Q: So many problems with iTunes Match...

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.

Re: So many problems with iTunes Match...

Nov 15, 2011 4:05 PM (in response to dViper)

So My iTunes on my iMac is normal. Nothing seems to be changed although when iTunes Match is turned on, on my iPhone, It wipes all the music off of my iPhone and asks me to redownload off fro iCloud (taking up my download quota) rather than just keeping the files i synced from my iTunes. Is this supposed to happen because if it is, iTunes Match "IS ****!"

You do realize that is exactly what itunes match is used for - right?  It's meant to give you access to your entire itunes library, via download, on iOS devices you own.  That's it.  You don't need to synch your iphone to itunes because you just download what you want to listen to and wipe it later if you like.  I'm not sure what you were expecting with match - what you're describing is exactly what the product does.

Duplicate post

iTunes Match is thus far the worst performing Apple product I've ever used. On my laptop. songs are showing up four and five times; on my iPhone only a fraction of the songs are showing up. Since I started using it, my phone seems to have slowed down very noticably and the battery is draining like it's an Android. I am willing to give it about a week, after that I'm asking for a refund.

Apple should never have released this service in its current state of disarray.

Hi from upper Michigan. Same problems here. I tunes match replaced all of my music I had with music I never knew I had. It eliminated a lot of albums I liked and also repeats the same songs over so I had to make a playlist just to get my music back in order. Also my iPhone died for some reason after installing match and I got it rebooted but I am finding battery life problems. Apple care did finally help me eliminate some stuff that was wrong but I'm still not that thrilled with it. I can't even synch a cd that I load. What's up with that? I cancelled my iPhone contract and now it's just an iPhone without the phone. I like it so far.

My iTunes on my phone froze several times and i had to do a soft reboot. I have about 20,000 songs and it took almost a week to upload. Only about 1/2 of the itune purchases matched, which makes no sense. . Trying to listen to music In near streaming is a waste unless you are on wifi. match is. Match is a disappointment.   I expected that I could select play list and download the list while on wifi this didn't happen. I gave up with match on the iPhone. I guess. Arch is a decent backup but doesn't seem to do much more. I really don't see where it does anything more than box or dropbox except for increasing to 256. But except for a couple of early rips, everything I have is 320. I lost some art work. Hard to say how much.

bfarneth wrote:

 

You do realize that is exactly what itunes match is used for - right?  It's meant to give you access to your entire itunes library, via download, on iOS devices you own.  That's it.  You don't need to synch your iphone to itunes because you just download what you want to listen to and wipe it later if you like.  I'm not sure what you were expecting with match - what you're describing is exactly what the product does.

Some people WANT to sync with iTunes.  If you want a fair amount of songs loaded on your phone, it's much quicker and easier to do it with syncing from a local drive than having to manually select a bunch of stuff on the device and wait for it to come over the internet.

Mike Connelly wrote:

 

Some people WANT to sync with iTunes.  If you want a fair amount of songs loaded on your phone, it's much quicker and easier to do it with syncing from a local drive than having to manually select a bunch of stuff on the device and wait for it to come over the internet.

I realize that's what some want but the post I made was in response to Match doing exactly what it's supposed to.  The OP didn't seem to realize that's what the product does.

I'm done with Match.  I turned it off this morning after four days of hassle with it.  Surprisingly Apple didn't put up a fight to give me a refund.  I just had to sit on hold for an hour.  It's going to take a few days to get my library back in order and maybe one day I'll try Match again, but not anytime soon - not until the bugs are worked out.  Very disappointing.

bfarneth wrote:

 

I realize that's what some want but the post I made was in response to Match doing exactly what it's supposed to.  The OP didn't seem to realize that's what the product does.

I don't buy that wiping all songs and then having to immediately download all those same songs again (and over internet no less) is "what it's supposed to do".

He's just saying that users should be able to sync AND also get songs from the cloud.  And he's absolutely right, the current implementation is a bad one.

Correct and you can both sync and use iTunes Match.  That's what I've done on my iPhone and iPad.  I created Smart Playlists of songs that I know I will always want on them and the rest of my iTunes library is still available from iTunes Match/iCloud (as long as I have a Wi-Fi or 3G connection).  I can add and delete as needed either by syncing or streaming/downloading from iTunes as well.

This "hybrid" version probably isn't what Apple had in mind, but it works perfectly fine for me.

Rich, I'm going to be using that "hybrid" version too.

I finally got it all working. Now I'm trying to go through and download all the better bitrate versions of my songs. Then I have to go back and find the duplicates on my hard drive and delete those. All in all I'm liking iTunes Match. It's a good solution for me since I have a 16 GB iPhone 4, and way more than that amount of music.

It's a bit of a pain, but it does work.  I had to wipe all of the music from my iDevices, then turn on iTunes Match and let it populate everything.  Then I connected it to my computer again, opened iTunes (had to do that twice because it still thought the iPhone and iPad were using iTunes Match), then re-sync the songs I wanted permanently.  It basically "overwrites" the iCloud matches with the "real" tracks.  It would be nice if you could toggle that, but for now...

A note for anyone that's re-ripping uploaded songs for a better bitrate, don't delete the original tracks in your iTunes library, click on "Replace".  If you delete them from your iTunes library as well as iCloud it will also delete any custom cover art you might have had.

Hey Rich, I don't see an option for "Replace". Am I missing something?

After you insert your CD into your computer, it shows up in iTunes and you click on the "Import CD" button you'll get a pop-up with three buttons...click on "Replace Existing".  That should ensure any custom cover art you've added will remain intact.