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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

Reply
629 replies

Nov 14, 2011 11:44 PM in response to dViper

Same complaints here. iTunes only found 20% of my iTunes library - almost all of it mainstream albums ripped from CD's.


It's trying to upload over 6,000 songs! Really?!! I'm talking about common everyday albums from multi-million album selling artists.


Cover art is missing from a large number of albums...all of which were there previoulsly.


iTunes 10.5.1 crashes repeatedly while trying to finish iTunes Match. I've had to force-quit iTunes eight times in 10 hours and iTunes Match still isn't complete.


This is an absolute mess.

Nov 15, 2011 12:06 AM in response to dViper

This issue with certain tracks on some albums having to be uploaded rather than matched seems to be one of the biggest issues going. I would note that I was able to match all of Houses of the Holy tho I ripped it from the first led zep boxed set rather than the "original" CD - however I would say I have a few hundred tracks that should have been matched as most of the rest of the album they are on did match. For example, on Abbey Road, the entire album matched except for She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. This really doesn't make any sense. Hopefully, the matching mechanism will retry "uploaded" tracks to see if they can be matched in the future as one of my primary reasons for buying the service was to shift my ripped 128 tracks to 256. If it doesn't try to re-match uploaded tracks, this will be a significant headache to manage.

Nov 15, 2011 1:00 AM in response to secondandc

I ended up deleting about 50 songs that were stuck in the "Waiting" mode...iTunes Match just refused to finish. Once I deleted those it finished. They were fairly obsucre, some holiday music and other music I can live without. It upsets me that I couldn't get iTunes to not crash unless I deleted those songs though.


Unfortunately now I'm missing probably 50+ cover art files that I had added to rare albums. It took me a lot of time and effort to locate them and now they're just gone. 😟

Nov 15, 2011 1:08 AM in response to richsadams

I'm not sure why anything would be missing or changed from the songs on your computer. iTunes Match doesn't actually do anything at all to your local files. The only album art issue I'm having is that none of it is showing up on my other devices using iTunes Match. All the album art is still there in my original iTunes library though.

Nov 15, 2011 5:05 AM 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 ****!"

Nov 15, 2011 6:03 AM in response to richsadams

Unfortunately now I'm missing probably 50+ cover art files that I had added to rare albums. It took me a lot of time and effort to locate them and now they're just gone. 😟

your covers aren't completely gone unless these are the songs you deleted off your mac/pc prior to turning on music match. If you ddn't delete, they will still be there. In beta 1, I noticed each day that more and more album art showed up on my iOS devices. I would just give it a little time, your art will probably show up eventually.

Nov 15, 2011 7:44 AM in response to dViper

I've had some similar issues. I signed up for iTunes Match when I was at work (used LogMeIn to run my Mac at home) and let it start its matching. It was still running when I got home (about 5 hours later). It matched about half of my 6400 songs and was in the process of uploading the rest.


When it finally completed, I had a couple of hundred songs that had an "error" and it didn't upload. No reason for the error, though. I made a smart playlist of all my music and selected all items where iCloud status WAS NOT uploaded, matched or purchased. So all that was left were items that were not eligible, duplicates and the "errors". I selected all the error songs, right-clicked and selected add to iCloud. It put most of the error files up to the cloud and I did the same thing this morning and it finished the rest. I have a feeling the errors were caused by the servers getting overloaded.


I did have those weird problems where all songs except for 1 or 2 for a number of albums were matched and those couple had to be uploaded. Then there were whole albums (mainstream stuff) that were not matched at all and had to be uploaded.


I still have some odd issues with my iPhone where I have some duplicate songs scattered around, not all of my playlists are listed and it looks like it kept all the music on my phone after switching to iTunes Match. I got the prompt that said it would replace my library.


It did wipe out the music on my iPad 2, though.


Hopefully they'll get this straightened out soon.

Nov 15, 2011 7:52 AM in response to dViper

I'm having massive issues as well. Half of my album art is gone and I have over 1100 songs of my 7500 song Library that needed to be uploaded. Of those, probably only 150 should actually have been uploaded. Whole albums that iTunes sells and multiple tracks from other albums were uploaded when iTunes has the same thing for sale. I made a TextEdit file with all of my uploaded tracks that shouldn't have been uploaded and it's massive!


Like a lot of you, I got iTunes Match to upgrade my Library from lower quality rips to 256kbps iTunes Plus quality. Being that a lot songs aren't there, I'm stuck. I'm not going to re-rip all my CD's that are missing Matched tracks. I also don't want to go have to try and download the files elsewhere to see if iTunes matches the file.


I really hope Apple fixes these issues soon. I figured after an extended Beta period with developers, these issues would have been ironed out.


I turned iTunes Match off on my iOS devices for now. There's no point in syncing down music that shouldn't be there (especially since you can't sync with iTunes after you enable iTunes Match).

Nov 15, 2011 8:18 AM in response to iDavidB

I always love the people who are ready to give up day one of a new service.


Granted its not perfect, but whats the big deal if a bit of music isn't matched... unless your goal is to upgrade your music, just let the uploads happen and be done with it. I had 3000 that were uploaded out of about 14,000... so what, it only took one evening and its done.


Give it some time before demanding a refund. Enjoy what it does do well, which is way more than services like Google or Amazon provide.


I have a feeling the service will only get better from here, and its alreayd worlds better than crappy spotify type services that are REALLY bad when it comes to full albums and artowrk etc.


You all should have been along for the ride when this service was in beta... its improved a TON.


Just sayin...

Nov 15, 2011 8:24 AM in response to lundejd

Enjoy what it does do well

For me, its not very much. It does manage to give me access to my music through the cloud on my iPhone, but when 99% of the albums are missing album art that should absolutely be there, and albums are listed all out of order, it leaves a real bad impression of the service. All the other music cloud services I have tried had no issues at all handling my album art or sorting my albums based on my custom meta data.

Nov 15, 2011 8:29 AM in response to dViper

Same situation here, it's only found about 4800 of my 6800 songs. I ripped most of my music from CD's (not using iTunes but rather dBPoweramp at 256k).


Same issue as others mainstream alblums with perfect metadata.


If it couldn't find 2000 of my songs that have perfect metadata, I wonder what it's going to do with some of the junkie iTunes libraries I've seen out there. LOL.


We'll see what happens when it finishes uploading those 2000 songs.


I bet it matters on the settings used to rip the CDs. Probably ones that iTunes ripped itself probably work better.

So many problems with iTunes Match...

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