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I am seeing "gathering information" forever

When I start iTunes it goes through "Gathering information about your iTunes library" and the prgress bar goes all the way to the right. And nothing beyond that ever happens. Activity Monitor shows iTunes using (at this moment, 60% CPU but I have seen it as high as 170%. If I use the Stop button it stops but resumes shortly after. I tried turning Match off and then back on but that didn't change a thing.


When I originally did the Match it seemed to go fine. I had a few errors, quite a few "Matched", many "Uploaded" and even more "Purchased", and what seemed to be a lot of "Waiting" but those cleared mostly over a few days. Now everything is either "Waiting" or "Not Eligible" ...


I haven't seen anyone else with the problem yet and thought you all might be able to help.


Bill W

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Nov 29, 2011 5:43 PM

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Posted on Apr 23, 2017 2:37 PM

While the previous answers totally make sense, in my case however they did not help.


The "gathering information" simply hangs forever, no matter what I tried. The files I was trying to match/upload were in no way special/broken/garbled or alike.


For me, the problem appears to be routing specific. My provider's network seems to have problems communicating to Apple's iTunes match backend. What did solve the problem for me was switching to a VPN that used a different route.


So in case you run into this issue, the above really good hints do not solve it and you are on O2/Telefonica in Europe/Germany, try a VPN if available or wait and hope for the route to get fixed.

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Apr 23, 2017 2:37 PM in response to GreybeardCT

While the previous answers totally make sense, in my case however they did not help.


The "gathering information" simply hangs forever, no matter what I tried. The files I was trying to match/upload were in no way special/broken/garbled or alike.


For me, the problem appears to be routing specific. My provider's network seems to have problems communicating to Apple's iTunes match backend. What did solve the problem for me was switching to a VPN that used a different route.


So in case you run into this issue, the above really good hints do not solve it and you are on O2/Telefonica in Europe/Germany, try a VPN if available or wait and hope for the route to get fixed.

Dec 3, 2011 7:06 AM in response to jrperser

I should have posted earlier ... I finally called support and we went through a bunch of things to try to get it to work. And we finally ended up moving the library to my desktop and restarting iTunes then Import the library from the desktop. That step too an hour or so but when I turned on Match again it was fine. It did go through Gathering Information again but that didn't take too long and then the next two steps completed very quickly.


We thought I would loses my playlists but I didn't and all seems well.


If you call support have them look at Express Lane Case 267659626.

Dec 3, 2011 10:24 AM in response to GreybeardCT

I have seen similar problems with individual songs in 'Gathering for Information' never proceeding after I have been able to get my whole library into match. Every once in awhile, match will go back and do an update or I will add some music and it will get stuck. What I am finding is it gets stuck on songs it downloaded via match (i.e. matched songs from my library or purchased songs I deleted and redownloaded from match). Perhaps my solution for this case pertains to those with new libraries - I think it is a corrupt file or library entry in iTunes and I found a way to see which file it is stuck on.


On OSX:

- open up Activity Monitor

- Select the iTunes process. It usually shows activity constant around 60%

- Choose inspect

- Select Open Files and Ports

- Watch or scroll thru the list. Eventually you will notice a file name and path for a song to repeatedly flash or show up in the list and disappear. It may take a few seconds looking at different parts of the list to notice the changes as the list updates in real time. If a file contines to repeat, this is the song that is messed up. Remove it from your itunes library and see if match will then work.


If it was a bad file, you can try to re-add it but it will likely fail again. For songs I had downloaded from match that caused this for me, I just redownloaded from match and then it worked. I don't know if it was the file or the itunes library itself that was corrupt.

Dec 22, 2011 12:37 PM in response to tmksnyder

Looking at the activity monitor made me catch up with something I wasn't aware of before. I had a lot of Protected AAC files. Those were the ones popping up in the Activity Monitor. When I checked, I saw that they were duplicates. One was Protected, on was Matched. So I moved the Protected ones to a directory and deleted them from the library. And voila, everything worked...

Feb 9, 2012 4:56 AM in response to Crazy

Just a thought but maybe you have the "Barefoot Truth" songs on an iOS device and during syncing its copying the bad files back to your Mac recreating the problem. I believe this is what happened to me. Make sure you're not copying the bad files back. I deleted the songs causing the problems. Some I was able to download again from iCloud. Once you have the iCloud version you should be good to go. If that's not possible maybe you need to purchase them again.

Mar 1, 2012 9:56 AM in response to robAtoms

I'll update with a trick that may be easier than using Activity Monitor. Make sure your iTunes library has the "iCloud Status" field displayed (right-click on the columns at the top to see possible fields). Sort by that column and find songs that are "waiting." Click one, then resort by name. See if you don't have a "matched" song that is completely identical. If so, delete the "waiting" song. Rinse & repeat.


My theory: this problem comes from syncing an iPhone (or other device) manually and allowing it to "transfer" songs that it thinks are not in the library. I'm willing to bet it's a holdover from devices with firmware designed before Match (so iPhone 4, older iPods, etc).

I am seeing "gathering information" forever

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