iTunes Match - download all songs?

Perhaps this iMac, which has all my music on it, is too old. It is running OSX 10.7.5.

Having talked to Technical Support, I think the reason the songs aren't available for download is because they are already downloaded. They play from the hard drive when the computer is disconnected from WIFI. It's confusing because all these songs were on this iMac before I ever subscribed to Match. So how do I know if I have the higher quality Match version on my hard drive?

Eventually, I plan on getting a new iMac and downloading the music from Match onto it. Then there will be no question. Songs that Match couldn't match I'll copy off the old computer and put into the new one.

Yes I just did it. Works great. All the updated itunes quality music came down. Just make sure you have it backed up in case.

I find the easiest way is to create a new smart playlist :

Location is not on this computer

Location is in iCloud

Will give you a playlist containing anything that needs to be downloaded.

The solution that I used for jforts problem where you have just turned itunes match on and you want to download the matched version of your old music onto your computer.

Create a smart Playlist:

iCloud Status is Matched

Kind does not contain AAC

Media Kind is Music

Delete everything from your library that is in that playlist.

Download everything in that playlist from iCloud.

This only works if your old music is not AAC encoded. (eg. MP3's)

One other thing that might be of interest is that i noticed that when was getting my music only from the cloud .. (As match also removed my local music without asking) is that it seems not all of the tracks are displayed when you are on 3g. I have a couple of longer tracks that just dont show as being available to pull from the cloud when you are not on wifi. This is a double whammy of inconvenience from my perspective .. In fact they dont even appear. For a while i thought i had got confused about which album the tracks were in but then i got back to my wifi and magically they were back again.

I thought the iTunes Match Service was like Dropbox but for your iTunes library. It would be better if you could choose weather or not songs were automatically downloaded per each device you have.

Downloading from Match to an iOS device is by choice (and NOT automatic). If Show all Music is turned on, all of the cloud stored tracks are visible, but not downloaded until you choose to do so.

That is a valid point. If there is an option to download each song (which there is), I believe there should be a "download all" button. The service would be more fluent and require less manual maintenance from users. The cloud is about services being in sync but my music doesn't sync as fluently as it could. It's a minor inconvenience considering all the things that do work well amongst Apple products.

Many thanks Paul. Exactly what I was looking for and saved me alot of thrawling

I know this is a supes old post, but they've finally solved this problem in El Capitan. Go to iTunes, open your library, select all your music (Command-A works), right-click or control-click, and select "Make Available Offline." All the music that you've selected will be cued for download.

Three years in the making, we've finally figured it out.

See, that's exactly how I've always done it - I upload a certain playlist to my iPhone 6 (I only listen to a little more than half of the 7000 songs on my iTunes). I've never had to rely on iCloud or now iTunes Match. I don't have those enabled at all. But for whatever reason of the 3500 songs in that playlist I can only listen to maybe a fifth of those at best. And then it even uploaded songs I specifically told iTunes not to transfer. And for the rest that I'm missing that I actually want I'm being told I have to use iTunes Match to listen to songs I already own! It makes little sense to me other than Apple is beginning to get way too greedy. If I hadn't lost my Classic iPod I'd say the **** with iPhones and go back to flip phones.

Totally agree. I live a few miles for a large city in the UK and the internet is rubbish and I have three lines coming in my house.

I've bought the music and I want it on my device not in a **** cloud!

Just trying to get music bought with an Apple ID on another Mac and having issues.

It's very easy to download all music...

List all your music by song title, choose "Select All" from the edit menu, right click on a song title, then choose download.

It will download all music from the cloud and store it on your Mac.

I have an issue that some iCloud music would not download to my iPhone ever. Even if played and even if I click on the download cloud button. Just will not download to iPhone. So every time I am not connected to wireless it uses my 3G/4G mobile data connection to play the song and my phone contract is charging me for large amounts of data (going over my limit!).

I've tried everything to get iCloud to download. I have very fast wireless at home with a 75Mb/s internet connection - so it is not a problem with my connection.

(I turned off iCloud on my iPhone and did the old sync - and that worked in terms of getting all my music on my iPhone, but why didn't iCloud download certain music???)

I've turned the iCloud back on - but the problem is not fixed.

Solution found.

There's been a lot of replies here and I'm not sure if this question was properly answered (and there have been a lot of other unrelated questions as well). I got this answer from another website, posted by a user named David Harthcock. I also added a bit of explanation as to why this glitch is happening. The difference is between iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes in the Cloud was/is a way for your device to sync with your computer without plugging in manually. iTunes Match somewhat supersedes that by allowing you to choose when to sync, but also to stream tracks, etc.

When you first enable iTunes Match, it asks you if you would like to sync this phone with your current iTunes Library in the Cloud. When you say yes, it authorizes your phone for iTunes in the Cloud. So now you’re running both iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes in the Cloud is trying to sync your computer with your iPhone, when in reality you want to use iTunes Match to choose what and when to sync. As a result, you can simply disable iTunes in the Cloud for your iPhone without disabling or affecting iTunes Match.

– Open iTunes on your computer and click on Store > Account

– Under “iTunes in the Cloud” click “Manage Devices”

– Remove your iPhone from your devices

You shouldn’t need to do anything else. Obviously if tracks are in the process of downloading on your phone, cancel them, and follow other’s instructions for pruning the leftover tracks on your iPhone. If you want to use iTunes Match on any other devices, just make sure to follow the same procedure.