions as difficult as "How does a light switch work?". And the argument for iTunes Match being a streaming service is like arguing that Vince Young is like Drew Brees because they are both employed as NFL quaterbacks. The service is more problematic than anything it claims to be. It is filled with glitches and clearly does not deliver on it's promise. Come on richadams come clean as an employee or own up to your cultish worship of all things Apple because iTunes Match stinks! Plain and simple.

I don't work for Apple and attacking me personally for trying to help others is well, not helpful. I've posted dozens of "how to's" here and assisted numerous folks with their issues over the past couple of years. And you?

If you'd taken any time to read my posts you would have found that I have ranted and raved with the best of them about how bad Apple's products and services have been now and again.

Having said that you can have your own opinions but not your own facts.

You're either part of the problem or part of the solution.

catalyst9 wrote:

We can agreee to disagree about the definition of streaming... Apple, for one, clearly understands the distinction between streaming and downloading in all their marketing materials. Ideally, they'll give users the option. 😉

Agreed. They actually do both. iTunes Match streams (and that's all) to my Apple TV2. It streams and downloads a cached file to my iPad and iPhone. The downloaded files are temporary and will either disappear on their own or you can delete them. I'm okay with that.

That's the nice thing about the service. We can use it...or not. 🙂

My issue with iTunes Match is as follows:

It just does not work and feel slighted that it is just too buggy and unfinished.

First had enountered the dreaded error 4001 when I had turned the service on.

I was an orginal beta test but that should have no berring now since the match service was made avalible to the public.

After a number of attempts to have itunes match library failed again and again with the same error.

Discovered a fix that was mentioned on a number of sites and forums to upload on song to the cloud and then the iTunes Match would start to work.

That worked and was moving my songs to clouse with seemed to have been taking close to three days.

Then tonight tried to pull songs down onto my wife's iPhone 4 and nothing.

Was able to see my play lists but no music and checked iTuens.

What did I discover that iTunes Match errroed out every thing that was moved up to the cloud was gone.

Was forced to turn off iTunes Match and turn it back on and try to start the process all over again.

After a number of attempts to reconnect now I recieved error number 4010 which is an itunes store error.

Some product this is and very disapointed by the expirence.

Apple had to do something about this becase $25.00 for a buggy system is not acceptiple.

Music is supposed to be fun. Match has made it a huge pain in the butt. Files mysteriously disappeared from iTunes, others were inexplicably duplicated, my library is a gigantic mess. I just want to turn it off any make it go away. This is absolutely the worst experience I've had with any software product in a very long time.

Catalyst9 - how are your playlists? In particular - smart playlists and genius playlists? In my initial attempts, my smart playlists had all tunes that matched the criteria (so an 800 song playlist had 4,000 songs) and genius playlists were the opposite - a 45 song playlist had 2-3 songs, or none at all. Turned IM off on my iPhone a couple of days ago when it seemed to be trying to download my entire library and haven't tried it since. I have kept it on my MB though, because I like the ATV interface and convenience of not having to stream from my MB.