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dViper Author

Level 1

0 points

So many problems with iTunes Match...

So far my experience with iTunes Match has been horrible. I keep getting a ton of unmatched songs that absolutely should be matched, and lots of upload errors.

For example, the album "Houses of the Holy" by Led Zeppelin.... http://i.imgur.com/RscRg.png

After toying around with it for a while, i found that sometimes using iTunes to create an AAC version of a unmatched song, the newly created AAC version does get matched. Not sure why this is, as the original unmatched files are 320bit MP3s.

Another issue I've found is that albums are not sorting correctly on my iPhone with iTunes Match active. I use dougscripts in iTunes to copy the release year of all my albums into the "sort album" meta data field. So that way on my ipod or iphone albums are sorted chronologically. Through iTunes match, none of my albums are being sorted correctly. Its not even that they're sorted alphabetically instead of chronologically. They're just listen in what seems like a completely random order.

Yet another MAAAJJJOOORRR complaint is with the album art. I am very meticulous about my album art. Every album in my library has album art displayed. My first step in getting album art is trying to get album art through iTunes. Most of the time this works fine. For the ones that dont, I just search google images and copy and paste the album art in... What I'm finding though, is that all my albums with album art gotten through iTunes, is not showing up on my iPhone when using iTunes Match. But albums where I had to paste a image in to iTunes, those do show up on my iPhone. This is not 100% consistent, but pretty close.

Overall I am very disappointed with iTunes Match so far. The Apple philosophy of "it just works" certainly does not apply to this product.

Im going to wait it out another couple of days or a week or so, and if things don't get better, I'll be calling in asking for a refund.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Nov 14, 2011 11:12 PM

629 replies

mmp1964

Level 1

14 points

Nov 20, 2011 5:39 AM in response to mmp1964

btw - my Genius playlists have been restored. I assume what happened is a version was created on my iPhone with only the songs that had been matched, and this version overwrote the version on my MB - perhaps they did not have some kind of hidden unique identifier. At some point in all of this madness I noticed that I had 13 GB of "Other" on my iPhone (which may or may not be related) - so I reset my iPhone and restored from a local backup.

Russa

Level 4

1,343 points

Nov 20, 2011 7:24 AM in response to mjbanks

.. I am still trying to figure out how to get the "matched" music from my iTunes library to my iPhone automatically. Any ideas?

aphutch3

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 7:47 AM in response to dViper

I have turned off iTunes Match:

1) It CRASHES iTunes when trying to upload unmatched songs....

iTunes Match matched ~16,000 out of ~23,000 totals songs (I was hoping for more... but I could definately live with 16k matched)

2) Having a large library .. I would like to be able to skip Steps 1 & 2 once I have run them once to speed up the process of uploading my unmatched songs.

3) Lastly which seems "UNFORGIVABLE" by Apple .... is that my Apple TV, iTunes on my PC and iPhone do not show properly the 16k songs that were supposively matched.... as an example ... I have all the The Beatles albums... they have missing songs from the cloud match... (note: this problem seems to be on albums/songs that I have not purchased from iTunes) .... key to the problem here is I can not tell what iTunes Match matched.... I just assuming albums I know iTunes carries like The Beatles there would be no problem

Hope Apple fixes this service it has alot promise....

At this point it is not ready for prime time release.... I will wait for an update before I try this service again.

Nov 20, 2011 9:24 AM in response to aphutch3

aphutch3 wrote:

I have turned off iTunes Match:

1) It CRASHES iTunes when trying to upload unmatched songs....

iTunes Match matched ~16,000 out of ~23,000 totals songs (I was hoping for more... but I could definately live with 16k matched)

2) Having a large library .. I would like to be able to skip Steps 1 & 2 once I have run them once to speed up the process of uploading my unmatched songs.

3) Lastly which seems "UNFORGIVABLE" by Apple .... is that my Apple TV, iTunes on my PC and iPhone do not show properly the 16k songs that were supposively matched.... as an example ... I have all the The Beatles albums... they have missing songs from the cloud match... (note: this problem seems to be on albums/songs that I have not purchased from iTunes) .... key to the problem here is I can not tell what iTunes Match matched.... I just assuming albums I know iTunes carries like The Beatles there would be no problem

Hope Apple fixes this service it has alot promise....

At this point it is not ready for prime time release.... I will wait for an update before I try this service again.

You can check the "match" status of any song by adding a column to iTunes on your computer. Open iTunes and in song list mode click on "View" in the toolbar. Click on "View Options". Check iCloud Status (you can also check iCloud Download to confirm the song's availability later).

FWIW I have the same issue with some albums including the Beatles (but not Abbey Road, for some reason it's fine). A a majority of the songs on an album will be matched but a couple won't and had to be uploaded. Definetly a bug.

Here's what I ended up doing to finally get iTunes Match to stop crashing and get all of my unmatched songs (about 2K) uploaded:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3492405?answerId=16760668022#16760668022

There are some other tips and tricks posted on this thread and a couple of others as well.

Hope that helps!

Nov 20, 2011 9:31 AM in response to Russa

Russa wrote:

.. I am still trying to figure out how to get the "matched" music from my iTunes library to my iPhone automatically. Any ideas?

AFAIK it doesn't update automatically. With iTunes open on your computer click on "Store" in the tool bar > "Update iTunes Match."

Once I did that, changes I had made to playlists and a couple of albums I re-ripped showed up on my iPhone and iPad pretty quickly.

If there is a way to get it to do that automatically I'd like to know how also. Or maybe it does and we just didn't give it enough time? I can't find anything on the Interwebs about that. 😕

Leann O.

Level 3

642 points

Nov 20, 2011 10:27 AM in response to richsadams

Thanks for the tip on checking the match status. I didn't know about that, and I've just set it to show up in my iTunes. It will really help me out. Appreciate it. 🙂

Nov 20, 2011 10:32 AM in response to Leann O.

Glad to help. Hope you get things sorted out. It does work pretty well once it's working but what a PIA this has been! 😠

Nov 20, 2011 11:03 AM in response to mmp1964

All playlists working as expected, mmp1964. Going to Store>Update iTunes Match in iTunes should solve most problems now. Let it finish, then check again...

Nov 20, 2011 11:06 AM in response to dViper

Is anybody having the problem of songs not playing on your iphone or it playing a song that you didnt choose???

Its pretty irritating because its constantly happening. It also wont let me listen to a song sometimes either I'll have to delete it and redownload to work.

Nov 20, 2011 12:03 PM in response to johnskies

johnskies wrote:

Is anybody having the problem of songs not playing on your iphone or it playing a song that you didnt choose???

Its pretty irritating because its constantly happening. It also wont let me listen to a song sometimes either I'll have to delete it and redownload to work.

Is it happening with iTunes Match or just a normal iTunes sync library? The reason I ask is that that happened to me when I upgraded to iOS 5. The new Music App messed things up. It was playing the wrong song sometimes and other times it wouldn't play anything at all.

I fixed it by connecting my iPhone to my computer, opened iTunes, unchecked "Sync Music" and clicked on Sync/Apply. That removed all of the songs on my iPhone. I then disconnected my iPhone from my computer and reset it (hold the Sleep/wake switch and Home button down together for at least 10 seconds, until the Apple logo appears). I reconnected it to my computer, checked "Sync Music" and sync'd it again. Everything was back in order, songs played normally. I don't know that the reset step is necessary but I've found that when things get a little buggy, doing so seems to always clean it up.

So you might give that a try.

FWIW the new Music App is a terrible downgrade from the original iPod App IMO - but that's another thread.

Nov 20, 2011 12:45 PM in response to richsadams

I'm downloading it to my iphone 4(iOS5) with itunes match. So what its doing is that I pick a song and it wont play, it'll just stay like that or it'll pick a different song completely even though the artwork is for the song I chose. It doesn't happen with my spotify app so I know its just the music app. My whole Itunes Match experience has been pretty disappointing so far but I still have hope. I just want to get these issues resolved and yeah your right the new music app BLOWS.

Nov 20, 2011 12:58 PM in response to johnskies

Got it. Here's what I'd try then. Turn iTunes Match off on the iPhone. Update iTunes Match on your computer. Connect your iPhone to your computer, sync without any music as I described earlier - that should wipe any and all songs from the iPhone. (Note if under the Music tab it still says "iTune Match", close and reopen iTunes and it should change to normal.) Then reset your iPhone and then turn iTunes Match back on and let it populate your iTunes library again. If that doesn't work I'm stumped.

Agreed, this has not been a pleasant experience...quite dissapointing. I've gotten it working and I like it now, but man...

Nov 20, 2011 1:30 PM in response to richsadams

yeah it seems to be working a lot better now hopefuly it stays like this. Thanks for the tips @richsadams!!!

Nov 21, 2011 11:22 AM in response to dViper

Macworld has published two very good articles. The first covers iTunes Match basics and the second some troubleshooting tips for those that might still be having issues (most have been discussed here, but it's nice to have them in one place).

iTunes Match: What you need to know | Macworld

Bugs & Fixes: Three essential iTunes Match troubleshooting tips | Macworld

Nov 21, 2011 2:53 PM in response to mallshouse

mallshouse wrote:

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.

Random indeed. iTunes matched my ripped copy of 0898 in it's entirety. I just upgraded the files to 256. However, I have the same problem you described with other albums in my collection. I haven't been able to make any sense of it. And these are albums ripped from purchased CDs, not poorly tagged downloads. Very frustrating.

So many problems with iTunes Match...