Baffled by Match Playlists

[Rufuss Sewell]

I feel like I'm walking through a maze of mirrors with iTunes Match Playlists.

I make music for radio and TV commercials. I make lots of mixes every day and I like to check the mixes in the car when I'm out.

When it works, Match is great for this! I finish a mix, throw it on iTunes and it's available on my iPhone for listening in the car.

Unfortunately I have no clue how I'm supposed to add songs to playlists without them disappearing - not showing up - becoming "not a music file"

I'm baffled.

When a mix is bounced from Logic, the resulting MP3 only has a song title. So in order to keep it organized I drag the MP3 into my desired playlist first. Then I add the artist, album etc.

But the next time I open iTunes the song is no longer in the playlist... sometimes.

Other times it is. Other times it's in my main library but not the playlist. Sometimes the playlist has a slash through it and says it contains non music files... but they're just normal 320 MP3 files created by Logic.

Either way, by the next day everything comes back and I'll have three copies of the same song, or old mixes that I erased from the playlist etc.

It's totally unpredictable and a complete nightmare compared to just old fashioned cable syncing. I love most of Match, but there has to be a predictable work flow that I'm missing here.

Any clues?