itunes chopping off end of songs now that i signed up for match

SONGS BEING CUT OFF EARLY!!!

I found the solution with the help of three workers at my local Apple Store. You won't like it, but it works! First, understand this is only happening with my songs purchased from the Itunes Apple store. (Not every song but alot.) Songs I put directly into my library from CD's are not corrupted. Second, the corruption occured after I did an Apple update in February.

Solution:

1.) Identify all your corrupted songs and delete them from your computer. Sorry! You can speed up this process by iIdentifying all your purchased songs from Itune store: Item #4 below helps you to do this.

2.) Go to Itune store and sign in. On black bar accross top click on Music.

3.) On right hand side click on Purchased.

4.) On right hand side click "All" which will show you all songs you have bought. Next, click all songs to the left. Now next to the "All" is "Not On This Computer" click this which will show you all songs you deleted in step #1.

5.) Stay clicked on "Not on this Computer" and then click down in the right corner "download all." This will redownload only the corrupted songs you deleted from your computer. (You will not be charged now or ever to redownload music you have purchased in the past.)

6.) Resync your devise and music is fine.

Word of caution: I don't know if downloading the new Apple update will corrupt my music again! If anyone finds out please let us all know. Hope this helps everyone.

Thank you eyedocpa....

However, I feel I should mention that I have had this problem with mp3s directly ripped from CD and also I have never used or bought Match.

Eyedocpa- I'm with Scrivello's reply above. I checked/tested thoroughly (I'm a UCLA dual degree engineer with 18 plus yrs in high technology- so troubleshooting complex tech problems and looking for causation, isolating patterns, root cause analysis, etc is something I do daily) and can find seemingly no pattern at all. It's occurred on songs that were from my CD's I owned/ripped, and interestingly even a song that iTunes "match" couldn't find a "match" so it "uploaded" it as my original to the "cloud" and now that song does not play correctly- cutting off as everyone says right in the approx. "middle"- as if it got corrupted somehow in the process of iTunes "match" doing it's thing. So, from a tech/engineering analysis- I think there are enough previous posts that point to this having a "random" component to it- across all different devices/machines/operating system- i.e. me running a Macbook in Windows with (like everyone else) THEE LATEST iTunes version properly installed and previously working flawless, some using phones or other devices as the "playing" platform, etc. The common denominator is that we all appear to have signed up for iMatch and thus used the match/cloud function- and now a certain number of songs (I've yet to determine my total number- cause as I said in my previous post, I'm literally checking manually all 3000 plus songs by hitting play in iTunes, then using the slider bar to see if the last 10 to 20 seconds of the song is still playing- on "problem" songs if you slide the play-bar to the end of the song they instantly skip to the next song, and/or are empty air blank)- so, I don't know if it's 1% of songs, 1 out of 100, 1 out of 200, 1 out of 500 yet ?, but others posted above seem to have a fair amount "corrupted"?. As a previous poster stated- Apple engineering MUST KNOW ABOUT THIS- as this thread has been up for 6 months plus, and further Google searches show many hits that LOTS of people are experiencing these oddities with iMatch. Apple's LAME "support" responses such as "well it's beta" or similar are BOGUS. Nowhere, when I barfed up $25 for this service, did it warn me that this is some "experimental" program and that further- it might ROYALLY MESS UP my music collection- that, like many others I've invested a LOT of time, effort and money to "get right" and organized and reliable- and now don't know if I’ve got a bunch of "half-play" corrupted files buried at random in my song list. Apple needs to STEP UP and fix this- and offer us compensation/refunds for the time and trouble it's causing us and also - provide us free credit to repurchase any song we lost or need to get a "clean" copy of because ours was corrupted. It's just BAD all the way around- releasing JUNK and charging for it is for amateurs- not a company of Apple's reputation, size and one that is CASH rich. When you BLOW IT- step up, admit you blew it, and MAKE GOOD to your loyal customers. In business MBA school- they use the Tylenol debacle as a classic Harvard Business Review case study- don't know if you remember the "tainted" Tylenol event occurring many years ago. Long story short- it wasn't even their fault, but they stepped up- said we'll recall, investigate and MAKE IT SAFE AND RIGHT- and they essentially saved the entire Tylenol brand/name and reputation- when they could have lost it all. They communicated openly, admitted what they knew- and told their customers that "WHATEVER it takes- they'll make it right for them". THAT is the "new" model on how to run a company- when you have a known problem/issue. One of my MAJOR gripes with Apple- is they seem to have an internal "syndrome" that began with Jobs- that says, "we're PERFECT, our products are "better" and PERFECT and we never admit FAULT internally- and especially NOT TO THE PUBLIC". This is a bad business practice and culture. On "recent" engineering "flaws/mistakes" its taken total public outrage, tech radio talk shows SCREAMING, etc- to get Apple to finally admit a few times they actually had a known problem- and to issue some sort of correction to the customer base. This iMatch mess is playing out exactly the same- everyone on this board is basically getting the CLASSIC "run around"- as opposed to the simple, we KNOW IT'S A PROBLEM, we’ve got engineering working ROUND THE CLOCK ON IT- and we'll make good by FIXING IT and even offering refunds to those who it's cause major problems and loss of a great deal of their personal time to try and "save" their own music collections- JACKED UP from a faulty product release.

CMSENT

You said the common denominator is that we have all signed up for iMatch and use the cloud function...I haven't! I agree with the rest of your comments; however, if you want a fix, my solution will work. (Admittedly painful!)

My problems started happening BEFORE I started using iMatch. I actually signed up for iMatch thinking it would help the problem. It didn't, just made it worse. And I agree, Apple should be part of the solution, not ignoring the situation as if it doesn't exist.

I had to delete my entire 10,000 song library and then reinstall from my backup. I re downloaded all the songs that were purchased from Itunes instead of taking them from the backup. It seems to have worked, and it sucked that it took an entire weekend to do it. Now, when I download new music, I make sure it plays all the way through,or I delete it off the hard drive and keep reinstalling until it plays normally.

The only thing I have learned from all of this, is that the minute I notice a song not playing all the way through, I make a note and fix it immediately. I DO NOT want to go through the process of reinstalling all my music again.

Eyedocpa- I made my point because this thread is the "MATCH" thread- it's supposed to be used for people reporting problems as related to "iMatch" if you notice the thread title and trail above. Thus, my comments. It appears you and perhaps jrfan are reporting a DIFFERENT, though similar problem- which should probably be started under their own thread/report? Perhaps- this thread focused on "match" and the "cloud" is part of a bigger, integral problem with iTunes in general?

CMSENT

You are correct; however, this problem obviously exists irrespective of iMatch. Hope my solution is helpful. I don't think Apple is going to do anything probably because there is no universal fix.

There is a MUCH EASIER FIX:

1. Identify the problematic files.

2. Copy the problematic files to your desktop.

3. Delete the files from iTunes (including delete to trash).

4. Copy files from your desktop to iTunes.

5. Delete files from your desktop.

That's it.

If you're experiencing the same problem I did, your files are actually complete; rather, there is a problem with how they are interfacing with iTunes. For whatever reason, recopying them into iTunes seems to do the trick.

Eyedocpa, I'm with you- I think we're uncovering a much bigger problem related to "iTunes" the big umbrella and all it's now sub-products- uncluding "iMatch" the "cloud" and now more and more people playing and streaming their music across multiple devices - rather than someone like me a rather "simple" user who just kept iTunes on my computer and syched to my ipod classic and played songs on one player only. Agree- Apple doesn't seem to be stepping up to the plate or even admitting a problem (though, as I said, it would be monumental to believe that somehow they don't know all about this/these issues). Again, they've got some weird internal "corporate cultural" thing that seems to prevent them from admitting product flaws- as if not making them public means they simply don't exist. It's very frustrating. Like going to the doctor and saying I have these symptoms or side effects from a medicine- and as we've all probably had happen before, the doctor replies, "No, you shouldn't be feeling that and the medicine won't/doesn't cause those side effects." You walk out of doctor's office with that, "I think I'll go smash my head into the wall feeling !! 🙂". So, this is overall just not good- we all expect better from Apple. Tell us there's a problem, tell us you're working on it, and compensate perhaps- as in refunding the $25 for iMatch as many of us have now put in untold hours of our own time trying to "save" and make right our music collections.

Rob, understand and agree- I had success so far on at least one tune with your "fix". Problem is- many of us have 1000's if not, as some users have pointed out 10,000 or more songs. It is a total BUMMER to have to go through and manually check all your songs- which is the only sure fire way I know to find out "right now" if there is a problem song(s). Or, just wait years until you play every song in your entire library- and just "discover" by chance every once in a while that one is messed up now. As I and several others pointed out- we are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT confident- that before using "imatch" and the "cloud" - we had favorite songs that we know were spot on perfect- played a 100 times or more and never had a glitch or stopped early. Post using the imatch service- many of us of course picked a few of our favorite tunes to play- and BAMM, we got a problem Houston. Not good. As I stated- I'm manually going through 3000 plus songs now checking each one by hitting "play" in iTunes, then using the slider bar at top to go to the last 20 or so seconds of the song- if it's still playing, then it's good. On "corrupted" ones- they just skip to next song or have empty air, no sound. Very frustrating- I'm going nuts checking 3000 songs, I don't know what a person with 10,000 or 15,000 songs would do- which it is not uncommon these days for people to have song libraries that large.

I think this has something to do with artwork.

For those of you scouring 1000's of tracks looking for faulty ones, try this:

go to the iTunes folder in your folder system and look in the 'iTunes Music' folder, where all the mp3s etc are stored.

Open up the indiviual folders for the albums to see the list of mp3s / songs for that album. If they are saved in itunes with their artwork, then you will see that the individual music files are listed with a thumbnail sized picture of the artwork as the file icon, rather than the standard apple mp3 icon.

I have found that for corrupted mp3s, the songs that should have the artwork icon, instead just have the standard apple mp3 icon. It also tends to be not all the tracks in an album, but only the final half of them, for some reason.

This might make it easier and quicker to idetify, at a glance, what songs are affected. I've also found that when I import mp3s from a CD, everything is fine, all songs are working until I add the artwork. Then they become corrupted.

Once again, I only use mp3s, never the ACC itunes format, I have never used Match, and I have up to date versions of software running on snow leopard. I think this is a wider problem with itunes, not just with match.

Does anyone out there find this information useful??

Also, I have tried the trick of copying corrupted mp3s to the desktop and playing them from there, with vlc media player - still corrupted. I think that adding the artwork has somehow taken a chunk from the audio part of the file instead of adding properly to the ID3 info.

Frustrating. This just started happeneing a couple of weeks ago with just a couple of songs here and there. Now, it seems to be spreading - album by album - to my entire collection. Interesting, though, in that if I search for a problematic song and play it (isolated) it plays just fine. If I play it straight from the list, however, it truncates. WTH?

Disregard the part in my previous post about searched songs playing OK...I just tried it again and they still truncate. Sorry for the bad G2

also...I do not use Match

now I have seen that it officially spreads to tracks that were fine just a week ago.

I thought originally that it may be something to do with how they were uploaded but when I was out today I found two tracks that I listen to all the time, since I first set this up, that now no longer have the last 30-40 seconds of the songs

does anyone have experience with any recent direct contact with Apple on this or do we all just hope they will read these updates? I saw some people earlier did but curious if anyone else has.

Just total BS that songs we have paid for now no longer work