iTunes Match taking forever to upload artwork

I understand upload speed/throttling/etc. But this does not fit that profile. No songs uploaded for 2 weeks. Then a few uploaded overnight. Now zero songs uploaded for almost another week. I'm not aware of any ISP that would shut down uploading to a site for 2 weeks at a time.

Also, in the rare occasions when it was uploading a few songs and then hanging, I noticed that the status bar at the top said "uploading "song title xyz....." then "song title abc....", etc. Then it changed to "Uploading Remaining Songs and Artwork" and completely stops. If it was strictly an ISP blocking/throttling problem, there's no way that iTunes would know to change from itemizing specific songs on the status bar to the generic message. It would be stuck on 'uploading song title aaaaa" or something.

still waiting.......... it's been over an hour, on one song, and it wont even let me go into itunes to delete that track. I'm beyond upset at this point.

rogo0034 wrote:

still waiting.......... it's been over an hour, on one song, and it wont even let me go into itunes to delete that track. I'm beyond upset at this point.

Assume you've tried quitting, rebooting, and starting again? It should pick up from where it left off, so you won't be back to square one?

I've had to do that a few times to clear various blockages...

After a week of trying to mess with match, my whole library is finally completely in the iCloud. I had the same problem as is being described in this thread by many. iTunes stuck on step 3, waiting to upload artwork and over 3000 songs. First I made a smart playlist with rules Music/not uploaded/not matched. Then added the iCloud and iCloud Status column and sorted the playlist by iCloud status. An easy way the select all the error files in one go. It was about 60 songs. After converting those to AAC, iTunes was still hanging. When I looked in Activity Monitor on iTunes while it was stuck, there was one song. The file didn't give an error in iTunes but was in waiting status. After converting that one (even though it was m4a file) the whole problem was solved. iTunes uploaded ALL the songs in about 3 hours and iTunes match is now complete with zero waiting files.

I'm not sure if people go carefully through the Activity Monitor/iTunes/inspect/Open Files and Ports steps. Well, I didn't at first. If it's stuck you will see a name of the song that is causing it somewhere within the report. It shows the complete path to the file. It's not the last line, look carefully through all the lines! It's the only line with a path to a song.

I hope Apple solves this soon, because it's clearly a software related problem. iTunes should be able to skip the damaged song (or whatever the problem is) and keep processing other files.

I hope it helps.

I'm having all these problems too. Been signed up since day one in Australia (a week ago or so), and the 'upload' part of the sync hasn't yet got past 50 songs after multiple attempts and leaving it running for days.

I've looked in Activity Monitor at 'Open Files and Ports' under iTunes, but I can't see any indication of a song that it's stuck on. The log doesn't mention a file by name (that I can see - it's pretty long).

I've also noticed that when you select 'iTunes Match' on the left menu and go to look at the progress of the uploads it sometimes turns the page grey (ghosted) and the 'start' button re-appears to the bottom left of the page (incidentally, the page says 'still uploading' although there is no active progress anymore).

Definitely feels like somethings broken with this part of the process. Maybe just too many people smashing the servers at once? Hope it solves soon, would like to get the full benefit from my subscription.

Tintin.... welcome to the problem. The good news is... if you are the type of person that things glaciers move too fast, then you're going to love iTunes match.....

After a mere two months (that's right... two months) of watching songs trickle up a few at a time and then wait a week, my last song finally was sent a couple of days ago.

<editorial comment>

I can understand that with just a few billion people uploading a few thousand songs each, they are going to have manage the flow. But why the silence, Apple? Why not just tell us what to expect? (or did even YOU not know what your application was going to do?) When I purchased Carbonite online backup, it was very upfront that it was going to take possibly a few weeks to upload everything on my harddrive. But at least it uploaded a bunch every day. None of this uploading 30 in a couple of minutes and then stopping for 3 weeks while telling you they have no clue why it stopped and that you ought to check your internet upload speed. Personally, that kind of response is insulting.

</editorial comment>

So, take a few weeks for vacation and maybe you'll have a few more songs uploaded when you return. Good chance you'll have everything uploaded by around March given the current pace...

Ha ha!! I've always thought that glaciers should just slow the heck down and take a chill pill - but they're pretty chilled already so I left them alone!

iTunes Match on the other hand was not sold as a glacially paced cloud service for your iTunes library, and as I would like to get through this part of the process I am going to speak up. It's the annoying re-starts I keep getting that put me back each time. Occassionally you'll go to check on progress and the greyed out page appears with a start button and it goes back to the beginning again.

Anyone know whether if you interupt the internet conneciton or restart the machine, the upload has to start again?

In my case it always kept track of where it was in the list of my files it needed to upload.. Every time it restarted (or I restarted or whatever) the process, it would do the step 1 of checking what you have and step 2 of comparing what needs to be uploaded. Pretty quickly it would end up at step 3. At that point, it knows that you have 1451 songs still remaining to be uploaded (for example). If it deems you worthy this week of uploading one or two of those, the next time iTunes Match restarts it will hang at "1 of 1449". So restarting does nothing but keep you busy with something to do while iTunes Match ignores you. In my situation, I just gave up and left it open for weeks on end. Every couple of weeks it decide to upload a few more and then go back into hibernation.

I had sent a very long rant with the 11 software incombatibilities i was having with itunes, itunes match, my iphone, and it has all began since iOS5. but the gist of it is, apple is going to turn just as S H I T T Y as microsoft products without steve jobs. i was fine with ios 4 before they announced ios 5. so i'll give them till december when itunes match renews for them to fix it. or i'll just roll back itunes, my iphone, apple TV, and my ipod touch to the iOS 4 days... apple has too many software issues with their products to be saved. abandond ship.... we're gonna hit that glacier!

** i am stuck at step 3 with 0 of 43 songs for almost two weeks by the way. but they are all pirated stand up comedy from pirate bay. i've already listened to them all so if i delete them, technically i dont have any itunes match issues.

now i keep getting "ineligible" for two standup comedy tracks and they are both over 2 hours, and they are the only files left for itunes match to upload, and the only two files that are over two hours. the 3rd longest file is one hour 39 minutes and it uploaded

😠 I recently subscribed to the iTunes Match..... whether I need it or not, is any another topic. Okay, so it's only $25.00 a year, not bad.......but..... This is CRAZY!!! It is taking FOREVER to upload/match 1 song. I have been stuck at 922 songs of 5,000 since a day ago. Zero movement, zero matching, zero uploading or whatever the **** it is doing. Stuck, stuck on Step 2.

What the gives Apple? 😠 I am VERY disappointed with Apple and the entire iTunes Match. It's Apple and not Microsoft, therefore the service/product should be excellent and working smoothly. I believe I might have to give up on this and cancel and say goodbye to that $25.00. 😟

I have had it with iCloud and iTunes Match . . . 😢

iCloud seemed like a much better backup solution than continuing to use a PC. BUT . . . and it's a big but . . . . I bought an iPhone 4S and once I figured the IOS on it was older than on my exisintg 4 I upgraded and found my cloud backup. I restored the backup except it wasn't a backup . . . it was missing Apps that were no longer in the App Store and also missing data associated with those Apps. A call to Apple finally resulted in the advice that I "should restore those from my iTunes backup on my PC" . . . . "I don't have one, I use iCloud for my backup" . . . "well, iCloud isn't really a backup, its just for syncing between devices" . . . . AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH . . . 😠

Then, on further investigating, I found I was missing all my uploaded music . . . . my plan had been to uplad and forget about the CDs so I had packed them away . . . a little further and I discovered my playlists had gone too . . . that was many hours of work and there is ZERO trace of them . . . AAAAARRRGGGHHHH . . . 😠

What's more fun is that when trying to recover this and doing, under instructions of support, resets it also resets all sorts of things including iTunes Match and that's seems to be goodbye to reloaded music. Well, I have exhausted my download capacity from Vodafone and BT for this month and am being charged more. I think I have reloaded the music from the cloud about 7 times now, it maybe more. Luckiliy I also have access to a VirginMedia connection and that it helping . . . but in the middle of this my iPad and iPhone managed to sync beautifully and I lost all uploaded CDs and all playlist from both devices. Not quite sure what is going on. Without reading thousands of pages of posts I am never going to understand what an intuitive interface is . . .

Nearly two weeks have passed since I got the 4S. I have uploaded 95%+ of the CDs, I have recreated playlists and much of the music is back on the iPhone and the iPad. That is except for the 69 tracks that are sitting on this PC flagged at waiting. I thought about phoning support but they are going to get me to reset the phone and then I lose stuff again andhave to spend time forcing downloads that keep hanging on iTunes match so . . . I figured I might as well just sit here and type because somewhere out there there is someone else going through this and maybe finding out they are now alone will help them . . . anyway, it is cathartic sitting here typing this and certainly a lot cheaper THAN THOWING THE IPHONE AT A BRICK WALL . . . 😠

I bought an iPhone, I bought loads of Apps, I bought loads of albums from iTunes because it was easier than loading CDs, I bought an iPad, I paid for the iPhone 4, I bought an iPad2, I paid for support for two years on the iPad, I upgraded my cloud storage when I went to cloud in anticipation for needing it for the uploaded CDs, I paid for iTunes Match, I upgraded to an iPhone 4S and where am I? I'm feel I have shown commitment to Apple but I'm left wondering whether Apple are going to knock on my front door and laugh at me and say "now you've wasted two weeks of your life you can see just how important we are to your happiness and to a stress free existance . . . SO GIVE US £10,000 and we'll get you back to where you were before you gave us all that other money . . . you know you want things to work again . . . just pay us and it will all work . . ."

Then I wake up screaming, knowing I am about to do battle for another day, just trying to get an environment that'll make life more fun yet doubting I'll ever achieve that again.

I think the real problem is that you can't skip step 3: I am in Italy and today I can't use use Match at work (on Windows PC) because my macbook at home is still uploading (you can't access a Match library until it has been fully uploaded)

When I use Itunes Match, when it gets to step 3, my internet is basically unuseable which is a shame. I can't stream to my xbox, websites time out, horrible. I'm on a 50mbps stream too, so there is no reason for this. Should be a way to set the upload speed limit with this service. Guess only time I can do this is at night when im sleeping, shrug.