iTunes cannot see the music that was "matched"

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iTunes cannot see the music that was "matched"

I am running iTunes on a Lenovo (64 bit Windows 7). I "matched" my library which was on a network hard drive at my home. It took a long time, but seemed to work OK. Now, I am away from that hard drive, and I am using the same computer. iTunes shows all the songs in the library, but cannot find the music. It sees (and can play) about 20 out of about 7000 songs. About 200 other songs show the cloud with an exclamation point (error), and the rest have no cloud symbol at all. Almost all the songs show an exclamation point in the first column. I tried deleting the library on the local hard drive on my computer, but iTunes still tries to point to the local hard drive. If I try to play a song without the cloud symbol, iTunes asks me if I want to try to find it. I tried turning iTunes Match off and back on, and iTunes tells me there are about 7000 songs available, as it should, but I cannot get to them. Thanks for any help.

iTunes -OTHER, Windows 7

Posted on Feb 24, 2012 1:12 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

KeithJenner

Level 4

1,020 points

Feb 24, 2012 1:49 PM in response to docbrown50

iTunes will always try to play a local copy if there is one, rather than the cloud version, and just removing the disc that the files are stored on doesn't tell iTunes that the local copy is not available. As a result, when you try to play a song it is trying to find the local copy which it believes should be there.

You have two options.

If you are not going to want to connect your HDD again then it is fairly easy. Just select all of the music in iTunes and delete it. Make sure that you don't select the box to delete from the cloud. Also, select not to send the files to trash (it shouldn't matter if the HDD isn't connected, but best be safe). iTunes wiull now know that the files aren't stored locally and will play from the cloud.

If you will want to connect your HDD occasionally you don't want to do this, as iTunes won't look to the HDD if it is connected. If this is the case you need to create a new iTunes library (hold alt and open iTunes). Sign this library up to iTunes match and it will use the cloud files. If you have the HDD connected then use the old library.

Hope that makes sense.

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Answer 2

docbrown50 Author

Level 1

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Feb 24, 2012 2:06 PM in response to docbrown50

Thanks for the help. That solved my problem.

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