[Macworld]

Post your comments for iTunes Match: One year in here

[Toon61]

Like so many others, I was very excited about iTunes Match. But most of the issues described here, are applicable to me and some drive me crazy.
The most annoying one is that is seems like iTunes Match just 'hangs' at matching the remaining 200-300 tracks in my 10.000 track library. Newly ripped and added CD's (yes, I'm one of those people that still buy CD's) are matched almost immediately. But still, I keep tracks unmatched from, mostly, 'obscure' albums that are available in the iTunes Store. These 200-300 tracks don't get matched, whatever I try (there are a lot of workarounds on the internet I tried).
When iTunes tries matching these tracks, I have the feeling iTunes Match 'hangs'. You can play songs through iTunes. But when I want to quit iTunes, it just won't quit. The only way is to Force Quit iTunes. Having done that, and relaunching iTunes it always complains about the iTunes store and I have to sign out and sign in again to get everything working again (after adding my computer to iTunes Match again).
None of this happens when iTunes Match is not running.

[DougAdams]

I'm still getting downloads from iTunes Match that are truncated; the audio data is all there but something about the file trips up iTunes and playback stops during the first third-or-so of affected files. This is a serious issue.

Some have suggested that shutting off simultaneous downloads may prevent this. But that doesn't help when a not-insignificant number of files already downloaded are truncated.

[Philmco]

I took a flier on iTunes Match, simply to upgrade the quality of my library, but couldn't agree more with this article as I've experienced all the problems mentioned and more. That fee was a bargain even if at least a third didn't necessarily match. Whether I re up for another year depends largely on how these problems are addressed. I hope Apple is listening.

[SilverSideDown]

I told Apple I wouldn't be renewing iTunes match if they don't fix the explicit song problem. I had many songs replaced with clean versions.

Also hate that I lost ability to manage songs on iPhone. If I know for a fact I won't listen to something on my mobile device, I should be able to delete it.

[DocNo]

Not being able to "anchor" a playlist to never be deleted was the most annoying thing before iOS 6 - now not being able to download individual songs is even more annoying. And frustrating that we had it and then it was removed. Combine that with the track limit and iTunes Match isn't nearly as useful as I had hoped

[longwing]

I was happy with iTunes Match until the iOS 6 changes. Now I won't be renewing. Wish it weren't so.

[Curlypaws]

I purchased iTunes Match as a way to access all my music on the go and (for the most part) it does that very well. I haven’t had problems with the track limit and I haven’t (so far) noticed the problem with explicit lyrics - although that would annoy me.

But it would be nice to be able to attempt to ‘re-match’ some albums as I’ve noticed a lot of peculiar cases where albums partially match. In some cases this can be down to changes in versions of the albums - where presumably the record company has changed something enough to prevent a match, but in others there doesn’t seem to be any rational reason that I can see.

[farmertomato]

I made the mistake of thinking that I could depend on iTunes Match, and could thus free up space on my Macbook Pro by deleting the copies of songs on my internal disk. But iTunes Match is never dependably available. From time to time, everything would go gray in iTunes and I would have to sign out, shut down and restart and log in, and turn on iTunes match again in order to access my iCloud library. I quickly gave up on that one and restored by library to the internal drive, where it was dependably available. But whenever iTunes Match goes away (and it goes away a LOT), my library isn't available to the iPhone or iPad, so what's the real upside here? I don't imagine I'll be renewing.

[anotherusername]

I LOOOOOVE this Service....HOWEVER, they need to fix two things or I will NOT renew for a third year. 1. they need to up the song limit, and for ANYONE who says anything about "piracy" in this matter, I only need to point to the fact that APPLE sells and advertises iPODS that hold more than 25,000 songs....so if they are going to sell a device that hold more than 25,000 they need to let me HAVE more 25,000 in my library. 2. they need to put the swipe to delete option back on the phone when music match is turned on....the fact they took it off is silly, but the fact that you can still swipe to delete if you don't use music match, is insane and ass backwards. If the only way I sync my music is via USB why would I need to swipe to delete? on the contrary if I ONLY use music match, I may want to free up space on my phone and now I can't.....C'MON APPLE! These are two easy fixes, and I would be willing to pay for more songs too!

[Flexmeister]

I wish Apple would introduce something like Spotify. These days I use iTunes Match mostly to free up hard drive space, and for that it's a tad expensive.
But the Spotify client drives me up the wall. "Want to listen to music? Ok, let me just block your entire upload bandwidth, so everything else will come to a stand-still."
Little Snitch can intercept most of this, but man alive. I really hope Apple is working on something.

[StevenFishervsh2]

I have another one:

Copy lower bitrate tracks over the cloud.

I have a whole bunch of speaking tracks, all ripped at an insanely low bitrate. I understand that these can't be matched, but I want them on the iPhone. What's my path to get them there, other than returning to syncing my music library?

At the moment, I could get around this by converting them to higher bitrate. Then iTunes Match would copy them over. It just means more storage on my Mac, more bandwidth to get them over, and (if I store rather than stream) more storage on my iPhone. And, of course, lower quality due to lossy compression.

[EricBeining]

This might be a question best asked tomorrow, but: If you subscribe for a year, use the service to replace lower quality files on your computer (which you then delete) and then, after not-renewing your subscription, at some point you then delete the matched and downloaded file off your computer, because you thought to yourself "I have iTunes Match and can download it again later" (before deciding that you wouldn't renew the subscription), are you then able to download those files like regular iTunes in the Cloud purchases (post your iTunes Match subscription expiring)? Or are you just stuck having to track down your original file (or original CD!) somewhere if you want it back?

[edgedesign]

Some possible fixes for iTunes Match:

Update the Music app for iPad!!! There should be a way to display playlists, artists & albums as text-only lists. Those of us with many playlists and/or large music libraries suffer using iTunes Match and the graphic-only options available in the Music app for iPad. The app becomes unusable when in areas where mobile signals are weak forcing users to disable the service. Sometimes this works, but sometimes you are stuck with a spinning loading icon and no way to play your music - downloaded or not.