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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

Jan 7, 2013 11:27 PM in response to Michael Smith3

Great post and constructive, I trust they will read this now. Well played sir :thumbsup

Jan 8, 2013 12:05 AM in response to xdonniedarkox

Hello xdonniedarkox,

Thanks for the thumbsup, I hope it helps!

Mike.

Jan 8, 2013 12:30 AM in response to Michael Smith3

Michael Smith3 wrote:

Hello everyone,

Well...my Match subscription expired on Christmas Day, and since I couldn't get it to work properly I didn't renew. <snip>

Nice work Michael. FWIW Apple has reached out to me directly a couple of times; had me run various diagnostics and return the results to them. Neither was for iTunes Match, but they did eventually get the bugs out of the application and firmware that I (and lots of other folks) had trouble with.

So hopefully the info they get back from you will help resolve some of these iTunes Match issues.

Having signed up for iTunes Match day one I can say that it's markedly better than it was early on and everything is working about 98% of the time...but there are obviously still some issues for them to iron out.

Best of luck and keep us posted!

kauff

Level 1

4 points

Jan 8, 2013 9:16 AM in response to richsadams

This helps, but only to illustrate the problem with iTunes Match.

The How to upgrade tracks to iTunes Match, fast. DOES NOT work for unmatched (uploaded) tracks -- only matched tracks can be upgraded -- and iTunes fails to match many tracks that should match. ie. it often fails to deliver what it's advertised to do. I don't expect perfection, but the failure rate is way too high, and Apple support won't own or fix their problem.

kauff

Level 1

4 points

Jan 8, 2013 9:21 AM in response to richsadams

Why can't I delete this duplicate reply?

Jan 8, 2013 11:49 AM in response to kauff

kauff wrote:

This helps, but only to illustrate the problem with iTunes Match.

The How to upgrade tracks to iTunes Match, fast. DOES NOT work for unmatched (uploaded) tracks -- only matched tracks can be upgraded...

You are correct, and I stand corrected. I found an old track that iTunes Match showed as "Uploaded". Using the "upgrade" method I deleted and re-downloaded it and although I had apparenty manually "upgraded" it to 256kpbs at some point, the downloaded track was at the original 128kpbs.

Agreed about the failure rate. Hope they get things sorted out sooner than later.

Jan 8, 2013 11:50 AM in response to dViper

Wow! I thought it was just me having to watch ITM daily repeat steps 1-3! I guess ITM has some real problems. I think I'll just ignore it for awhile and see if Apple rewrites the program or something this year. It they don't, I will probably not resubscribe (I too have been signed up since day one). Fortunately, I have no reason to listen to music off the iCloud, I just thought of it functioning as some sort of backup of my music anyway (even though that's not what it really is).

Jan 8, 2013 6:41 PM in response to Derek Hagen

Hello All,

I see that Apple has edited my previous post. I didn't realize that I was not allowed to post copies of any correspondance with Apple here in this thread. I apologize to the forum administrators. I was just trying to let everyone here know what progress I was making in trying to get help for iTunes Match.

For those who saw the full content of my previous post, Ms. Buress from Apple Support offered me a gift renewal and I will give Match another try while running through the Charles Log process to see if the iTunes engineering team can capture the looping issue that I was having. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Have a great evening everyone.

Mike

Jan 8, 2013 7:20 PM in response to Michael Smith3

Apple are good at that Mike, having been driven to insanity with itunes mis-match pre Xmas I had posted on here and Apple took it upon themselves to remove it...

At least that proves that they do read this forum I guess, it's a shame that they won't put their hands up with this one and say we got it wrong instead of regulating this forum secretly - unfortunately guys you can remove individual posts but 35 pages on this thread prove that that the service stinks and you need to do something about it.

The concept is great, if it worked it would be even better. I know there is a minority who are using it successfully and I'm pleased for those people but come on Apple, time to do something about this one.

I loved Apple and everything Apple but the itunes mis-match and experience with customer service has really put me off unfortunately, shame...

I had to cancel my service in the end, I wish you guys all luck in your quest to get the service working for you.

angusfan

Level 1

2 points

Jan 8, 2013 7:30 PM in response to davery1979

The only thing that has worked (for most part) is staring a new library after a week of endless looping to discover my new library synced up with match as soon as I signed in to match that new profile or library. From there I can only upload about 1 album or long track at a time but that seems to have worked. The stuff that doesn't want to upload I've just left out of match completely. This is far from a "it just works" like most apple products but I guess will do for now. However and I can't believe I'm saying this, google music which is free is ALOT smoother I just don't like not being able to use my native music app to access the tunes

Jan 8, 2013 8:10 PM in response to angusfan

angusfan wrote:

The only thing that has worked (for most part) is staring a new library after a week of endless looping to discover my new library synced up with match as soon as I signed in to match that new profile or library. From there I can only upload about 1 album or long track at a time but that seems to have worked. The stuff that doesn't want to upload I've just left out of match completely. This is far from a "it just works" like most apple products but I guess will do for now. However and I can't believe I'm saying this, google music which is free is ALOT smoother I just don't like not being able to use my native music app to access the tunes

I am considering creating a new library as well. I tried recreating my old library to work with Match and had all sorts of problems trying to preserve my playcounts, date added info, etc, not to mention over 100 carefully crafted playlists. If it wan't for time machine, my entire library would've been screwed up. It just wasn't worth potentially losing YEARS of precious metadata just to get Match to work.

Mike.

Jan 8, 2013 8:16 PM in response to Michael Smith3

One thing that still puzzles me though: The only time Match worked flawlessly for me was with my old 2006 iMac running Snow Leopard. Things fell apart when I got Mountain Lion. I've read in some other forums that some think Mountain Lion is part of the problem. I wonder...perhaps there's smething to that theory.

Jan 10, 2013 8:39 AM in response to dViper

I finally turned off Match on everything Apple I and my family own yesterday. Just couldn't get it to stop running over and over again, and tired of trying work arounds to get music we purchased on iTunes to show up in the Music library, and albums only partially matching in the iCloud. This is very disappointing as the theory of iTunes Match seems wonderful. I looked back at the family purchase history on iTunes and see the first purchase was on May 13, 2004 (Ch-Check It Out by the Beastie Boys) and now the library has over 38 thousand songs and music videos. I'm no computer whiz but I have to function as the IT guy for my extended family and all their macs, and things were just getting way out of hand with iTunes Match. My subscription is paid for until around Christmas, but it won't be turned on again until I hear that Apple has fixed things.

Jan 10, 2013 8:49 AM in response to Derek Hagen

Derek Hagen wrote:

...and now the library has over 38 thousand songs and music videos.

Sorry to hear about your frustrating experience with iTunes Match, I know how that feels.

You sound pretty savvy and I'm sure you're aware of it (and not sure about that mix) but iTunes Match has a 25,000 song limit...not including songs purchased from iTunes. That might or might not be what's causing your problems, but thought it worth mentioning.

Did you try some of the "fixes" listed here and elsewhere? I know I had to get rid of about three dozen oddball tracks to get it to work normally.

With that kind of loyalty and money invested, did you ever call Apple support?

In any case, I'm with you...hope they get this sorted out sooner than later.

Jan 10, 2013 9:00 AM in response to Michael Smith3

Michael Smith3 wrote:

One thing that still puzzles me though: The only time Match worked flawlessly for me was with my old 2006 iMac running Snow Leopard. Things fell apart when I got Mountain Lion. I've read in some other forums that some think Mountain Lion is part of the problem. I wonder...perhaps there's smething to that theory.

I've moved through Snow Leopard, Lion and now Mountain Lion plus the progressive iTunes versions to the current one and haven't really noticed any impact on iTunes Match's performance. I'm still using it on our Macs and with our iDevices. iTunes Match has improved over time, but is still problematic in several areas and certainly has a ways to go IMO.

So many problems with iTunes Match...