Q: Songs Stuck in Waiting Status

captfantastic - if iTunes Match ran for three hours and uploaded only 9 songs, that's very unusual.  Some possiblities come to mind - some less likely than others, but still worth looking into so they can be ruled out.

•  ITunes match will accept files up to 200Mb. The most common music files are under 20Mb.  Could you give us an idea of the file size of the tracks you just processed?

• iTunes Match will accept various lossy and lossless formats, but those lossless formats - ALAC, WAV and AIFF are not simply copied if they need to be uploaded.  They are transcoded within iTunes to an AAC and it is the AAC that is uploaded.  Transcoding happens during the time we normally think of as just being used to upload files, and as transcoding speed is probably dependent on the the processing power of the host computer, it could add significantly to upload time.  Do you have any ALAC, WAVE or AIFF files?

• Upload speed, of course is dependent on your internet connection.  Some internet providers monitor how much bandwidth their customers are using and after a certain threshold is reached, slow them down. Other internet connection methods simply aren't that fast to begin with (dialup, DSL).  Can you tell us how you connect to the internet?

If you have broadband and know the upload speed, you should visit one of the "test your internet connection" sites and run the test.  If it's well below what it should be, I'd call your internet provider.

If you have trouble keeping a connection, that might well be part of the problem. I don't know how iTunes Match handles connection interruptions, but one thing that could happen would be that it would simply stop processing.  It might start up again as a matter of routine, but if it keeps getting interrupted, a lot of songs could simply be still in waiting status.

If you determine there is nothing unusual with respect to file size/type, and your connection is fine, then I would proceed with the assumption there is a corrupted file somewhere.  I would suggest creating an empty library, importing some of the "waiting" songs to the new library and running Match from there.   In case you do not know how to create a new library, on a mac, quit iTunes, then start it back up holding down the option key.  If you are using Windows, I believe holding down the shift key when starting iTunes does the same thing.  This will also be the way you re-load your main library when that happens.

Once the new library has some music in it, enable iTunes match and let it process those tracks.  See if things don't go more smoothly.  If it is working, you might want to continue adding music identified as "waiting" in the other library to the one that's working.

The files are normal size (5 to 20 MB) They are purchased from Amazon or Napster or downloaded from my CD library into iTunes so I don't think there are any strange file configurations. I do have DSL but I think it would still be faster than that...  The only reason I got iTunes Match was for some of my old CDs. I have The Beatles 62/66 and 67/70  and a bunch of the Time Life Sounds of the Seventies and Eighties discs and some others stuff and was hoping to get some remastered versions of the songs without actually having to pay full price for all of them.

was hoping to get some remastered versions of the songs without actually having to pay full price for all of them.

That's a separate issue from getting everything to either match or upload.  if you have something that has been remastered, experiences to date suggest you'll have poor luck getting matches to them, simply because theyre not the same track.  For one thing, it's generally believed the matching process involves waveform comparision.  for another, iTunes matches based on what is "currently for sale in the iTunes store."  If what you have is there, it may match (it won't always), but if it is not, but a remaster is, that's considered a different album entirely.

It's funny you should say that. Half of Abbey Road matched but not the other half. One or two songs on each Seventies and Eighties matched but not the rest. Parts of some Elton John albums but not the rest. All the Amazon free samplers. No Springsteen, Al Green or Guess Who which are fairly new CDs.

If you have the 80s mastering of Abbey Road that is simply not going to be a 100% match with what is in the iTunes Store since that version is the 2009 remaster. My copy of Abbey Road, which I ripped from the 2009 stereo remastered CD, matched 100%, which I expected. My copy of Springsteen's Born to Run (30th Anniversay Edition) matched 100%.

For other albums that are a mix of matched and uploaded, the most likely culprit is one or the other version (in your library or in the store) has been remastered at some point. So they won't match 100%.