Q: iTunes Match horribly slow lately?

I echo Richardgm's comments.

I was an early adopter of iTunes Match, and it once worked great.  Over the past several months its performance has degraded to the point that it is useless.  I have tried all the suggested fixes as well and they never work.

I am currently evaluating Google vs. Amazon's solutions.

The following article is a little dated, last year, but apparently Match has many problems and the author claims it's a neglected product.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2036062/itunes-match-another-neglected-apple-ser vice.html

I added my library back when Match worked, and I don't add much more these days, so the long match times are very annoying, but not (yet) a show stopper for me.

My big gripe is that streaming has basically stopped working, after several years of working just fine.  Songs will start, hang, start, hang, and then stop entirely.  I originally blamed my local 3G network, but then I found that the same thing happened even on high bandwidth WIFi.  Also, Spotfiy works flawlessly on both.

The only way I can listen to music now is to download it beforehand, which is really getting closer to just syncing it, like the old days.

You know it's bad when even the serious fanboys don't rush to the defense of an Apple product.

Sounds like I am having similar problems too.  My observation indicate that additions and changes don't appear to be getting updated in the "cloud" and therefore are not being updated on any of my other computers and devices.  In other words, they stay local to the machine you did them on instead of getting updated to the cloud.  Sure would be nice to have a "cloud" view to confirm this. 

Here are a couple of examples of behavior I am seeing...

1. I make some metadata changes on "MachineA" and they appear correct in the library of "MachineA."  If everything were working as they should those metadata changes would appear on "MachineB" in a minute or two.  But now they are not.  If I run STORE > UPDATE ITUNES MATCH on "MachineA" it will churn for awhile and when it is done my original metadata is back again
2. I deleted several songs from "MachineB"  to the point were I could not see them at all in my library.  However, I never got an indication that there were deleted on "MachIneA".  I ran STORE > UPDATE ITUNES MATCH on "MachineB" and my deleted songs were back again.

In both examples I have waited overnight before running UPDATE ITUNES MATCH for the desired behavior to happen but it never seems to.  I have a large library but am under the magic 25000 number for uploaded and matched content.  As it appears with many of you, this was working "good" one day and then in the last week or two it has been unusable (for me at least)

I can force both examples to work temporarily by disabling and re-enabling iTunes Match but after one or two additions or changes it gets stuck again.

Hi,

If you delete tracks or update metadata, there is no need to use the update command. I have a large library and use a second library to help me keep the numbers below 25k. When I delete tracks from the cloud using the second library, the iCloud status for those tracks becomes "removed". This change used to be instantaneous but now it takes a while. I don't have any issues with metadata changes.

Jim

Same here for me it actually is stuck in step forever it always says "sending infomration to Apple" thought it was something wrong is there a fix for this ?

I found a potential work around, that doesn't involve turning off / turning on iTunes Match. I'm interested if this works for other people.

1. Launch iTunes

2. If iTunes Match is 'matching' (sending info to apple) - cancel the matching process, by clicking the little X button

3. Go to the "Store" menu, and select "Update Genius"

4. Let Genius update (should take a minute or two)

5. After Genius is done updating, Go to the "Store" menu, and select "Update iTunes Match"

In my experience, iTunes Match will take less than a minute to do its thing.

I need to do this every SINGLE time I add a song to my library, but at least it works.

It also proves that it isn't my internet connection. I already knew my internet was fine, but perhaps it will appease the "Genius" support staff. Maybe Apple will... like... you know, fix their software and stop blaming my internet

Does this workaround work for anyone else?

"Update Genius" doesn't seem to have any effect for me. My minimum wait time is now more than 24 hours to add one song. I'm going to shut iTunes Match off, and then just turn it on once a month to update my library one time. From all appearances, a decision has been made at the top of the corporate structure to abandon this program. Time to jump off a sinking ship.

It work just as you said for me , I guess this will work until a fix , thanks

Worked for me to. Thanks.

Ok - I think I've fixed my slowness issues by rebuilding my iTunes database.

This is a standard procedure, documented on Apple's support website - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451

Scroll to the section labeled "Re-create the iTunes Library", and follow the instructions there.

- definitely backup your database before you do this (step 4)

- my library XML file is called "iTunes Media Library.xml", not "iTunes Library.xml". I'm running the latest version of iTunes on a mac (step 8)

I rebuilt my database a few days ago, and my songs are matched very quickly, and I do not need to "update genius" before running match.

Hope this works for other people

Updating Genius first worked well, although it did take a few minutes. Thereafter iTunes Match completed the "matching" part in about a minute and started uploading the missing songs (a much slower process -- only 1 mbit upstream).

john330's method worked for me as well.

I also updated Genius before updating Match - not sure if that helped, but it couldn't have hurt.

The problem is still big. I have been using iTunes Match from the start, but lately it really *****. I have a 150 Mb down and 15 Mb up connection (and I actually get close to the promised speed) but it takes forever to get a new album in the cloud. APPLE PLEASE IMPROVE THIS SERVICE!

Awesome, this worked...Great Job!!