iTunes Match on Mountain Lion doesn't work on my 2012 MacBook Pro. I had Lion before, and iTunes Match worked fine. Now it disconnects and back every few seconds. I tried resetting cache, iTunes, turning on/off match, but nothing works. Now what?

exact same thing here on mid 2010 macbook running mountain lion

Exact same thing on my MBP Retina running Mountain Lion...

Same here!!!!! I can connect for about 5 seconds, then the lighting bolt shows up

What happened!!?!?

So far, this isn't the solution for me. Still hanging up as it's starting to upload the first file.

This was after I'd switched routers and networks -- no good results with iTunes match since then.

I have been fighting with the exact same issue since installing Mountain Lion. Step 1 of the matching process kept restarting itself and I saw the lightning bolt in the little cloud icon many, many times a day.

I had ruled out a network problem because all the other apps worked perfectly - Safari, Mail, Contacts… no issues at all. My internet connection was super fast and stable and I had no problem accessing the iTunes store. But, as I found out yesterday, the network was the culprit after all.

I reset my router and deleted my networks in System Preferences, restarted the Mac and added them back. And to my surprise iTunes Match is working like nothing ever happened. For the first time since installing Mountain Lion all 3 steps were completed.

For testing purposes I ripped several old CD's and matched them one by one - no problems (and the lightning bolt has not reappeared). iTunes Match is back to normal for me.

I realize I should have done the network-reset right away… but I was confident that the network was fine because I saw no problems with other applications (or my iPhone and iPad on the same network).

If any of you haven't tried that as a troubleshooting step I recommend you give it a shot.

@Sweet-jane: What kind of router do you use? is it an Airport router? Mine is an Airport Extreme.

I tried your suggestion, but no luck yet for me. Until now what seems to work best for me is turning off and on iTunes Match, but this is no guaranteed success (very frustrating...)

I have tried this, didnt fix me up. I also have tried 3 different networks and running it.

whitewater2, that is really frustrating. Troubleshooting a service that is basically not under our control is maddening….

ProCaRiel, my router is a Pirelli - I got it from my ISP. To be honest though, I'm not even sure if the router-reset was necessary - after resetting the router iTM still didn't work, so I deleted the WIFI and ethernet networks in System Preferences and restarted (I once read that restarting is important because some old DNS stuff or similar things stay in cache and only a restart get's rid of them). Anyway, after my iMac had started up again I added WIFI and ethernet back and the problem was gone. It's possible that the router-reset AND the deleting/restarting/re-adding did the trick, but maybe it was just the latter.

There might be different issues going on here, though - because the turning on/turning off iTM has not worked for me, not once since installing Mountain Lion. It's strange that it is working for you occasionally. But in every case, it's extremely tiresome to fight with this stuff… I hope you guys get it solved!

sweet-jane wrote:

... so I deleted the WIFI and ethernet networks in System Preferences and restarted (I once read that restarting is important because some old DNS stuff or similar things stay in cache and only a restart get's rid of them). Anyway, after my iMac had started up again I added WIFI and ethernet back and the problem was gone.

What, specifically, did you do?

Michael, I deleted ethernet and WIFI under the networks-pane in System Preferences, by choosing them (one by one) from the left column and removing them with the "-" button (I hardly ever use WIFI, I just removed it for good measure...). After restarting my iMac I added ethernet back with the "+" button and iTunes Match was working again (later I added WIFI back as well).

I haven't seen the dreaded lightning bolt ever since and the matching-process is working reliably.

It seems like (in my case) the update to Mountain Lion had some effect on the network that only iTunes Match had a problem with.

Just tried deleting network, rebooting, and re adding network and it didn't fix my problem. Itunes match still starts but ends up restarting the first step over and over. Hopefully Apple realizes this is a problem and fixes with the next update, but I highly doubt it. Seems all the issues that I have never get fixed. External hard drives randomly disconnecting is my other big issue. Also having issues with screen sharing since Mountain Lion. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I suppose those issue would be a new thread.

Interesting. I'm giving this a try now.

Exactly the same issue on my iMac late 2009 i7.

iTunes Match worked perfektly with Lion. But with mountain Lion everything "hangs" exact the way you discribed it.

Please fix that soon apple.

Drat! Didn't work for me.

Same issue here with 27' Mountain Lion. The only current way to add songs to iCloud is to turn off iTunes Match, add the new songs to iTunes, turn back on Match. Let the match process run through. Made the new songs available for download on my iPhone. On iMac Match keeps to sync over and over again. Hope Apple will come with a fix soon. Darm I should have waited with till at least 10.8.1