itunes match says "this item cannot be downloaded"

Yip, that worked a treat for me too. Only tried it on one song, but it worked:) like you, my match takes quite a while sending data to Apple so its not a process im in a hurry to go through unless I really want a particular song!

Thanks for posting it up.

The ticket is left open so far. Still awaiting to hear back from them, tried what they suggested over the weekend, to turn off iTunes match on all devises, then turn it on again one by one starting with iTunes on Mac, then my iOS devices. Didn't fix it.

But.... When I saw the post below from you, Portgordon, about 1) backing up the file in question, 2) deleting it from iTunes & iCloud, 3) Re-syncing iTunes Match after delete, 4) re-import the errant song, and then 5) re-sync iTunes match it managed to fix at least one song which is more than what Apple Support has been able to.

Nice work to that!

This is still an Apple issue which they need to address as iTunes Match worked 100% perfectly until whatever caused this recently got let out of the box...

Sorry, credit for the fix goes to Phil Smith in his earlier post, my bad...

Sure does :)

I'd offer points if I could - maybe the OP would be so kind.

i also used express lane to file a complaint (just now). i have a large library on itunes match (>20,000) and i can find no common denominator for the rejected downloads so far...but i suspect it to be only the "matched" songs as opposed to the "uploaded" (of which i have quite a few). weirdly, i have plenty of albums where are completely matched EXCEPT for 1 or 2 tracks.

anyway, as an example, for the album "out of the vein" by third eye blind, i can only pull down tracks 4,5,6,8 and 13. the rest are rejected. although sometimes, if i'm persistant, i can get the cloud icon to change to the downloading icon, and even watch it "download", although in the end, it simply reverts back to the cloud icon. i'm not in front of my mac, so i'm not sure if this is an example of the "matched" vs "uploaded" issue.

between this and the seemingly unfixable album art problems, i doubt very much i'll be renewing itunes match this year.

You're all too kind, but my credit goest to Jenina of Apple for presenting a work around. 😀

I just wanted to chime in again with something you all may have already figured out, but in case not here it is: Instead of going to "Store-> Update iTunes Match" you can just highlight songs you've re-added to iTunes (that have the dashed outline cloud next to them), right click and select "send to the cloud". This seems to fix the issue as well, and may be faster than re-scanning/syncing your entire iTunes library. Haven't spent enough time yet (the task is daunting) to find the fastest way to go about this, but this did seem quicker.

Also wanted to point out that I finally got confirmation this this is a known issue from Apple, and that they're working on the problem. My ticket remains open, and an email will be sent to me when it's resolved.

Lastly, all the tracks that I've had a chance to fix so far (all two of them) are tracks that were uploaded to the cloud. In other words, they did not seem to get "matched immediately by iTunes" or however you put it, but were needed to be uploaded.

So maybe they lost a bunch of our uploads. And, quite literally, you cannot download the song any more because it's simply not there! Just a thought.

Cheers

huh...i'm experiencing exactly the opposite...i don't have problems with "uploaded" tracks. rather it's the "matched" tracks that are bombing out.

never mind...there's no rhyme or reason. sometimes i can't grab uploaded tracks, sometimes i can't grab matched tracks.

just got off the phone with a support advisor. the bottom line: they don't know what's wrong. their advice: try again later.

So check this out. I just had a problem with 5 of 17 songs on a RHCP album. It's in iTunes so you know it could be matched in its entirety. However iTunes only matches 12 of the songs, so I had to upload the rest. And it's those five songs that I had to re-upload that were having the problem.

So that's weird, but so far for me it's only uploaded songs that are givin me an issue. But it's an album that should be matched!

Just thought of something. We both have large libraries. Mine is more than 19,000 songs and yours is 20,000+.

Can anyone else chime in on library size? I'm wondering if there is a correlation there.

Over 19,000 for me too. I've only noticed the problem on matched songs so far, but thats not to say there couldn't be uploaded songs with the problem in my library too. The only way I'd really be able to tell for sure would be to attempt to download my entire library.

huh! looks like the support advisor's advice was good...i just "tried again" (later) and i'm able to grab anything i want including stuff that was rejecting earlier this week. i guess the problem is solved. but the common theme continues to be apple refusing to give customers any indication that they are having a problem, leaving us to twist in the wind, make endless fruitless attempts to solve the problems ourselves, and endless calls to support which they are unable to deal with. i'm sure this is a calculated policy on apple's part, and i don't understand it. in this case, all they had to do was say "we are experiencing problems with the itunes match servers and we are working to resolve it. watch this space for updates" and we'd all be happy.

Thanks for letting us know! I can confirm that the tracks I was experiencing the issue with are no longer causing a problem. Downloaded them fine just a moment ago. Shame I'm not in the mood to lisen to them any more!