iTunes Match waiting/uploading Incredibly slow

OK, if I read this right, you have 6,500 songs in your iTunes library. Most of those songs either matched or were uploaded. You still have 600 songs that have not either matched or uploaded, is this correct? You've enabled iTunes status in the view options and don't see any "ineligible" files, correct? These are all music files, correct? Not all media files are eligible for iTunes match.

Regarding hangs while uploading, others have had this problem, but I haven't seen any clear solution. Some have theorized it may be more a matter of the internet connection, that even brief interruptions in the connection could stall things and iTunes Match won't re-engage, or that heavy bandwidth use is causing some people to experience first time their ISP throttling back their account.

Regarding your match vs upload experience, honestly there are a lot of people who believe they have songs that are also available for sale in the iTunes store, yet they don't match. (note if they were once for sale, but aren't there now, they will upload, not match). While some people have found something unique to their situation that they are able to fix, nobody has an explanation for situations where, say, a CD was ripped by iTunes and all the songs save one, get matched. We're all hoping matching will improve, that Apple's agreement with the RIAA forced them to set a pretty high bar to what will match (since doing so gives you access to Apple's copy), but that as they roll the service out, they will tweak the matching process so more legitimate songs do get matched. Problem is that even if they do that, there's no guarantee they will just automatically re-scan everything that has been uploaded and replace it with a match.

I see you mention using a fix that involved creating a playlist and populating it with AAC versions. The information you've provided is a little limited, so bear with me if what I say here really isn't relevant to your situation but . . .

Getting iTunes to take a fresh look at a song isn't in any way tied to it being in a playlist as far as I know. The songs have to be removed from your library AND from iTunes match, AND a fresh copy of your database, one without those songs, needs to be uploaded.

So, if you didn't delete the originals from your library and the cloud, then run iTunes match so your database was updated in the cloud . . . and then with iTunes match off, re-import your songs into iTunes, create the new AAC versions, delete the old copies and then turn on iTunes match, then the chances are pretty good that during the matching process the most that might happen is that your new copies would get flagged as duplicates.

I know this from experience. I've been toying with getting vinyl rips to match and learned pretty quickly that if I simply replaced a file in iTunes with one I'd changed, one that Match had uploaded in the past, it didn't upload a new copy, just flew past it. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to get Match to really look at the new file. Sometimes it re-uploaded it, sometimes it matched, but main thing is it took a look.

uploading / waiting is exactly that - they are likely being uploaded as they haven't matched. So this process really depends on your ISP and your upload speed. As Jim mentioned, your ISP could even be throttling your connection (*cough cough* Comcast) as they might have P2P limits in place and this process might be affected by that.

If you feel this is taking much longert than expected, and you can crunch the numbers on the expected time using your upload speeds and file sizes as a guide, then you might want to call your ISP. You can even add tools to your PC to check the actual upload speeds to see if they match what your ISP advertises. It could also be Apple's servers overloading so it may be hard to pinpoint.

If I'm helping great. The additional information you've provided helps some, but I still have a few more questions.

You've now said "waiting/error" Are you getting something that says "error" or are you just referring to the fact that iTunes tags them as "waiting/" You don't have anything that says "ineligible?" I don't want to belabor this, I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what you're seeing.

I can see by your response that you did delete original songs, but the key to getting iTunes match to take a fresh look is to be certain it has purged them from its database. Did you do this? Simply removing them from your iTunes library and checking "remove from iTunes Match" when you do it isn't enough. While eventually iTunes match will check, you have to manually run an update with those songs out of your library and the cloud before you've got it done. If you don't, then all that happens is that it re-links to the uploaded copies.

While I've gone through a pretty involved process to make certain this happens, I've also used my iPhone or iPad to look for those songs after I've used Update iTunes Match to make and upload a new copy of my database without those songs. Ideally, when you go looking for them, they just won't be there.

Also, do you have any reason to consider your internet connection speed and/or reliability to possibly be an issue?

Just as a test -- I would recommend creating a new library and then adding just a few songs to that library that you know will upload, and see how long it takes. If it chokes, then I would call Apple first as their servers might be overloaded - this at least removes the ISP from the picture compltely because you're only uploading a small amount of data in one shot.

I can't speak for this week, but last week Apple was definitely having some issues when they expanded iTM to more countries. So far this week I've been pretty good but I'm doing my matches in small bunches and not in one shot.

I had maybe 2 songs appear as in-elegible. I'm really not sure why they have, since they're in an acceptable format (aac) and above 100kbps (I have nothing below 128kbps)

I've documented that not all AAC encoded files will play once uploaded (a few encoded in Audacity). This is different from your having some show up as ineligible. Ironically mine should have been flagged ineligible too. If you encoded these outside of iTunes, it's as least possible Apple's now acknowleding that they are incompatible. Point is, clearly when it comes to iTunes Match, not all AACs are the same.

I've zero reason to consider my ISP an issue. They don't throttle the lines at all, my upload speed is ok and a 6mb song shouldn't take hours to upload, more like a few minutes.

However, if the uploads are really "hanging," not simply moving at a snail's pace, then it could be the result of some brief interruption, be it your ISP or Apple. We don't know what protocol Apple's using for uploads, so we don't know if some "resume upload" capability is in there. It may be just timing out. If that's what's happening calls to Apple and your ISP still might be in order. As Roebeet suggested, setting up a separate library and monitoring what's happening might help you get more information.

If I go to the Match screen, it'll start on 0 out of 650 and sometimes it'll hang on 2 or 3, other times it'll get to 10 and then next time I look, it'll say 4 or something. Pretty random and extremely frustrating!

I don't think we can assume that the feedback there is 100% accurate, but I have another question for you. Despite all the problems you are having getting the remaining songs to either upload or match, are you having any progress? is the list of songs yet to upload shrinking a song or two each time you get part way through a Match session?

OK, doggedly slow, a small number of AAC songs that for some reason show up as ineligible, but still there's progress. Also note that as horribly slow as the whole process seems to be for you, if you posted the same day you started having trouble, it's only been three days. I know that seems like forever when things aren't moving like they should though.

If it is hanging up, you're not sitting right there waiting for it to happen are you (if you are, you've got more patience than I do)? If you're not, then a lot of time is getting eaten up while everythings just hanging, waiting for you to re-start the process.

Robeet's experience with slow servers at Apple may be part of the explanation. If so, things should eventually speed up.

Guess I should add a little personal experience here for perspective. I signed up for iTunes Match U.S. shortly after it went live. While I've had my gripes, the matching/upload process (cough, cough, Comcast) went pretty much as it should. I have about 4,500 songs in the system. 986 songs were uploaded. I don't remember how long it took, but under 24 hours I think.

Stephen Rumbelow wrote:

Not sitting here watching, but I do work from home, on the same computer so it's inevitable that I continually check it! 😁

Hmm, you may have a lot more horsepower than I do (not hard to do, I matched using an old white MacBook), but I do have to point out that I let the computer do the entire match without my doing anything else on it. While it chugged along, I "borrowed" my wife's much better 2011 MacBook Pro.

Just saying that if you are running iTunes in the background while doing anything that might be CPU-intensive, or "internet intensive", that could be a factor. Now work is work and things have to get done, but I just felt obligated to point out that in some cases, it could be a factor. Not that it should, mind you, but it could.

P.S. my "match" success rate may seem low, but it's largely due to vinyl rips that did not match. CD rips were much more likely to match and more recent vinyl, tweaked, is matching better too.

Message was edited by: JiminMissouri

Hi Guys,

This problem of very slow transfer, is most likly our ISP 'seeing' this action as a PTP transfer and is slowing (shaping) the transfer....

Here's another piece to the puzzle. I've read an Apple support document that clearly states certain file types, while eligible for upload, are transcoded in iTunes on-the-fly into a temp AAC file and it's that AAC file that get's uploaded.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4914

Songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF will be transcoded to a separate temporary AAC 256 kbps file locally, prior to uploading to iCloud. The original files will remain untouched.