iTunes Match is not working for a growing number of users

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited August 2021
An increasing number of iTunes Match users are reporting issues with the service, with some claiming content uploads have not been functional for weeks.

iTunes Match


Launched by Apple in 2011, iTunes Match allows users to pair songs in their music library, whether it be downloaded songs or CD rips, with high resolution versions pulled from iTunes. Matched music can then be made available for listening across all owned devices.

To use the service, customers first need to upload their music libraries from the Apple Music app to iCloud for processing. For some, however, that mechanism is no longer working, according to online accounts.

Multiple Apple Support Communities forum and Reddit threads discussing the issue note an array of difficulties, though most complaints focus on problematic uploads. Many reports claim the system enters a "loop" or "freezes" when attempting to upload new content for matching.

"You can download all your files in the cloud but if you upload more, they will not respond. Seems this has been broken for a week now," said one Reddit user.

Other users say the upload process begins, but then stalls with a message saying, "matching your music with songs in the iTunes store."

Apple support personnel are apparently unaware of a widespread problem, according to multiple users who contacted the company for assistance. MacRumors, which reported on the iTunes Match troubles earlier today, claims some users were told that the problem was a hardware issue.

While reports of similar complications date back months, the last week has seen a significant uptick in complaints posted to forums and social media platforms. The increase has been attributed by some to a recent update to the Apple Music app, though the software's role in the ongoing issue has not been confirmed.

Apple includes iTunes Match as part of an Apple Music subscription or as a standalone service that costs $24.99 a year.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    I have paid for iTunes Match for years. Not sure why anymore. Apple Music is really all I need. I have no idea how to see what's in or on my iTM. The only way I actually know I have it is because I get an invoice once a year. 
    bulk001
  • Reply 2 of 26
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    I have had trouble even with Apple Music since the introduction of Apple lossless and Atmos.
    I download tracks to play offline on my work phone out of wifi range.  I replaced existing playlists with the new features.
    They only play 15 seconds then hang. Exactly 15 seconds. Very annoying over CarPlay.

    Edit: and a quick search shows I am not the only one.
    edited August 2021 Japheybulk001
  • Reply 3 of 26
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    entropys said:
    I have had trouble even with Apple Music since the introduction of Apple lossless and Atmos.
    I download tracks to play offline on my work phone out of wifi range.  I replaced existing playlists with the new features.
    They only play 15 seconds then hang. Exactly 15 seconds. Very annoying over CarPlay.

    Edit: and a quick search shows I am not the only one.
    I have had this with my Airpods, only there is hideous digital screeching noise at full volume 15 seconds in instead. First time it happened I hit the Airpods out my ears it was so painful. It has happened again since, so I turned off lossless and Atmos and it's not happened again.
  • Reply 4 of 26
    Match hasn’t been working for me for a while now…
  • Reply 5 of 26
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    I just ripped a CD into the Music app and it uploaded just fine. I see no issues on my end.
  • Reply 6 of 26
    baconstangbaconstang Posts: 1,103member
    It seems to work fine for me, so far.
    I don't bother with lossless or Atmos.  Hi-def files are on my iMacs if I want to go that way.  
    A lot of the uploaded stuff is from monitor mixes I did at the end of sessions, and are not matchable.
    It's nice having 13K songs available from my iPhone or MBA without using a ton of space.
  • Reply 7 of 26
    Current Scroll Down of AI headlines Has All Of The Following:
    -Apple App Scam
    -Apple Sexism
    -Apple Sued 
    -Apple Wallet Dropped
    -Pegasus!
    -Apple HomePod Has No Market
    -Apple Phones Beat by Xiaomi
    -Apple Turns To (oh Bad!)Chinese Manufacturer To make IPhones

    Understandable as guess which stories get the clicks and comments? (hint: see above for the likely answer)






    p-doglkrupppscooter63spock1234
  • Reply 8 of 26
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,036member
    Apple made a mess out of music when they replaced iTunes with Apple Music and there have been problems before that.

    I have been a customer of iTunes Match since the first day it was available and problems with updating it with new files is not really new.
  • Reply 9 of 26
    I stopped my iTunes Match subscription a year ago when a poster here pointed out that the functionality was available with Apple Music. I've had issues with music getting uploaded and sometimes the artwork not getting updated.
    It is a little frustrating. I don't care about the matching aspect, but the uploading really needs some fixing. 

    There was a time when I could connect my iPhone to my iMac and directly add the music into the phone. Now I need to rip it onto my iMac, upload it (which is a real pain) and then download it onto my iPhone. 

    Doesn't "just work" anymore.
    susiesqueuebulk001
  • Reply 10 of 26
    TuuborTuubor Posts: 53member
    The real pain is that still to this day you cannot import music to the Music app on iOS.
  • Reply 11 of 26
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,333member
    paxman said:
    I have paid for iTunes Match for years. Not sure why anymore. Apple Music is really all I need. I have no idea how to see what's in or on my iTM. The only way I actually know I have it is because I get an invoice once a year. 
    Did you notice the following statement in the article above?

    Apple includes iTunes Match as part of an Apple Music subscription

    I dropped iTunes Match when I signed up for Apple Music. It seems to be working just fine for me - although I don’t rip a lot of CDs anymore. I’m always on the hunt for less well known music, especially local bands and singer-songwriters, when I go to yard sales, rummage sales, or attend a song night at a local cafe or bar. So far everything I’ve ripped into Apple Music on my Mac gets uploaded to my library and is available for downloading to local storage on all of my Apple devices and for streaming on devices that don’t have local music storage, like Apple TV.

    I will say that over the years the iTunes Match service, along with iTunes and Apple Music, has periods of weird behavior that leaves my music library in a state of turmoil. I’ll end up with duplicates and individual songs, say from a compilation, forced into albums. I’ll also see single albums split into multiple albums with one or two songs stuck in their own copy of the original album. It can be very frustrating and makes me wonder if Apple has any employees that understand how the music industry creates and manages its products. I suspect Apple’s engineers try to get too cute about minimizing the library storage footprint and start playing games with the metadata to minimize storage needs. If they can do it 100% transparently and with 0% loss I’d be okay with it, but they don’t. If the same named song is on 10 albums by the same artist I expect every single album with that song to have a copy of that song in it even if it costs me more storage. I want the integrity of the original album organization preserved, end of story.

    So if the big headline here is that “Apple Messed up iTunes Match,” I’d simply add “Again.” They will fix it - and they will break it again later on down the road. That’s just what Apple does when they over engineer a solution to a problem that didn’t need fixing. If they’d just stick with the organization that the producers of the music laid out since day one and uploaded and downloaded content with no concern for optimization these kinds of problems would be minimized. If storage size is a concern on their end they can optimize the storage of the content on their servers, but I’d rather they not try to do me any favors on my side or on my devices. It’s never ended well.  
    edited August 2021 urashid
  • Reply 12 of 26
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Current Scroll Down of AI headlines Has All Of The Following:
    -Apple App Scam
    -Apple Sexism
    -Apple Sued 
    -Apple Wallet Dropped
    -Pegasus!
    -Apple HomePod Has No Market
    -Apple Phones Beat by Xiaomi
    -Apple Turns To (oh Bad!)Chinese Manufacturer To make IPhones

    Understandable as guess which stories get the clicks and comments? (hint: see above for the likely answer)






    Yep, all we ever hear on tech blogs these days is how bad Apple is. It’s on full display in the comments. Occasional story about Apple doing good or praising a product gets zero (0) comments. Publish a negative story and the comments fill up the forum to overflowing with outrage, disappointment, waging tongues, like this thread for example. Apple’s quarterly blowout got almost no response. If Apple had not met expectations the knives would be out, Apple has lost its way, fire Tim Cook, QA has gone to pot, nobody wants Apple products anymore. You know the drill. Guaranteed like death and taxes. And those who defend Apple are labeled fanboys. If you’re not on the “I hate Apple” bandwagon you have no street cred on sites like this one.

    And when Apple keeps growing and selling more and more products that crowd scratches their heads in bewilderment. How could suck a sucky company still be in business. Oh, I forgot, only stupid people buy Apple.
    edited August 2021 ArchStantonspock1234
  • Reply 13 of 26
    gcvgcv Posts: 18member
    I gave up on iTunes Match about two years ago. It kept corrupting my music files, and I would often end up with duplicate files. I would also import high quality CDs into iTunes and the Match program would replace them with lower definition files. Lastly, if when I entered my CDs into Match, and did something as minor as leaving an extra space between two words in an album or song title, Match would either not recognize the album or would replace it with something different. I literally spent DAYS talking with tech support to function and eventually decided the aggravation was not worth the convenience.
    dewmescstrrf
  • Reply 14 of 26
    I don’t sleep well so when Playlists came along I uploaded tons of music via Match — enough to play for a week, 24x7 on my HomePod. I almost always wake up to silence. I texted with Apple support who ‘assured’ me it was a faulty WiFi, or a refrigerator between me and the router (?), or some other stupid reason. It was better after 14.7 but broken again with 14.7.1

    There is a worm in the Apple 
    scstrrf
  • Reply 15 of 26
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    dewme said:

    Did you notice the following statement in the article above?

    Apple includes iTunes Match as part of an Apple Music subscription
    Good point. I sped through it and didn't see that. Come to think of it I probably haven't paid anything for years but I used to notice it and wonder why I had it. I haven owned a CD in a very long time and anything I had I can listen to on AM. I get so many invoices / receipts from Apple I rarely look. It's a family thing and I get all the invoices for all the services as well as books bought. 
  • Reply 16 of 26
    urashidurashid Posts: 127member
    lkrupp said:
    I just ripped a CD into the Music app and it uploaded just fine. I see no issues on my end.

    It's a hit or miss with me. Last CD I ripped only partially uploaded (4 out 15) and every time I hit "Update Cloud Library" a couple more songs get transferred. Granted, this particular CD is not available in Apple Music so that might have something to do with it.  The previous two CDs I ripped uploaded without any issues (these albums are available on AM).
  • Reply 17 of 26
    lkrupp said:
    Current Scroll Down of AI headlines Has All Of The Following:
    -Apple App Scam
    -Apple Sexism
    -Apple Sued 
    -Apple Wallet Dropped
    -Pegasus!
    -Apple HomePod Has No Market
    -Apple Phones Beat by Xiaomi
    -Apple Turns To (oh Bad!)Chinese Manufacturer To make IPhones

    Understandable as guess which stories get the clicks and comments? (hint: see above for the likely answer)






    Yep, all we ever hear on tech blogs these days is how bad Apple is. It’s on full display in the comments. Occasional story about Apple doing good or praising a product gets zero (0) comments. Publish a negative story and the comments fill up the forum to overflowing with outrage, disappointment, waging tongues, like this thread for example. Apple’s quarterly blowout got almost no response. If Apple had not met expectations the knives would be out, Apple has lost its way, fire Tim Cook, QA has gone to pot, nobody wants Apple products anymore. You know the drill. Guaranteed like death and taxes. And those who defend Apple are labeled fanboys. If you’re not on the “I hate Apple” bandwagon you have no street cred on sites like this one.

    And when Apple keeps growing and selling more and more products that crowd scratches their heads in bewilderment. How could suck a sucky company still be in business. Oh, I forgot, only stupid people buy Apple.

    I'm always (always) a believer in the saying 'follow the money'. Want to know why something is happening, start by following the money.
    IMHO it's no coincidence that the onslaught of negative press stories about Apple started right around the time that the privacy data spigot was fully turned off (became default) to numerous big and little companies.  This info spigot turn off hit a wide swatch of industries. Not even Apple can mess with the $$$ without getting blowback. 
    scstrrf
  • Reply 18 of 26
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,333member
    paxman said:
    dewme said:

    Did you notice the following statement in the article above?

    Apple includes iTunes Match as part of an Apple Music subscription
    Good point. I sped through it and didn't see that. Come to think of it I probably haven't paid anything for years but I used to notice it and wonder why I had it. I haven owned a CD in a very long time and anything I had I can listen to on AM. I get so many invoices / receipts from Apple I rarely look. It's a family thing and I get all the invoices for all the services as well as books bought. 

    It's easy to lose track of some of the features that don't get talked about very much, like iTunes Match.

    One music related feature that I find very useful that we don't see mentioned very often is Home Sharing. Home Sharing allows you to share the music library on your Mac (or multiple Macs) with other devices on the same network, including iPhone, iPod, and AppleTV. This allows you to play music on all of these other devices without requiring Internet access or requiring the music to be copied to the storage on the devices that are consuming the shared content.

    I've found Home Sharing to be very useful for playing music on older devices with limited storage, or no storage in the case of Apple TV. I have an older Apple TV connected to a TV that is connected to my vintage analog receiver via an inexpensive DAC (~$25) that has optical audio input to analog output. The Apple TV shares the ~230 GB music library sitting on my iMac via Home Sharing. I could literally play music for more than 2 months 24x7 without hearing the same song twice. I could use an iPod to do the same thing, plug the iPod audio out into the DAC, but I like having the Apple TV sequencing through the lovely screen savers or my Photos library (also on the iMac) while the music is playing in my space.

    Like I said, Home Sharing is a nice little, but seldom talked about, feature that's built into most of Apple's products.
    edited August 2021 ArchStantonscstrrf
  • Reply 19 of 26
    dewme said:
    paxman said:
    dewme said:

    Did you notice the following statement in the article above?

    Apple includes iTunes Match as part of an Apple Music subscription
    Good point. I sped through it and didn't see that. Come to think of it I probably haven't paid anything for years but I used to notice it and wonder why I had it. I haven owned a CD in a very long time and anything I had I can listen to on AM. I get so many invoices / receipts from Apple I rarely look. It's a family thing and I get all the invoices for all the services as well as books bought. 

    It's easy to lose track of some of the features that don't get talked about very much, like iTunes Match.

    One music related feature that I find very useful that we don't see mentioned very often is Home Sharing. Home Sharing allows you to share the music library on your Mac (or multiple Macs) with other devices on the same network, including iPhone, iPod, and AppleTV. This allows you to play music on all of these other devices without requiring Internet access or requiring the music to be copied to the storage on the devices that are consuming the shared content.

    I've found Home Sharing to be very useful for playing music on older devices with limited storage, or no storage in the case of Apple TV. I have an older Apple TV connected to a TV that is connected to my vintage analog receiver via an inexpensive DAC (~$25) that has optical audio input to analog output. The Apple TV shares the ~230 GB music library sitting on my iMac via Home Sharing. I could literally play music for more than 2 months 24x7 without hearing the same song twice. I could use an iPod to do the same thing, plug the iPod audio out into the DAC, but I like having the Apple TV sequencing through the lovely screen savers or my Photos library (also on the iMac) while the music is playing in my space.

    Like I said, Home Sharing is a nice little, but seldom talked about, feature that's built into most of Apple's products.
    That's a great point. The little features sometimes take time to discover (like reading it on a poster board). IMHO Apple is doing a better job of getting information tidbits into user hands but still needs to do better in getting out -- some more easy 'how to' on these items.

    Apple provides the gold standard basis for interoperation of multiple devices, devices that take the least amount of effort, updating and general bug fixing to make work. Not perfect (interop tech will never be perfect IMHO). I have friends who will ask me to help (for anyone that is any type of PC support they'll know this: the average person assumes I know everything 'techie' because I work in support) with their disparate line of tech products. IME the average user (average) just isn't capable of making it all work on an ongoing basis without deciding they are going to learn it (which is a small slice of users). They end up working out a limited working routine for the basic functionality, and that is what they use. This is where Apple can beat the competition hands down. IMHO they just need to do better getting that out to the user base (and competition user base).  Every Apple product should come with a video showing a user experiencing the array of products. 

    scstrrf
  • Reply 20 of 26
    digitoldigitol Posts: 276member
    Apple is dead.  “It just works” doesn’t. 
    “Software so easy to use you don’t need a manual” isn’t.  “Macs don’t get viruses/malware” they do.  “Macs are great for video or graphics”. They are not.  That said, the said truth and fact is the competition sucks worse.   
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