Q: Has iTunes match gone haywire?

aaaaand another one too.  Only found this thread after I'd restored my phone too but its all messed up still.  Poor show by Apple

I'm experiencing exactly the same. It's very annoying, as this used to be a brilliant service, which I've recommended to loads of people. It's fine on my old Apple TV. And I've checked and checked and checked my MacBook Pro library. All okay. It's just iOS 8.3 on my iPhone 5. I'm hoping it's just a temporary glitch. Nevertheless, not really acceptable for a paid service. Breach of contract Apple...?

im really hoping 8.4 resolves this I just paid for another year!!!

Well, I too, am going to weigh in on this. Earlier today I decided to sit down at my computer and go through my iTunes playlists. I noticed all kinds of problems. Songs added to playlists that were certainly never there before. I even had a movie, not a music video in a playlist. So I spent an enormous amount of time going through each playlist checking it and fixing problem areas. After doing all this I decided to check the discussions and lo and behold I'm not the only one having issues. Guess I could interpret that as a good thing. Ha! Also after doing all my cleanup work I clicked on update iTunes Match. It started to do so but unlike those who had it just sit and spin, I did get a message saying that it couldn't connect and that the iTunes store must be busy. I can only hope this has something to do with the events taking place tomorrow but I certainly hope my hours of work don't get messed up again. I have iTunes Match turned off on my phone and only 1 playlist actually loaded on it because I have the Apple Watch and wanted to sync a playlist to it when exercising. For now I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Scottyboy99:

I am having the same problem as you with metadata mismatches in iTunes Match with an iMac mid 2011 27" i7 running MacOS 10.10.3 and an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.3.  Here is what I sent to Apple:

*****

Apple Tech Support

(877) 416-4271 x******

********

****:

I sent you an email this morning, which is restated below.

Since I emailed you, ANOTHER iTunes Match problem has popped up - several songs by different bands (The Lumineers - Gale Song, Bruno Mars - It Will Rain, Madonna - Who’s That Girl?, Whitney Houston - I Have Nothing, Blondie - Heart of Glass, Talking Heads - Life During Wartime) are now being listed by the Artist - “The Rascals” (as opposed to the correct Artist).

I thought you should know this as this is a big problem now.

Please call me to discuss or have an iTunes Match engineer call me.

Thanks.

J.P.

HERE IS THE EMAIL I SENT TO HER BEFORE THAT ONE:

*****

Apple Tech Support

(877) 416-4271 x******

********

*****:

I have not heard from you since we spoke last week on June 19.

My problem with iTunes Match has actually gotten worse.  It seems as if Apple has had some sort of software update in the iTunes Match database and has cancelled many of the changes I made to the metadata for songs I uploaded to iTunes Match (I had previously thought that it was just for songs purchased through the iTunes Music Store, but it is happening with songs that I imported into iTunes from other sources - CDs and Amazon Digital Music).  Needless to say, this is a pain - for example, this problem has resulted in a single album being “split” into two or more albums, which means that you can’t listen to the entire album straight through from the first song to the last as the artist intended).  Also, some artists are now listed as “Various Artists” which ***** when you are looking for a particular song by U2 and not a particular song by a band named “Various Artists.”

I would be happy to talk to an iTunes engineer to help them figure out what is wrong because if it is happening to me, it will be happening to many other people, and as an Apple shareholder and fanboy, I don’t want Apple to be maligned.

Please follow up with this.

Thanks.

J.P.

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL EMAIL I SENT TO HER:

*****

Apple Tech Support

(877) 416-4271 x******

********

*****:

Thanks for taking my call today.

The reason for my email is that I have iTunes Match (for which I pay $25 per year) and when I buy a song on iTunes, the metadata for the song purchased frequently does not match what I want the metadata to reflect (for example, the song “Will it Go Round in Circles” by Billy Preston shows up as being from the album “20th Century Masters” (which is a best of album).  I want the metadata for this song to reflect the original album in which this song appeared, “Music is My Life” so I made the change manually in my ITunes library on my iMac running MacOS X 10.10.3 and iTunes Version 12.1.2.27, then I click on “”Update iTunes Match” under the “Store” menu in iTunes on my iMac and after the matching process is done, it changes the changes I made back to what Apple wants to call the song.  Another example is the album “Handel: Messiah (Remastered 2014)” by the Academy of Ancient Music (which, oddly enough is “Mastered for iTunes”).   It makes more sense to designate this album’s artist as Handel (the writer from the 1700s) rather than by the orchestra who performed on this album, so I changed the artist to “Handel” on my iMac, but when I click on ”Update iTunes Match” the metadata will not update through to my iPhone 6.  What makes this particular Handel album even more irritating is that there are different performers on this record, so the “Artist” is listed as the “Academy of Ancient Music” sometimes, “Emmy Kirkby” others and “Choir of Christ Church” on others.  Thus, when this album is viewed on my iPhone, the album is actually split up into several different albums based on who Apple considers to be the artist - in other words, there are separate albums for “Academy of Ancient Music”, “Emmy Kirkby” and “Choir of Christ Church.”   This is super irritating since when you buy Handel’s Messiah (one of the most famous operas in history), you do so to listen to the whole album in order.  The way Apple categorizes this record is that listening to each song in order is impossible because of the way that Apple has identified the performers “Academy of Ancient Music”, “Emmy Kirkby” and “Choir of Christ Church” and split them into separate albums.

This problem has occurred sporadically over the years since iTunes Match was introduced, but the problem was pretty much fixed until this week when all of the songs I purchased in the iTunes Music Store started replacing the manual changes I made with the song names, artist names and album names that Apple wants to call them (which, as I explained, in many cases are wrong or don’t make sense).

When Steve Jobs introduced iTunes Match in June 2011 and when Tim Cook talks about Apple and Music today, the mantra is that Apple has Music in its DNA.  I believe that this is true, but someone in Apple needs to fix this irritating problem which is not just happening to me (type “iTunes match metadata problem” in Google search and you will see that many other people have the same problem as me.

This problem only occurs with songs bought through the iTunes Music Store (not where songs are bought on Amazon in mp3 format or where the songs were imported into iTunes via physical CDs.

I will be happy to work with Apple Engineers to figure out how to fix this problem as I love the concept of iTunes Match and want it to work as much as Apple does since I use this product every day.  I suggest that when an iTunes Match user manually makes a change to a song purchased in the iTunes Music Store, that the system default is that iTunes Match NEVER reverts back to the old data.

Again, thanks for taking the time to review this issue.

J.P.

<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Add me to the list. I actually just signed up for iTunes match last week, so I was afraid that this was normal behavior. I was somewhat relieved when I found out that it's a fairly recent problem. I can confirm that this only seems to be affecting current software versions. My library is a mess on my iPhone 6 running iOS 8.3 and my 3rd generation Apple TV, but everything is fine on an old iPhone 4 running iOS 7. Hopefully that's a sign that it should be an easy fix.

I haven't used my Apple TV for a while, and when I went to play some music last night, I got a bit of a shock when I saw all this nonsense!  Tried my iPad, which streams from the Cloud, same issue - but everything is fine on the MacBook as it is on the iPod / iPhone, where I don't use streaming, only stuff stored on these devices.

I'm very glad I checked it out here before messing about with settings, deleting libraries, resetting things etc!!  I'm just going to leave it alone for a few days and see what iOS 8.4 brings to the party.  I can't see myself ever using the Apple Music subscription service - I had spotify for a bit and very rarely used it.  I like the iTunes Match service (when it's working!) because it's a great way to access and play everything - I use the iPad and a Bluetooth enabled Bose speaker.

That said, over the last few months, I have organised and indexed my CDs - all 800+ of them, - and bulked up my vinyl collection again.  I'm quite enjoying this olde worlde way of listening to my music!!

Add me to the list. I'm from France, so this is a worldwide problem. It started when i reinitialized my iphone and my ipad a couple of days ago. My iTunes library is ok on my mac, but completely unusable on my ios devices. And I'm sure it's most likely related to the launch of this Beats Music thing and iOS4 scheduled today. I'm waiting for the software update to see if it fixes thing.

I'm like Mark Lawless. Love my collection of CDs took me months to rip them. I've got AirPlay everywhere in the house and have always had the freedom of steaming my music on which ever device is in my hand. Useless on iPad now. Unusable on my iPhone 5. Mac is ok thankgod. I'm having to lift the lid on the Mac now wait for it to boot etc just to play some tunes, not good. Hope I don't have to cancel my subscription.  Don't want Apples new streaming service. It's not for me unfortunatly.

havn't checked the Apple TV yet???

It's quite apparent you take pride in the music

Library you have created. I'm hoping all our

existing iTunes Match libraries will function

properly should we not continue with Apple

Music after the 3 month trial period. All my

Artists & Albums are a mess. So bad I must

listen via playlists only. I've spent thousands

on cd's, etc that are uploaded in the iTunes

Match cloud. And it deserves to be orgaized

as it was two weeks ago.

another voice here! same on my iPad2 and my iPhone 5s. Also I'm glad I found this thread!

I find this whole episode disturbing. A good company (and indeed any good organisation) should put its hand up as soon as possible if there is a problem of its creation. Communication is everything in maintaining trust with customers.  I thought Apple would fall into this category but apparently not. I'm lucky. I have the tech experience to look in forums like this when I have a problem. How many other apple customers do not and are currently turning iTunes match on and off and trying the other suggested fixes from apple's tech support. This is not the way a good company should treat its customers. I am disappointed with Apple. I have recommended them and indeed ITunes match to many friends and I feel let down. A poor show indeed.

Agreed. I, too, have recommended the service to many friends. It's not so much the problem but the lack of response from Apple that really annoys! Why don't they make an announcement? At least just throw their hands up and say, "Look, we know there's a problem and we're working on it". This thread now has almost 150 posts (more, if some posts have been deleted as other users have commented) and over 6500 views. I'm stunned that there is no official comment (unless I have missed it) from Apple.