Error in iTunes Match - "This item cannot be downloaded"

So aggravated about this. Just started to notice this. I have a 9,000+ song library that is very precisely organized. At first if one song wasn't available for download I was deleting the whole album and then buying it from iTunes but there is no way I am going to do this for every missing song. I'll go broke. I have a macbook, an ipad, a iphone 4s, and apple tv so I like to stream my music instead of saving it all the HDD. NOW WHAT? Hope this is a glitch and not a ploy to get us to buy more songs. I've already spent a small fortune in the itunes store between movies, music, apps, and books. If I ever gave up iOS devices, i'm screwed!

I have a large library which I uploaded to iTunes Match, then I deleted the local files and I play everything streaming from Match (using my MacBook and iPhone). This worked well for a while until I noticed that iTunes (both on the Mac and iPhone) would silently skip some random songs for some reason. When I try to download those tracks I get the Error 11111 message. I realized that iTunes Match was rendering random individual songs unplayable one by one, slowly eating away at my library! Completely unnacceptable.

I too have been having this issue on random songs for quite some time. It's rather odd and frustrating as I ripped all of my music from CDs. Example: Radiohead's Hail to the Theif refuses to download the 1st track but everything else is no problem.

As an odd note I was having these problems with 2 tracks on Paul's Boutique a couple of weeks ago. I was able to 'fix' those tracks by deleting the entire album from my iPhone and then redownloading it. The files that were giving an error before downloaded without pause. I can't seem to make this work for the tracks that are currently giving me problems though.

I have to say that I'm becoming more and more frustrated and disappointed in the iTunes Match service. I can't honestly recommend it to anyone given the current state of its development. Apple needs to make this a priority to resolve if they are serious about being a leader in cloud services.

I just wanted to chime in on this as well, after monitoring the forums for a few days. It's obviously a widespread problem so if a few more of us add our voices, perhaps it'll get picked up by one of the Apple blogs and get taken a bit more seriously by the folks at Cupertino.

Over the past week, I've noticed that utterly random matched tracks would refuse to download on my iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Macbook Air (on which I don't keep local copies of songs). My master library is on my Macbook Pro. On the iDevices, I get the "This item cannot be dowloaded" error. On the Macbook Air, it's the "error 11111". It affects only a small proportion of my library - but there's no consistency to it, and it's extremely annoying because some of the tracks in question are favourites.

I went so far as to delete all music from the cloud, using my Macbook Air, then using alt+"Turn off iTunes Match" on my Macbook Pro where my local files are, then rerunning the entire matching process. It didn't help - the same problem persists, but this time some of the tracks that previously would not download will, and some that previously were fine won't download!

For now, I've reverted to turning iTunes Match off and using the old sync method. I'm normally what some people would describe as a bit of an Apple fanboy, but I'm disappointed that this hasn't been addressed and doesn't even appear on the iCloud System Status page as a problem.

Do you remember which tracks were giving you issues on Paul's Boutique? I just tried downloading it and I had issues with "Shake Your Rump", "To All The Girls" and "3-minute rule"

At the moment I can't seem to download To All The Girls, Shake Your Rump downloaded in like 5 seconds though. I'm also having issues with 3-Minute Rule. 😕

It's so random! For me, an example is the not-at-all-obscure "ABC" by the Jackson 5. I have it twice - on a Motown compilation and on a Jacksons compilation. It won't download from either album.

What I was trying to figure out is if the same tracks are giving everyone a problem or if some songs work for some people and not others. Since I can't download "Shake Your Rump" and you can, it sounds like a problem with our accounts, not the file in the iTunes Store.

Same issue here on iPad and AppleTV. It does it on songs that I purchased through iTunes as well as songs riped from CD -- no apparent rhyme or reason. Doubly annoying is that when it reaches a song with this error, it halts playback entirely instead of just moving on to the next song. I hope they get this resolved soon or my iTunes/iPad/AppleTV setup is going to be worthless for playing music for my summer parties -- can't have the music constantly stopping playback. Apple: Help!

Just a reminder to everyone in this thread: Apple doesn't read these comments.

If you want them to know you are having an issue, you have to use the feedback form: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Agreed, Matt - I should have said I had reported this to Apple, and I urge everyone else affected to do the same. However, they simply noted my issue and then pointed me to the standard iTunes Match troubleshooting steps available in the support section, none of which are of the slightest use. I urge others to report the issue to Apple and possibly to send in a link to this thread to Macrumors or Appleinsider, etc, in the hope that they'll flag it up. The blogs often get more attention than individuals.

I should add that the support section lists iTunes Match under "iCloud > iTunes in the Cloud", therefore I believe that the following is the appropriate link to report the problem: http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html And to report the issue under the dropdown "iTunes in the Cloud". I accept that it is not the same service as iTunes Match, but the iTunes feedback form does not have any appropriate field for reporting this issue.

I just noticed this problem yesterday. The affected songs originally had "Matched" status, but after removing them from iCloud and re-adding them, the status changed to "Uploaded" (for the exact file I had previously downloaded from iTunes). Very weird.

We have a clue!

I have this issue with 3 tracks on an album. After looking in the iTunes store it appears that the album that was originally matched has now been replaced with a 'deluxe edition' of the same album. Wondering if iTunes match now won't recognise because of this. Surely if something that has been matched gets removed from iTunes store then this needs to be flagged as requiring upload from user?

Czicks wrote:

At the moment I can't seem to download To All The Girls, Shake Your Rump downloaded in like 5 seconds though. I'm also having issues with 3-Minute Rule. 😕

I had the exact same problem, and I just bought the "Deluxe" version from iTunes a few weeks ago.

It is happening with all types of songs. The Butthole Surfers' "Birds" is the one I noticed today. Good thing I still have the CD I ripped it from!

This problem causes another problem on the iPhone: When I hit the Download All button on a playlist, it will stop selecting songs for download as soon as it hits an error song and the only way I can get the rest of the songs is to individually tap them for download.