iTunes Match stuck on Step 3

It's probably not actually "stuck" but is actually uploading tracks in the background. I've seen this behavior myself. The easiest thing to do is to quit iTunes and relaunch it. The process will start at step 1 again, but this will be normal. It won't have to scan and match any tracks it has already done.

The most important thing is to be patient. Depending on how many tracks you have to upload it could take some time.

As long as your demos and live recordings are in a format supported by iTunes and fall within the iTM criteria they should be uploaded with no trouble. I've got over 200 live shows in ALAC that we added just fine. Where you got the music from really makes no difference except in the case of iTunes purchased tracks. Otherwise Apple doesn't care.

I wonder why Apple just doesn't figure out and do a post as to what type of files or iTunes anamolies that iMatch chokes and pukes on? It would be so much easier. I'm guessing that for every post here that there is at least 10-20% walkins at their stores or on their phones asking the same questions. It has to be costing them a fortune in opportunity cost.

Hey Apple, give it some thought. You must have some idea as to what causes iMatch to C&P. Let the rest of us in on it so we can properly prepare our Libraires. I say NO articles by Apple about how to prepare so as to minimize problems.

You might enjoy these two KB articles:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4054

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4914

If the pages don't load the first time just reload 'em.

I had the same issue. Over 5 days and about 20 quits and restarts of iTunes, all 6.5K songs of mine in 320 kbps CBR/VBR Lame MP3s got checked.

But it deleted everything off my iphone without asking.... NOT impressed!!!

Mine was "stuck" with Step 2 green checked, and Step 3 unchecked, however it was before the point in step 3 where the song being uploaded (at least on the Mac version of iTunes) shows in the very top iTunes status (where it also shows what's currently playing).

I found out it was trying to upload some "songs" that were really large (2 hours each) - these were some Pete Tong BBS Radio 1 captures of 2 hours of techno music.

You can sort by Time in the Music Library by clicking on the Time column header.

I ended up "deleting" those - but selecting the "leave on the disk" option.

I restarted the iTunes Match, and it processed just fine.

You would think that iTunes Match would tell you that the song you're trying to upload crosses a size threshold of some kind and it's going to take awhile to upload.

I joined iTunes Match, 5 days ago, everything went well, the matching, the uploading, until I decided to turn off the computer; that was the single biggest mistake!!. Came back a few hours later and the uploading was stuck, took me 1 hour to upload 2 songs vs 4 hours to upload 450!!.

After reading endlessly in all the forums; I found out the following: It's not your connection, the software or how the songs are ripped or encoded, (believe me, I've tried EVERYTHING, now... never got an error message due to my itunes crashing or my mac). it's the iTunes Match servers fault!! sometimes you are lucky to connect to a fast one, sometimes you're not. So my advice is the following:

• If you are stuck in a very slow upload process (unless, it's a very long song), you need to try again some other time, and don't waste electricity by keeping your computer on for days (like I did). I had mine once on for 24 hrs, and only 70 songs were uploaded (not worth it). Basically: I tried a different times, and there was the last time I hit the jackpot (when I finished uploading ALL of my music), somehow I connected to a faster server, was uploading over 250 songs per hour, I just left the computer on, until it finished.
• Now... by trying EVERYTHING I mean the following: resetting my Internet connection a million times, I even increased the speed of with my Internet provider (comcast, blast feature), thinking it was my crappy upload speeds, which of course, didn't help. I created special playlist (like some of forums recommend), to focus on the 'waiting' ones vs the ones that are ineligible, but again, it didn't help,all ********!! I tried converting a lot of my music to iTunes ACC standards, and never noticed a difference, some old MP3 files were uploading at the same speed of ACC ones, so that has nothing to do (in my experience).

NOW... I recommend you do the following before you join the Match...

• Clean your Music, by cleaning, I recommend you get software to help you with the missing info of the songs, I spent some money and got TuneUp, and that helped me get rid of over 600 songs and cleaned around 4K of my music collection (I have ~12K). Although it wasn't the best software out there, it worked fine with me.
• Interesting fact: when you rip your CDs with iTunes, in some cases, info is missing, so using some software to recognize and fill that info, helps a lot, and the match works better.
• Get rid of duplicate songs, iTunes does a good job, but other software can help you with that too (see above), also remember to keep the ones with the higher bit rate.
• I noticed that some songs showed the "ineligible" sign, don't worry, try some other time by selecting them, and then click 'match on the icloud' and they will change to "waiting". I think it's a server problem, and it's all about speed.
• At the end I end up with ~2K songs that needed to be upload to the cloud, (I was a little surprised, because it was a mix of mp3, acc and even songs that I bought in iTunes that didn't match). I lived in 2 different countries (with two different languages), and iTunes match was able to find most of my music.

So at the END my two cents are: try connecting at different times, doesn't matter that iTunes gets stuck doing the 3 steps over and over again, you'll connect to a faster server somehow, for me, the day I hit the jackpot was on a Monday around noon, suddenly the uploading speed went up to the roof!!.

have a good upload speed day soon!!, may the faster servers be with you !!

pace!