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Has iTunes match gone haywire?

My music artists are all over the place, I noticed it this morning. Just out of blue on all my iOS devices. It makes no difference if the metadata matches for artist, album artist, sort by artist, sort by album artist, ensure compilation is unticked. Many songs are coming up in strange places on the artists view in the iOs devices. Lots of entries under various artists popping up. I have a list of cliff Richard four times under artist as an example - its just crazy. Happened out of nowhere. I only really noticed earlier as back to work started listening to my songs but ic ould of been at the weekend it went all wrong. My iTunes library is perfectly sorted. anyone else seeing strange entries crop up amid their artist list. Could the impending Apple Music be wreaking havoc with match?

Posted on Jun 22, 2015 11:22 AM

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Posted on Jun 22, 2015 11:37 AM

Something is seriously wrong with it. All iOS devices are showing split artists despite perfect metadata. I even checked the artist list in iTunes view and they display correctly on here. Adam and the Ants as example shows FOUR times. A single album is split under the four listings. in iTunes I just highlighted all the songs to ensure I re-edited the artist and album artist correctly and was exactly the same. I also ensure compilation was unticked, yet no diff.


restarting match on the ios devices makes no diff either.


This is madness

290 replies

Jun 29, 2015 4:42 AM in response to Scottyboy99

Just to add another voice to the choir, I too am experiencing this issue.

  • Both my iPhone and AppleTV are affected (both on latest software)
  • I've never synced these devices with my Mac (and haven't looked too closely at the iTunes library on there to make sure it's OK) - it's all done via the cloud
  • Compilations are totally messed up, along with practically every other album with more than one artist
  • Artists are being assigned to albums they have nothing to do with (e.g. Axwell and Krafty Kuts seem to feature a lot on albums they don't actually feature on)
  • Sort order is subtly messed up in album, artist and compilation view
  • "Group by album artist" doesn't work at all (presumably because the metadata is messed up?)
  • Albums purchased from iTunes in the last few days are messed up on arrival
  • Switching iTunes Match on and off makes no difference
  • Deleting all of the music on the iPhone (via Storage in Settings) and then re-downloading it using iTunes match results in messed up albums all over again
  • Everything is OK on my iPhone as long as iTunes match is switched off and/or I don't download albums with more than one artist...

Jun 29, 2015 5:12 AM in response to Scottyboy99

I'm having the same issue. I noticed it this morning. All mixed up on my:

- iPad 2 mini

- iPhone 6 Plus

- iPad Air 2

- Apple TV 3rd gen.

And I can't connect to iTunes Match on my work computer (see screencap)

User uploaded file

In English it says: Maybe it's to busy right now. Check internet connection and try later...

Doing this all morning, no music on my iMac here at work 😟

Maybe they are busy with Apple Music right now...

Jun 29, 2015 6:30 AM in response to NZMarke

I don't like the fact that they have omitted the buttons for artits, title, albums etc in die bottom tab bar. I'm not planning to use streaming or radio (the latter isn't available in Germany anyway), so I don't need these buttons. Although I do like that the "play next" feature has finally made it to iOS.


I just checked my Mac and Windows-PC, both have the same screwed up libaries. 😟 At least I had a backup copy on my PC, so I could restore to my libary from last weeks which is perfectly fine. However, that's not what I paid 25€ for ...

Jun 29, 2015 8:14 AM in response to Scottyboy99

Yet another angry voice here - I have had this 'splitting albums' issue before, but it has only ever happened with one or two albums at a time. In those cases, changing the album name for the affected items and then changing it back always solved the problem. But in this case, even that fix is not working in the majority of cases. I just hope that iOS 8.4 resolves the issue tomorrow. It's so irritating that the iTunes Match service is, at least on paper, exactly what I want, but it is riddled with bugs and, in my experience, always has been. The corruption doesn't seem to be spreading to my Macs, but I'm glad I've got a full local backup of my entire library because heaven knows what might happen when Apple Music launches tomorrow.

Jun 29, 2015 8:45 AM in response to Scottyboy99

For what it's worth, this issue appears to be confined to iOS 8. My iPhone 5S running iOS 8.3, synced to Match, has chaotically split albums and artists as described by many others here. But my iPad 3rd Gen that is still running iOS 7, also synced to the Match library, is perfectly fine - music is organized normally.

Jun 29, 2015 9:46 AM in response to Scottyboy99

I noticed something funny with my album artwork last night. I didn't think much of it, now this morning my whole Match library is messed up. Exactly like you guys were saying. Albums are split up, some artists are listed more than once. I love iTunes Match (when it works!). I hope the iOS 8.4 update fixes these issues. I'm not holding my breath though. I plan on doing a fresh install (not an upgrade) when it's released. If it doesn't fix it, what do you guys plan on doing to try and fix this?

Jun 29, 2015 10:35 AM in response to Scottyboy99

Glad found this forum, had been thinking I did something that messed up my songs. Last week I was listening to my songs on my iPhone 6 plus with 8.3 on it and suddenly my music stopped and every song I had downloaded disappeared. I have no idea what happened.


Then tried to look at my songs and somehow they all were 'hide this purchase'. Happened to only the songs, not movies or tv shows. It was pretty weird. Anyways, after about an hour of fiddling with it and turning all of them to unhide, turned on iTunes Match and everything was messed up. Songs were split into multiple views, artists not matching. I can't even download or play songs. They are there in a messed up form and all are grayed out.


I even purchased a new album [Furious 7] and every song on there is split into multiple views and I can't play or download on phone. Worked completely fine on computer.


Since it looks totally fine on my computer, I just ended up downloading all my purchases. Copied all of them to the iPhone and turned off iTunes Match for now. Really frustrating.


I'll update this if I find anything more.

Has iTunes match gone haywire?

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