iTunes Match Broken After iOS 8 - Only downloads a few tracks, icons spin on every track in library

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Level 1

32 points

iTunes Match Broken After iOS 8 - Only downloads a few tracks, icons spin on every track in library

I have upgraded both my iPad Air and iPhone 6 to iOS 8.1, and iTunes Match is broken in two ways that make it unusable.

First, every single song on both devices (except those already downloaded to the device) has the "spinning wheel" icon as if I tried to download the song from the cloud... but I have not tapped Download on any tracks. The iTunes Store "Downloads" list confirms that nothing at all is downloading. If I tap one of those spinning wheels... it becomes a progress wheel and the track begins to download, and shows up in the iTunes Store's Downloads list. So the icon for every track is just wrong, the little cloud-arrow replaced with a spinning (or sometimes stationary) wheel.

Second, and far more frustrating, is the "Download All" button at the top of a long playlist now downloads only the first 30-50 songs on that playlist. After that it just does not try to download any others, confirmed again in the iTunes Store's Downloads list. Every other song on my playlist has a stationary wheel icon (which is to say, not a spinning wheel but the same icon), and I have to tap every single one of those to get them to begin downloading. I'm going on a long vacation with minimal internet service, I want to download a bunch of music onto my new iPad and iPhone, I have playlists that are thousands of tracks long... and now I have to tap every single song on every single one to download them for offline listening, which is just infuriating.

Help!

iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi, iOS 8.1

Posted on Oct 22, 2014 12:47 PM

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Answer 1

W12x40

Level 1

4 points

Nov 18, 2014 5:34 PM in response to Steve Murphy

iPhone 5 here. I don't have the first problem - all the songs show that they are downloaded, in process of downloading or waiting. Hitting "Download all" for the playlist behaves exactly as you describe, and I can tap each spinning "waiting" icon to download. I did notice that tapping "download all" for an album works correctly.

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Answer 2

Steve Murphy Author

Level 1

32 points

Nov 18, 2014 5:46 PM in response to W12x40

I found the exact same thing, that albums can download... but I don't have any albums over 25 tracks I don't think, so it might not be hitting its limit.

I'm planning to head to the Apple store in the next week or so to ask them if they can figure out what's wrong, I'll update this post if anything works!

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Answer 3

Dec 10, 2014 5:37 AM in response to Steve Murphy

I still have the same problem, and have tried everything I can think of including a restore. Did Apple manage to help you?

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Answer 4

Steve Murphy Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 10, 2014 6:11 AM in response to jamiebrown6

No, not yet. I took my devices to the Apple Store who could not help me directly as they have no access to that part of the system. They suggest that the problem is likely some disconnect within my AppleID, or else it would not be happening on every device to which I connect my account, and that I should call Apple Support about this who have access to the back-end of the system. I have to find a time to do this and I will report back on what happens!

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Answer 5

Dec 10, 2014 6:16 AM in response to Steve Murphy

Guess what!!!! I managed to fix it!

After much googling and experimenting - I can now download more than 25 songs in a playlist, and the songs don't get stuck with the red circle. The problem appeared to be, strangely, the syncing of folders of playlists in iTunes match.

What I did

- remove all music from phone and turn off Match

- ensure music is available for syncing in iTunes on Mac (but ensure 0 songs are synced)

- removed all folders from my playlists. Playlists do not reside in any folders anymore

- update iTunes match manually from the Store menu

- turn on match from iPhone, and download a playlist

That worked, remarkably. Some kind of buffering/caching issue when match tries to download from a playlist within a folder? How weird. Let me know if that works for you.

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Answer 6

Steve Murphy Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 10, 2014 7:59 AM in response to jamiebrown6

Oh man so you had to remove all folders from your playlist structure to make this work? I can't do that without Apple telling me it's the only option, I have a folder structure I've relied on for years and removing it would make using my collection infuriating. I'm glad it worked for you but I'd almost rather click every song than remove my folders!

If you make a folder now that you're up and running... can you still download more than 25 songs? Or does the problem come back?

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Answer 7

Dec 10, 2014 8:06 AM in response to Steve Murphy

Yep, and they all download now when you hit the cloud icon at the top of a playlist. I've submitted a bug report to apple. I haven't tried recreating a folder yet, but will get round to trying it... happy it works at least for the moment. Had a lot of folders too...

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Answer 8

W12x40

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2014 8:37 AM in response to Steve Murphy

I got an upgrade to 6+ with 8.1.1 installed. As it was doing the restore from backup, I had it download a couple of my playlists. It went slow, as I expected, but it did many at once.

I gave my wife my 5, so we'll see if it does it again after a complete wipe.

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Answer 9

Dec 16, 2014 8:25 PM in response to jamiebrown6

I wiped all the music off of my phone and turned off iTunes Match. Rather than remove all of the folders from my playlists on my Mac, I just removed one. I then updated Match from my Mac. Finally, I turned on Match on my phone. So far I have been able to download two playlists, each containing about 80 songs, and an entire artist with over 120 songs. No spinning wheel, no stalled downloads.

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Answer 10

Steve Murphy Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 17, 2014 1:12 PM in response to andrewortwein

I was excited to see this worked for you, but it didn't for me, sadly. I removed the music from my device, turned off iTunes Match, then removed a folder with two playlists in it from my laptop (I recreated them outside of any folders first), updated Match, then re-activated Match on my phone, and the problem was still there. Still working on it!

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Answer 11

Dec 17, 2014 1:26 PM in response to Steve Murphy

I'm sorry to say that it looks like the good news was only temporary for me. When I tried a larger playlist download (200 songs), I got the old spinning wheel problem again.

Since then I have deleted all folders in my playlists, but the problem still remains for me. In fact, I've discovered a deeper problem: I have a few smart playlists (and parent folder) that simply will not go away, no matter how many times I delete it. I have tried deleting these playlists from both my Mac and my iPhone, but as soon as I sync with Match, they come right back.

I have no idea whether this newly discovered problem is related to the spinning wheel or not. Perhaps my inability to completely remove them (and their parent folder) is preventing me from achieving what jamiebrown6 did. Either way, it's annoying.

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Answer 12

msdker

Level 1

7 points

Dec 18, 2014 8:23 AM in response to jamiebrown6

Jamie,

I followed your steps to correct my issues, but oddly when I moved the playlists up and out of the folders in iTunes (therefore they were just listed at the top level under music) then a few hours later when I had rebooted my computer, all my playlists were gone. Obviously you didn't have this happen. Thoughts as to why it did to me? I restored a previous iTunes library so I could get them back. I am now hesitant to move out of folders again.

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Answer 13

Dec 18, 2014 9:19 AM in response to msdker

Strange, not sure what's happened. After backing up your playlists files in the iTunes folder (sounds like you had a backup already 🙂 ) trying manually updating match and force closing the music app on iOS devices. You might have to wait overnight for the Match updates to reach the iOS devices. But not really sure what else to try.

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Answer 14

Dec 18, 2014 10:17 AM in response to Steve Murphy

I've been having the same problem for awhile now. I have approximately 20,000 tracks plus hundreds of regular and smart playlists sorted in multiple folders. iTunes match seems to work fine across multiple devices as far as keeping playlists and tracks synched, but downloading all the songs in a single playlist to my iPhone is very frustrating. Like Steve, many tracks just hang and it takes multiple attempts to download the full playlist over wifi and/or cellular. I have tried some of the recommendations found online (turning on/off match on iOS and OS X, logging in/out, checking Apple's status page, etc.), but none of it seems to be helping. I'm not about to delete folders as I've spent a ton of time organizing my library over the years. Hoping for a fix soon.

iPhone 6 (64gb) running iOS 8.1.2

2012 iMac running OS X 10.10.1 / iTunes 12.0.1.26

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Answer 15

goudok

Level 1

8 points

Jan 23, 2015 8:58 AM in response to Steve Murphy

I actually have found this issue back on the first day of 8.0. I have reported the issue to apple and haven't heard anything since. I have done everything from deleting all music, turning off/on match restoring the phone and nothing works.

Has anyone heard any resolutions on this? Deleting folders is not an option for me.

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