iTunes Match crippled in iOS 6

Couldn't agree more. I sincerely hope this is a bug, but it appears to be a design decision. I will not be renewing if this isn't resolved.

I totally agree I will not be renewing either. It totally *****. It was awesome when it first came out on iOS 5. But now...

Absofrigalutely. This is crazy. 😕

The only qualifier I will say is that you CAN delete ALL of your downloaded music if your iPhone gets full.

Settings --> General --> Usage --> Wait till all apps using data are displayed and locate "Music" --> Tap on Music --> The next screen will say "All Music" and show how much memory all your music is consuming--> Tap on Edit at the top right of the screen --> Tap on the Minus symbol --> Tap on Delete --> That should clean out all your music from your iPhone and return it to the Cloud --> You can then just stream (assuming you are using iOS 6) and never download any music or you can go back to downloading music until you reach your iPhone's memory limit again...repeat procedure.

This is the best I can come up with for now. I still can't figure out a way to delete individual songs or albums. It's all or nothing. But still, I hope this helps until Apple realizes what a HUGE HONKIN' Boo Boo they made.

Cheers, Mr. Luigi

Also, I can't see anymore the cloud icon on the songs not yet downloaded.

This way I can't even know if a song is downloaded on my iPhone or not...

Is it just me, or another of these "changes" on iOS6?

Exactly. I got back to 5.1.1 this morning.

NO! It is not just you. The only way to know if an individual song is downloaded, or still in the Cloud, is to click on "Artists", then an Artists name. Then you will see a Cloud download icon if the artist's songs are in the Cloud. If you don't see that Cloud icon symbol, that artists songs are on your iPhone and have been downloaded. You can do the same thing by clicking on "Albums" located in "More." Click on an Album and if the Cloud symbol appears that album is in the Cloud.

One other way to see all the songs that are currently downloaded on your iPhone is:

Settings --> Musis --> Turn "Show All Music" OFF --> Now you will only see the songs that are downloaded onto your iPhone when you get out of Settings and click on the "Music" App icon.

If this is a better way to do things than in 5.1.1, I fail to see why. I keep thinking it has something to do with the fact that now you CAN do pure streaming of your songs. If a song has not been downloaded, and you click on the song, it will stream to your phone and NOT download anymore. You have to click on that download Cloud icon to download songs now. You don't download a song when you click to play it. In 5.1.1, when you clicked a song to play it, is DID start to stream and play. But, it also download the song. Not really true streaming. So, that is one advantage of iOS 6. But, the rest of the set up of iTunes Match in iOS 6 is giving me a migraine.

concerning streaming: Sorry, that's not true. Try: Start playing a song for about 5 seconds. Stop it. Turn on airplane mode. Try playing the song again: and voila: the whole song plays. So, it is NOT REAL streaming. It is just a kind of "downloadstart & play immediately"

-> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4321162?tstart=0

Hi Johnny,

You are indeed right. I had tried an experiment b/4 posting the above about streaming. I completely emptied my music downloads as I describe above. My usage for Music dropped to Zero.

Then I clicked on AC/DC's Back in Black in my library. I didn't click on the download icon. Just clicked to play. Listened to the song. Delightful. :-) When I went back to usage, my Music usage was still at Zero! So, that why I concluded it was true streaming.

But then I just repeated this process after reading your post, and sure enough, my Music Usage showed 8 MB...the size of the Back in Black song.

I have NO IDEA what happened the first time.

But, I apologize for leading folks astray about streaming.

Good catch. Thanks!

Mr. Luigi

P.S. I am TOTALLY bummed we can still can not do true streaming with iTunes Match on iOS 6.

Why? Why? Why?

Especially since Apple has now made it impossible to individually delete a downloaded song and put it back in the Cloud. (At least as far as I can tell.)

Why? Why? Why?

Tottally agree man. The way match was working in iOS 5 was way better than in iOS 6.. The services has lost it's major features with this iOS update. I'm so upset with this. Apple should do something quick or explain their reasons to completely change the service features...I didn't buy it for this!

I posted the link to this discussion on the Web Site, AppAdvice. (Great resource for iDevice owners, BTW). I would fill-out a Feedback submission to Apple about this, but I think websites like AppAdvice may be a more effective forum to let people know what has happened to iTunes Match. If nothing else, it will save the users of those web sites the time some of us spent trying to figure out what the heck happened to iTunes Match after updating to iOS 6.

For quite a while, I thought the problem was me and something that went wrong with my update.

Until I read steve.lawrence's Original Post here.

BTW, even though there appears to be no solution to this I want to give a shout out to Steve for posting so that I didn't spend more wasted hours trying to debug my iPad and iPhone since it had nothing to do with my machines!

Update (Sorry for the length, but this is not a simple issue):

After doing a bit more investigating, it appears this “streaming” vs. “not streaming” issue is a bit more complicated than has been stated. If you tap on a song in an album, it will download it, but not in the traditional sense. It downloads it and a few songs forward in the album. But it is downloading it to a streaming cache. This is so there is no lag in going from the playing of one song to another…as was the case in iOS 5.1.1. I don’t know how big the streaming cache will get before some automatic clean-up process is done by iOS 6 if even any clean up is done. Maybe you have to manually delete the songs from the cache.

These songs in the streaming cache do look and act like downloaded music, because they are. If you do turn on Airplane Mode, as has been stated earlier in this discussion, the songs will continue to play because they ARE on your phone in that cache. Also, if you turn off “Show all songs” you WILL see those songs that are in the Streaming Cache…just like you would if you had “really” downloaded them by tapping on the Cloud icon with the downward arrow for the album. One hint that you have not “truly” downloaded the song when you just tap on it is that the Cloud icon does NOT go away. It remains. That’s because by tapping on the song, you have streamed it AND placed it in the Streaming Cache. It has NOT been downloaded and stored in your Music storage area. At least, that is what I have been able to gather from reading and experimenting with my phone.

The big issue here, IMO, is that this Streaming Cache is taking up memory on your phone. For those of us who subscribe to iTunes Match to control how much of our phone’s memory our music takes, it remains unknown how big this cache is allowed to get before it is cleared out…again, if it is cleared out at all. Maybe it is cleared out after a certain amount of time. I have NO idea and Apple sure has not made an attempt to explain this (or if they have, the explanation is really hidden well!).

I know other streaming music services excute somewhat the same procedure, but it's more hidden. Apple lets you see this streaming cache. That is not necessarily bad, but it is confusing when this streaming cache looks like normally downloaded music in many ways.

I think there is definitely room for Apple to tidy up and ramp up this whole iTunes Match business. It has become so complicated I might as well get my PhD in quantum electrodynamics instead.

What ever happened to, “It just works.”

You can swipe to delete songs by turning off iTunes Match. You cannot delete songs when iTunes Match is on. There is still no way to download just one song without adding the songs you want to a playlist then download the entire playlist. I definitely liked iTunes Match in Ios5 ALOT BETTER,

Hi Ryans80... At some point in time, in some room at Apple World Headquarters. With some collection of engineers a decision was made...consciously and with peer review...to change the way iTunes Match worked from what was to what is today in iOS 6.

You have to wonder...What were they thinking? What did they say?

And perhaps most importantly...

What did their ears hear when they talked?

Cause something, somewhere clearly got mixed up that day.

Fingers crossed that some of this was not their intention, and that a fix is incoming. Was anybody here ever running any beta versions of iOS 6? I'd be interested to know if this was in iOS 6 from the beginning or not.

I have only had iTunes Match for just over a month. That entire month I spent just trying to get the bugs in check, and then iOS 6 comes along.

Words of experience for those of you who are too frustrated to justify having paid for this: I emailed iTunes customer service with my complaints of iTunes Match shortly after signing up (before iOS 6, just because of play count errors, explicit songs becoming clean songs as if the cloud gets offended easily, and album artwork problems) and they offered me a refund on the service. The catch is that you can't sign up again until after 1 year of your original sign up date. I thanked them for the offer but would rather stick it out, as I do find the service useful. Or did, rather.