So many problems with iTunes Match...

Yup,

I went to Spotify as well. But, luckilly, I got a refund back from Itunes. Supposedly I can't use Itunes for a year now. **** lol. Most likely I will be getting an Ipad tomorrow but, I won't be using it for alot of music. I'll be using with my apple TV. and I will definetly put Spotify on it. I don't mind paying the $10.00 because I know its someting that works quite well. The only thing I really use Itunes for is to rip my CDs and use it with my apple TV. I will not use Itunes Match ever again. I won't pay for any Match services anymore period. Online music subscription to music, fine but, not match for me.

Merry Christmas to all.

GLENN

....then you get punished with not being able to use iTunes for a year, what kind of fvckery is that?..

Wow. Please Apple read this thread and maybe lets not try to be everything to everyone.

It's difficult to add anything new to this thread that hasn't already been said, so all I can say is I'm also having similar problems to many people here. At least I got my library to sync to the iCloud (after more than a day). I almost rejoyced because that's a step more than some people have managed, but my euphoria was premature; downloading or even just streamng albums or playlists to my iPhone 4S (running IOS 6) is a battle I frequently lose, and even when it works it takes much much longer than if I just sync'd my phone to iTunes in the usual manner. The promised eutopia of having all my library accessible anywhere with a 3G or WiFi connection is not even close to being reality.

EDIT: one thing I have noticed which may be of benefit, or at least it may point to where the problem lies. I have a laptop PC in another part of the house which accesses my iTunes library soley by streaming from iTunes Match (via WiFi). It streams absolutely faultlessly, and other than a slight delay when you hit play, you'd hardly know the songs aren't stored on that PC. So why is it so difficult to pull-off that kind of smoothness and integration on my iPhone, which is also connected to the same WiFi?

I don't know if this will help any of you guys but I think I've just struck gold...

I've just been trying to download some albums to by iPhone, and it was painful as usual. So I opened-up port 5223 on my router for TCP access, and other than one song which unexplainably does seem 'stuck' 3/4s through its download, it's like the floodgates have opened. I did have to pause the downoad of the 'stuck' song though, otherwise songs below it wouldn't load. (Apple need to look at that at least; it should be able to download more than one song concurrently, or at least if one song's stuck it shouldn't hold the rest up.)

I'm wondering, what made you open port 5223?

I just wanted to chime in, have had itunes match since day 1, lately, i'm stuck in a 4-5 day loop of step 1, 2 and 3, long story short had to delete everything off cloud and start over, on day 2 and although it says 13K+ songs are on the cloud, it still goes through this constant loop of steps 1-3, sometime it shows it uploading say 2 out of 130 songs, sometimes another figure, sometimes just shows how many songs are on the cloud. I've done the hold option key and turn off itunes match thing a few times, etc and randomly get the "you cant synch 2 computers on itunes match" error thing or whatever it says, I can safely say this is the WORST thing Apple has ever stood behind. It's anything but simple or smooth or just works, it's the only apple thing (as i told tech support) i ownthat consistantly doesn't work, have just about every problem listed on this thread. Nothing seems to work

I too have had a refund for itunes match and will not use again unless and until it can be trusted to upload my collection as stored and not change, alter or corrupt the files. It was a disaster for me so dumped it and got my money back.

@blametheadmin: I Googled something like 'iTunes Match Port' and found a reference to to that port (on this discussion forum, funnily enough). I can't say that since I opening it everything's been rosey, but it's been a million times better.

A lot of people seem to be having genuine problems, and I sympathize; it's a bugged product, and imo is not up to Apple's established 'it just works' ethos.

But a few people also seem to be complaining about it because it isn't a back-up facility. Apple didn't say it was a back-up facility, nor did they advertise it as such, anywhere.

binman62 wrote:

I too have had a refund for itunes match and will not use again unless and until it can be trusted to upload my collection as stored and not change, alter or corrupt the files. It was a disaster for me so dumped it and got my money back.

How do you go about getting a refund?

I was totally psyched to get this service as I'm OCD and like to have things nice and uniform. I haven't read through all the posts on this forum but I was having the same problem as angusfan above and I finally decided to remove any songs listed as "waiting" for their icloud status. It must be songs that it's trying to upload but why in the frack it keeps restarting the "matching" process is beyond me.

Add to that the fact that the stupid service won't even match songs that are available on iTunes! I have the Beatles 1 CD which I ripped into iTunes and the all-powerful Match only matched 17 of 27 songs. The other 10 it insists on uploading even though the entire album is avialble on iTunes for purchase. I tried purging it, re-ripping it in different formats - all to no avail.

Why does Apple seem to keep putting out beta software and yet marketing it as ready for primetime?😠

Can we alll please get over Itunes Match. It *****. Period, and done with. I love my Ipad. I love my apple TV but I sure as **** don't need this headache and all the sorry whiners who blame apple for trying to please their customers. If it doesn't work for you, get rid of it, this thread is not going anywehre. People who use apple Imac think everything should be perfect, it's not a perfect world.

Thanks Glenn for the heartening vibe and stoic words but I bought a lower memory spec iPad specifically in mind with using my music of Match, and its svcks: Full stop. End of story svcks. Its completely bums me out every time playing anything on it and now Spotify... and when we pay for a service it should fundamentally work, bug here and there I get but this is really not acceptable.... dont think any of us expect perfect. You being so sanctamonius is fine but adds nothing to the conversation

GlennW1971 wrote:

Can we alll please get over Itunes Match. It *****. Period, and done with. I love my Ipad. I love my apple TV but I sure as **** don't need this headache and all the sorry whiners who blame apple for trying to please their customers. If it doesn't work for you, get rid of it, this thread is not going anywehre. People who use apple Imac think everything should be perfect, it's not a perfect world.

Who said anything about perfect? I just want something to work the way it's supposed to. I know that's asking a lot - to have something work as advertised.

I was looking for someone to answer my question as to how I could get refunded for my iTunes Match purchase and then, yes, expressing my frustration which granted, is about as constructive and helpful as your comments were to me. Thanks for keeping us all on track and moving things forward. (Note: the previous sentence should be read with heavy sarcasm.)

Why are you even wasting your time posting on here if you don't even use and/or care about iTunes Match? Do you seriously have nothing better to do with your time? Talk about sorry...

I've had this same, very frustrating problem. More frustrating was Apple support's lack of concern about this issue.

Of 672 albums in my lib which are available on the iTunes store, 117 of those albums (17%) matched most, but not all, songs on the album, typically failing to match just a couple songs per album. So now when I download an album I get a mixture of 256kpbs songs matched to the iTunes store and 128kpbs songs I imported and iTune Match uploaded. Ie. iTunes Match is not a reliable way to upgrade your lib to 256kbps, in spite of this being a selling point.

I've gone round & round with Apple support on this, they insist this is normal/expected behaviour and that nothing can be done to mitigate the problem. They say that, hypothetically, an artist might have replaced just one or two tracks on an album, in which case just those one or two tracks might fail to match, and this is normal behaviour. They won't say that this is known to be the true for any of my fail-to-match problems.

Well, sure, hypothetically that could be the case -- but I think a more plausible explaination is that their matching algorithm fails more often than it should and they could/should try to improve it, but that's a possibility they refused to conceed.

kauff wrote:

I've had this same, very frustrating problem. More frustrating was Apple support's lack of concern about this issue.

Of 672 albums in my lib which are available on the iTunes store, 117 of those albums (17%) matched most, but not all, songs on the album, typically failing to match just a couple songs per album. So now when I download an album I get a mixture of 256kpbs songs matched to the iTunes store and 128kpbs songs I imported and iTune Match uploaded. Ie. iTunes Match is not a reliable way to upgrade your lib to 256kbps, in spite of this being a selling point.

Like you and others I have the same mix of "Matched" and "Uploaded" songs on some albums, some very mainstream like the Beatles. No idea why but it is what it is.

However it sounds like you would like all of your songs to be 256kpbs (or higher)? That shouldn't be a problem but you have to be proactive. I "upgraded" many songs I had ripped years ago at 128kbps to 256kpbs without going back to the CD/source using iTunes Match. Here's how:

How to upgrade tracks to iTunes Match, fast.

I suppose it's possible that a downloaded track might be different than the one on your computer somehow, but that hasn't been my experience. iTunes Match downloads are 256kpbs however if the file on your computer is a higher bit rate it won't change that (unless you use the above method to do so for some reason).

That said, even if I use the above method to download a track from Apple that iCloud status says was "Uploaded" it will still continue to show "Uploaded" afterward.

Unless you're saying that when you delete and then download a track (that previously showed "Uploaded") and it's downloading from iTunes Match at 128kpbs. I've never seen that happen. Again, even if the track on my computer started out at 128kbps and iCloud status showed "Uploaded" the downloads I receive from iTunes Match have always been 256kpbs.

Hope that helps!

Hello everyone,

Well...my Match subscription expired on Christmas Day, and since I couldn't get it to work properly I didn't renew. But Apple sent me a renewal notice and with that notice I took the opportunity to click on the included feedback link and (once again) voice my frustration. I also wrote a letter to Mr. Cook regarding iTunes Match.

Well, I hope that maybe you guys here in this thread can get the help that you need for iTunes Match. Maybe sometime down the road I'll give Match a try again. In the meantime, I hope my letter got through to the iTunes Match team and they gey you guys the help that you need.

All the best,

Mike.

<Edited By Host>