iTunes match shows light gray song -> cannot download

I too have had the same problem. It was bad to have to wait 4 days for itunes match to get set. Then I made a smart play list of my low quilty aac (under 160) I was only able to download 400 songs out of 4500. Then the rest of the songs were not able to down load at all. They all had a cloud icon with lines in it. So I have all of the songs on CD and now I am re-inputing my music to the high bit rate. This is week two of the project. I have read that there may be a bad file in the library and so I am fixing all I can find. I have high hopes, But I can tell you this I will not renew until this system is fixed.

I had the same problem. Others in the forum had suggested turning off Match, then turning it back on. This worked for me, however I would say I see the grayed out tracks about 1 of every 2 times I start iTunes. So I simply downloaded them all. Not worth putting up with the intermittent behavior.

One more update to summarize where I am:

Over the last week I have tried the following:

- 2 different computers on 2 different networks (home & work)

- same grayed out behavior on both, turning off match & back on corrects

- antivirus off & firewall off

- Computer 1 uploaded all songs, many did not match (even with the same album)

- Computer 1 deleted an unmatched song from an album where others matched,
restored from my backup, and got it to match

- Computer 1 deleted local copies and downloaded from Match - 100s failed

- Computer 2 (empty library) download from Match, again 100s failed (different songs than computer 1)

- On both computers kept repeatedly trying to download failed songs over several days,
got most to download

So my conclusion is:

1) There is a bug with iTunes where songs in the cloud are grayed out about
half the time. This can be worked around by turning Match on and off again.

2) The upload and download process is prone to file corruption. That's why:

- random songs within an album match and don't match, but
deleting local & cloud copies, then attempting to rematch sometimes work

- random songs fail to download from Match, but persistently trying
to re-download them (sometimes dozens of times) can work

3) Neither problem is not related to user accounts, computers, or networks.

I am now engaged via email with a Senior Advisor from Apple support. I have agreed to provide screen shots and more detail. I'm giving them a few days to either fix the problem or at least acknowledge they have a problem and are working on it. If they do not he as offered to cancel my subscription.

I will post to this thread and let you all know the conclusion.

Same problem, quite a few songs greyed out say they are available for d/l from cloud but cannot. I still have the song on my HDD, however it dosn't show, just the greyed out cloud copy. This is not what I expected from this service at all, and the support is horrible. I look forward to your conlusion EDP762.

I found out that if you re-import the original song into your library, then the greyed out goes away. It just shows you have a copy in the cloud, then the song also becomes available on you iDevice. I am going to try to just turn off Match then re-import my entire library, then turn back on see if that fixes it all at once. There is also the problem with album artwork being replaced with a lower quality copy, why apple, why? Simplify was soo much simpler, and effecient,

It's sad to see that many months later the problem has not been fixed. I have 2 matched computers. All local songs play but those in the cloud are a mix of OK and grayed out songs. I have rebuilt my libraries from scratch with no luck. Apple should give us an extension in the subscribed period until they deliver what we bought.

I turned the match off again, put sync all songs and it is working! Yeah!!!!!