Why does iTunes match keep re matching my collection?

First of all, the term is "caffeinated." Second of all, did you even read my initial posts? They were full of helpful information, not least of which was the second, in which I honed in on a potential fix.

Keith's advice was not common-sensical, it was irrelevant, as all previous posters had made clear that they'd completed a full cycle on iTunes Match.

You guys are pathetic. Bad advide, overly emotional. Yuck.

Nice. Hurl more abuse around. That'll do the trick.

Still, at least you seem to be keeping the moderators busy.

I believe I'll just look at the Level's and points earned from helping others. I've been around since itunes match was released and by far Michael and Keith are very helpful. If their advice was bad then they wouldn't have received so many points or been leveled up as much as they have. That only happens because they are helping others. I haven't been around in a while but keep up the good work guys. OBVIOUSLY it's helping.

Anyway…

So, I've (again) been able to fully complete the process and even add a few new songs to iTunes Match for the next few hours or so.

Later in the day, and every time since, iTunes re-matches the same 4000 or so songs (which takes hours) and then tries to upload about 2700 or more of those usually only getting 10-12 uploaded.

Again, it is not practical (for me) to leave my computer running this process (background or not) for more than a few hours at a time. I work from my MacBook, so when it's time to go, it's time to go, MacBook and all.

I'm trying to find if anyone has found a solution to this type of problem as it seems that taking multiple hours to re-index (what must be the same songs) is not the expirience that most are having.

So let's all take a breath and figure this out…or not.

Derrick Phillips wrote:

So let's all take a breath and figure this out…or not.

OK, as for some reason I missed your last posting, so didn't get round to responding to it, I will just have another go at explaining this situation as I see it, at the risk of provoking the wrath of others, and then leave for good.

I think that either I am misunderstanding you or you are getting a little confused as to what we mean by letting the process fully complete.

In order for Match to be able to settle down, it needs to fully complete the process of examining your library, sending the data to Apple and uploading any songs it can't match. Have you completed this entire process, including uploading the entire 2700 songs at any point? As you are saying that it is only managing 10-12 at a time my assumption is that you haven't.

If it has fully completed uploading, and the songs have been available on another device then there is something wrong with your iTunes Match, as it should not re-upload any things which have already been done. In this case I would recommend taking the issue up with Apple, as this forum generally isn't the place for individual bugs to be fixed.

If it has not previously been able to upload all those songs then I'm sorry to report that the only solution is to let it do so. If you can't do that then ity may be that iTunes match isn't the service for you.

I suspect that neither of these are answers that you wanted to hear, but unfortunately, given the service as it is at the moment, this is the situation that we have.

And with that, I'm off.

Message was edited by: KeithJenner

Derrick Phillips wrote:

So let's all take a breath and figure this out…or not.

The behavior you describe is odd and should not be happening. I think it is important we figure out what the status is of the songs in your library. Do you know if you have any tracks that are "waiting?"

KeithJenner wrote:

In order for Match to be able to settle down, it needs to fully complete the process of examining your library, sending the data to Apple and uploading any songs it can't match. Have you completed this entire process, including uploading the entire 2700 songs at any point? As you are saying that it is only managing 10-12 at a time my assumption is that you haven't.

HA HAA! That's what I'm talking about! It has in the past completed the entire process. Scanning, uploading, EVERYTHING! But it still insists on doing it AGAIN everytime I start iTunes. The 10-12 songs are after it re-scans my library.

That's the problem: to get 10-12 songs uploaded takes 4 hours (2+ are RESCANNING my library) AFTER the process has finished COMPLETLY in the past.

If it has fully completed uploading, and the songs have been available on another device then there is something wrong with your iTunes Match, as it should not re-upload any things which have already been done. In this case I would recommend taking the issue up with Apple, as this forum generally isn't the place for individual bugs to be fixed.

This is the (type) of answer I'm looking for. Now I can feel fairly confident that something is jacked and I should look for other avenues to solve the problem. i.e. it's bigger than a settings issue.

Don't know if you'll see this, so I'll just carry on.

There are some songs waiting, as well as uploaded, matched etc. A little of everything…

Ok, so since some tracks are "waiting" it is possible that the process is some strange state where it may look like it has finished what it was doing, but it actually hasn't.

So, remove those "waiting" tracks from your iTunes library but not from the HDD (you might want to make copies of them and put them in a folder somewhere so you can keep track of them). Next turn off iTM, log out of your iTunes Store account, restart your computer just for good measure, launch iTunes, log back into the iTunes Store account and turn iTM back on.

It will do what should be a quick scan and done. Let us know how it goes.

Live Update:

I was running iTunes Match again just now. As usual it gathered info, matched library and was uploading at a fair clip (95 songs up! Woo!)

Knowing that I'm going to need to head out soon (and thus stop the process), I thought I'd see how shady things are and stop and IMMEDIATLY restart the iTunes Match process…

and here we are again re-matching 4000+ songs as if it has never been done.

breakfast.

I'll give that a shot!

So I deleted all of the waiting tracks and iTunes made it thorugh the process. However it returned a few more waiting tracks (really only a handful) and upon running the process again (while faster) it did the same thing as before. So I fear that there is a bug(?) that is causing iTunes to re-check the same tracks over and over if they do not pas on the first run.

At this point I think I will concentrate on the number of ineligble tunes I have and then come back to the missing tunes.

This is of course ignoring the absolute mess that is iTunes Match on my iDevices (and the bonus mess that is documents in iCloud) *deep breath…count to 10…*

Thanks for the help. If anyone finds out more, let us know.

Derrick Phillips wrote:

So I fear that there is a bug(?) that is causing iTunes to re-check the same tracks over and over if they do not pas on the first run.

There is a bug that causes iTM to hang on tracks that it doesn't like, for whatever reason. This sounds like what you've been experiencing. I've not seen any reports of tracks that were previously successfully matched or uploaded being reverted back to "waiting," though.

I'm with you on this, their cloud stuff has been disasterous and Match is, too. I turned it on and it stays in constant sync and I don't see all of my purchased content, like some TV shows.

My thought has also been that I just need iTunes Match to finalize its run completly. That however is the problem, it never does. It always crashes, mostly during step 2. Sometimes it gets to step 3 and might get to upload a couple of songs before it crashes. Note that I also have tried to finalize it from several computers. I have my library stored on a server and access this from several computers. Might it be an issue that the library is not stored locally?

Also it is suggested that it should not be a problem letting the process run in the background, well for me it is because it seem to slow iTunes down. I am sometimes not even able to navigate in iTunes at all, it seem to be completly unresponsive. I can use the computer normally for all other types of tasks, so it is not an overall resource issue for the computer itself, just seem to paralyze iTunes.