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iTunes match waiting

I've had iTunes match since it came out. I've had problems with it, but not like this.


Now, every single song I have (of 14,500) is listed as waiting, and the clouds in the sidebar by Music, Movies, and TV Shows have a tilde through them.


I've turned off iTunes Match, restarted the computer, and re-enabled iTunes Match. I've read the solutions here where you delete all your songs and then add them back to iTunes Match -- seems like I shouldn't have to do that.


Has anyone encounterd, and fixed, this? Apple's status page doesn't show any current iTunes Match problems (or any problems at all), but I know the cloud services have had problems the last few days.


This started yesterday afternoon. At least that's the first I noticed it. And it's still a problem.


Thanks.

Posted on Aug 22, 2013 4:45 PM

Reply
7 replies

Aug 23, 2013 5:22 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

Thank you.


This is the hint I got by telephone from an Apple support engineer last night. He was wonderful and very patient as we went through this. It seemed to help because when I turned iTunes Match back on it took much longer to rebuild. However, when it was done, every single song was still listed as waiting and the sidebar tildes remained.


In addition, my iPhone and Apple TV showed not a single iTunes Match song (no music at all).


The engineer suggested I delete all my music from iTunes Match and my music library, while keeping the song files. I agreed that might be the only (ultimate) fix, but it was late and I would do this over the weekend.


On a whim, I left the Mac on and running iTunes all night. Sometime overnight the problem resolved. I woke to find an iPhone full of music and all my songs except six now moved into Matched or Purchased or Uploaded. The tilde in the music cloud is gone.


Although Apple didn't show any system problems last night, and still doesn't, I believe iTunes Match wasn't working at all for me last night, and sometime overnight it did.

Aug 23, 2013 9:57 AM in response to Linda Custer

Linda Custer wrote:


Sometime overnight the problem resolved. I woke to find an iPhone full of music and all my songs except six now moved into Matched or Purchased or Uploaded. The tilde in the music cloud is gone.


Although Apple didn't show any system problems last night, and still doesn't, I believe iTunes Match wasn't working at all for me last night, and sometime overnight it did.

Actually what happened was that while you left it running overnight the iTunes library was finally able to be processed. Enabling iTunes Match is not instant. It takes time. I suspect you just weren't waiting long enough for the library to be processed.

Aug 23, 2013 10:21 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

OK. That does sound reasonable.


The user interface doesn't indicate that, though: First, the notice about the iTunes Match connection with the AppleStore -- in the grey top status area of iTunes 11 -- reverts back to the Apple logo that shows nothing is going on. Second, the little cloud icon by the word Music in the sidebar is a cloud with a tilde ~ inside it rather than the moving stripes that usually show up while things are processing, and that cloud with a tilde can be clicked, tries to connect, and then reverts to the tilde. Third, the iCloud status column for all songs showed waiting but the cloud column was empty, and didn't contain the dotted outline of a cloud that is usually present when songs are processing.


To a user, it sure looks like nothing is processing.


I'm still not convinced that it just took a while. The night before, I had just let it be, connected in this state, and in the morning everything was still waiting. It seems that the option-stop reset something, and then either it processed on Apple's side or else Apple's iTunes Match servers figured out the issue and reconnected overnight.


I'm not sure, and Apple provides no way for users to know.

Aug 24, 2013 7:35 AM in response to Linda Custer

If there is a ~ in the cloud icon the connection from you to the iTunes Match server is not made. This may not be your issue, iTunes Match servers sometimes do not respond for maintenance or other Apple operational reasons.


You should exit iTunes Store, then exit iTunes, clearing the cache once again.


Ensure a good wired connection to your network, ensure that the computer will not pause / sleep or otherwise be interrupted.


Launch iTunes, move to Song view with iCloud Download and iCloud Status fields displayed - sorting on each field in turn scroll through the songs noting the pattern of both Status and Download indicators.


Sign-in to iTunes Store, start iTunes Match and allow the 3-step process to complete - this will take some time. Do not interrupt the process until the Match tab is available confirming the number of Songs accessible in the cloud.

Aug 24, 2013 7:42 AM in response to mracole

Thank you.


Yes, I agree ~ means no connection.


I have FIOS 75/35 through an Apple Time Capsule, and while this was happening (and for the last as long as I can remember) I haven't had any connection issues to the general internet. All else worked fine.


I did all you mentioned, including waiting for the Match tab with confirmation of number of songs.


The iTunes Match servers are still suspect in my book.


In any case, all is good now. I appreciate your assistance and that of all on the discussions. It helps.

Aug 24, 2013 8:40 AM in response to Linda Custer

Excellent, good that it is resolved. You are correct to suspect Apple server side issues. It may well be that your configuration has been operating well throughout - sadly this is no longer unusual. Perhaps Apple are simply choosing to make too many unadvertised changes server side - whatever the reason, many have seen reduced performance.


My library is now also operating via Google Play with gBeats App on IOS, it is great to have such a free service to compensate when iTunes Match decides to have a bad day/week.

iTunes match waiting

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