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

I have this problem that only the most recent of my ITunes bought tracks are played. Now I had an Apple ID/password change earlier this year and it seems that I can only play tracks that have the same ID/password combination as the one I use for Match. All tracks I bought undre the old combination are simply skipped (although they look matched/uploaded). My Apple TV shows them as "matrerial not found".

So is the Apple ID/password combination to be suspected? And is there a way to fix this? And the answer is not buy all that music again 🙂

And in relation to this topic: could an ID/password issue be the cause of your problem? Are the tracks you can't download possibly imported/bought under a different ID/password?

E Brouwers

In my case this is not the cause of the issue. I never changed my ID/Password and I have the same problem.

I'm having this problem again, too.

I have about 6k songs in match (most matched, some uploaded). I noticed a particular song would not play from my apple tv (Theory of a Deadman 'So Happy'). So I tried to download the song on my phone but I got the error. Then I tried the same song on iTunes and got the 'cannot be downloaded' error.

So I started a fresh, complete download on a Windows laptop. I still have about 2500 to go, but there have been about 100 that get the 'cannot download' error. A frustrating thing is you cannot leave this unattended. It pops up the error box and you must click it before itunes resumes the downloads.

Some of the offending songs seem to all be from the same album, but some are single random songs.

I know this was working in the past as I had played and downloaded the Theory song many times.

I was relying on itunes match as my master, cleaned up, organized copy of my rips. Now I have to go back and re-add these missing songs, I guess.

I'm also uploading a complete copy to my google play music account as another backuup.

A new wrinkle for my situation: A couple of the tracks I was having trouble downloading finally did manage to get downloaded the other day, but as 'Matched' 128kbps files! The whole reason I signed up for Match was to get 256kpbs versions of everything, so I am not counting this as fixed (and I told iTunes support that). Aside from that I am still finding new tracks that can't be downloaded.

As for the iTunes Support comment posted recently, that is similar to the response I have been given too: Engineers are working on it.

I too finally received a response via email to my phone report of the problem, stating that engineers are working on the problem. I just hope they resolve it soon - Match had been working flawlessly for me until about two weeks ago. The most bizarre behaviour I've noticed is streaming music via iTunes Match on my Apple TV. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes I get an error message for a particular track but it plays anyway, and other times the track fails with a "no content" error. As of today, this is still happening.

What e-mail address did you use?

Adding my support to this thread.

I have a large library and am finding random songs refusing to download. Very frustrating.

Hope Apple sort out a fix as I don't really want to have to start importing tracks again.

Jay, I used this feedback form, choosing the "iTunes in the Cloud" dropdown. The iTunes feedback form doesn't have any appropriate drop-down for iTunes Match:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html

However, I only really got anywhere after using phone support. A few individuals on various threads are reporting some progress in "dead" tracks being now downloadable, so hopefully the engineers are getting somewhere.

I've had this problem on occasion - no pattern that I can see and repeated attempts immediately after the first failure usually don't help.

However, if I wait long enough (the longest being a few weeks, the shortest being a few hours) eventually it will start downloading. What I usually do now is put the problematic track(s) in a "todo" playlist so I don't forget about them and just re-try every few days until they finally download. So far this procedure hasn't failed me (yet).

Well, maybe we must then come to the conclusion that it's just a ****** product...I'll give it a try with the helpdesk, and ask them why i can't play the 5500+ songs i paid for with the € 24,95 product that promised i could.

Just want to add my voice to the choir. I'm also having this issue with some of my tracks.

I'm also receiving "This item cannot be downloaded" message from my iPhone when playing match songs. Unfortunately, I deleted a lot of songs from my hard drive in order to upgrade them to Apple's 256kbps version. Now, I can't download the songs because itunes keeps giving me errors about not being able to find some of the songs.

I also am having the same issue. It's real troublesome when you're playing an album or playlist and the music stops because one of the tracks is 'unable to download'. I have used the 'trashing, re-matching, re-synch and re-match' method to get the track downloaded but that is time consuming process. I've sent apple feedback.

I am with everyone else here on this forum. Pretty annoying because of the fact that you pay for this service. I haven't been able to find a fix for this anywhere.

Brilliant! Works like a charm. Thanks Jundan

Jeff