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Apple Temporarily Halts New iTunes Match Subscriptions in New International Markets

A Complete Mess

I've been an early days adopter of all things Apple since 1987. This is the first real issue I've had - even MobileMe worked out just great for me.

So it appears, I subscribe, I can't turn it on.

Quick email to tech support - it's not available in your country, against the explicit press release telling me that it is.

I'm told that I'm to get a refund, however it's now working on my iMac iTunes installation. Won't work however on my iPad as I'm told that I'm not subscribed.

There's no option to cancel or unsubscribe on the iTunes which is (slowly) uploading the few thousand tracks that weren't matched.

So completely confused and utterly let down by the service.

This is Apple's biggest embarrassment in a very long time.

Disheartened, apparently out of pocket and completely stuck without further information or instruction. :(

EDIT:
Had a brain wave. Turned iTunes match off on my desktop iTunes. Then resubscribed from the iTunes store. Worked perfectly first time (although I've currently paid for the service twice). Now having my library re-scanned. Went to iPad, turned on iTunes match (settings > music > iTunes Match (top option). And asked for my password. Again, worked first time.

Hopefully this advice will help others as Apple seemed completely unable to help.
 
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well, i'll just let all you early adopters to upload all the songs and deal with the headaches, and then in a couple weeks, i'll get a fast and painless service with no headaches, just because i've waited a bit! lol you should start learning! people should calm down when "early adopting" these services! it sucks if it fails, but no one is going to die! so chill out and breath for a second! cheers
 
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Mr. Gates said:
I wonder how long it would take for my music.

About 700 Gigs.

And Most of it is from Vinyl rips
Click to expand...

The limit is 25000 songs. 700 GB is most likely more.

I ripped all my vinyl to Apple Lossless, hoping that one day I would find some good software that removes all the noise from the record player. iTunes Match managed to match probably more than half of those songs. It obviously won't match if you ripped one side of an LP into one song.


ipedro said:
I just deleted my 3000+ Matched tracks and am now downloading it all in 256kbps non-DRM goodness. If many people are doing this (as I suspect they are), no wonder Apple's servers are taking a pounding.
Click to expand...

That is actually exactly what I paid £22 for.
 
ipedro said:
This is the opposite of a screw-up. Apple is taking charge in ensuring that quality of use is not degraded for people who have already purchased the service. Demand is greater than what Apple expected so they'll be opening the gates slowly to allow them to meet demand without crashing the whole thing.
Click to expand...

I wonder what you would say when Microsoft, Google or Sony would do the same thing in the same situation.
 
Winni said:
I wonder what you would say when Microsoft, Google or Sony would do the same thing in the same situation.
Click to expand...

Same thing. Your attemp at painting a man as a cool-aid drinking Apple drone just failed badly. Not that this is a surprise to me looking at your colourful post history.
 
netdog said:
Just signed up this morning. Working fine here in the UK.
Click to expand...

Same here.

Actually I had been trying last night from my Mac Mini (where most of my music is held) and getting the "check back later" message.
This morning I tried from my MBP and it was letting me sign up.
Instead of signing up there I went back to the Mac Mini.
That was still giving me the "check back later" message!

Only after restarting iTunes did it let me in.

So if you're still getting the message and having restarted iTunes, try that.
 
Do you have to upload music or can you simply have the service match ? i simply want to match and upgrade music with this service
 
The difference between Apple and another company is that we know they'll fix the issues and won't put up with mediocrity for very long.
 
z4n3 said:
Until you purchase there is no way of knowing if your songs will be matched.
(looking on iTunes one by one could work I suppose haha)

I was very disappointed at the amount of songs that have errors or states that this song is not eligible for iCloud, taking into account I have had my iTunes library since 2001 and only used iTunes to import songs etc.

My iTunes library only has 4000 Matched songs out of 16000 which is quite poor matching results, or I have strange taste in music I guess :eek:
Click to expand...

I have the impression that the same CD bought in different countries doesn't contain identical music. As an example, I've got one compilation CD with about 30 songs, not one matched, and it turns out that the songs on my CD are all a few seconds shorter that the ones on the iTunes store. Another example, on Suzanne Vega 99.9F all songs but two match; on my recording one song is twenty seconds longer and the other twenty second shorter than on the iTunes store. Or Genesis, Abacab: The iTunes store version is "2007 remastered", mine was bought 20 years earlier.
 
It seems some albums I've purchased on iTunes (in the UK and Italy stores) are only getting partially matched. Some tracks have to be uploaded to iCloud. And then I have some live recordings that are definitely not on iTunes but that have been matched. Weird...
 
Isn't there ANY WAY to tell Match to disable uploading songs that AREN'T in the iTunes store? I have alot of **** I don't care about anymore, I don't need it to upload every damn audio file to the cloud, I just want it to match whats in the store. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way to do this. I wish there was an option of giving me a list of what it couldn't match, then I can choose from that what I want to upload. But no, it doesn't, and it's either all or nothing.
 
mcbg1 said:
It seems some albums I've purchased on iTunes (in the UK and Italy stores) are only getting partially matched. Some tracks have to be uploaded to iCloud. And then I have some live recordings that are definitely not on iTunes but that have been matched. Weird...
Click to expand...

As an example, look up "Pink Missundazstood" on Wikipedia. There is a US version and an "International" version of the album, with songs in a completely different order, and 15 songs in the international version vs. 14 in the US version. So the last song "Catch 22" won't match. It's not in the iTunes store. Well, I got it from Amazon. If you bought stuff on iTunes and it doesn't match, use "Feedback" in iTunes and complain.

Slurpy2k8 said:
Isn't there ANY WAY to tell Match to disable uploading songs that AREN'T in the iTunes store? I have alot of **** I don't care about anymore, I don't need it to upload every damn audio file to the cloud, I just want it to match whats in the store. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way to do this. I wish there was an option of giving me a list of what it couldn't match, then I can choose from that what I want to upload. But no, it doesn't, and it's either all or nothing.
Click to expand...

As before, use "Feedback" in iTunes to complain. But here's how you do it:

Quit iTunes. Then start iTunes again while holding down the option key. iTunes will ask you whether you want to use a different library, or create a library. You create a new library (in a different place than the old one) and match it with iTunes Match, which will be very quick because your library is empty. iTunes will then contact iTunes Match to see what music you have the cloud. Delete everything that you don't want.

When you are done, quit iTunes again, start it once again with the option key held down and select your old library. All the things you removed from iTunes Match is now marked as "removed". Obviously best to do this before uploading thousands of songs.
 
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m11rphy said:
Do you have to upload music or can you simply have the service match ? i simply want to match and upgrade music with this service
Click to expand...

No, you have to upload.

Whilst many people are attracted by the ability to upgrade, it is just an incidental benefit of matching. It isn't what it is actually for.

I suspect that if the intention was to provide a service to upgrade peoples rubbish to 256kbps it would cost a lot more than it does.

However, when you run the scan you will find that matches start to show up fairly early in the process. If you are creative with multiple iTunes accounts (or with more than one computer if possible) you could start the scan running, stop it, open a different iTunes and collect the upgraded songs. Probably needs a bit of playing around with, but if you are only interested in upgrading and are worried about big uploads then that could be the answer.

----------
gnasher729 said:
I have the impression that the same CD bought in different countries doesn't contain identical music. As an example, I've got one compilation CD with about 30 songs, not one matched, and it turns out that the songs on my CD are all a few seconds shorter that the ones on the iTunes store. Another example, on Suzanne Vega 99.9F all songs but two match; on my recording one song is twenty seconds longer and the other twenty second shorter than on the iTunes store. Or Genesis, Abacab: The iTunes store version is "2007 remastered", mine was bought 20 years earlier.
Click to expand...

It is extremely early days, but initial results from my matching suggest that the age of the CD you ripped from is relevant.

With newer CD's (regardless of the release date), I have had very good results, 100% in many cases, but CD's purchased in the 80's and 90's are very patchy.

My assumption is that with older CD's it is much more likely that the version in iTunes is from a newer issue (whether due to remastering, or some other tinkering done during the process) and that is why we are getting some songs on albums being matched and some not.

As I say, it's early days and that may well not prove to be the case, but I suspect it may be.

Personally, I'm happy to have a number of unmatched songs if it is because the process is rigorous enough to avoid mismatches. However, I'm not using this to upgrade my music and I don't have any internet usage limits, so an unmatched song just means it takes longer for the library to be complete.
 
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I'd echo the advice to either chill and accept the pain that goes with being on the bleeding edge or wait a few months for things to be properly bedded-in.

Personally, I'm pretty impressed. I have 16.5k tracks, some of which go back to rips from CDs bought in the mid-1980s when CDs were hi-tech. The service matched 13k of them, and did so pretty quickly. From random checks, the matched music all seems to stream flawlessly on my iPhone and iPad.

The unimpressive bit is the uploading of the remaining 3.5k, which is currently proceeding at a snail's pace. But that's to be expected with half the world doing the same thing.
 
Assimilated said:
I'd echo the advice to either chill and accept the pain that goes with being on the bleeding edge or wait a few months for things to be properly bedded-in.

Personally, I'm pretty impressed. I have 16.5k tracks, some of which go back to rips from CDs bought in the mid-1980s when CDs were hi-tech. The service matched 13k of them, and did so pretty quickly. From random checks, the matched music all seems to stream flawlessly on my iPhone and iPad.

The unimpressive bit is the uploading of the remaining 3.5k, which is currently proceeding at a snail's pace. But that's to be expected with half the world doing the same thing.
Click to expand...

My uploads went at the full speed that my internet connection is capable of. Which isn't very fast at all :mad: . Usually your upload speed is a lot lot lower than your download speed.
 
Just signed up. Canada. Took, like, 10 seconds.

It's been in Step 1 (Gathering Information) for about 20 minutes - 15k song library.

Progress bar seems to be inching (millimetering) forward, so I assume this is normal speed. Believable, if it's actually "playing" parts of every song to get a fingerprint.
 
gnasher729 said:
The limit is 25000 songs. 700 GB is most likely more.

I ripped all my vinyl to Apple Lossless, hoping that one day I would find some good software that removes all the noise from the record player. iTunes Match managed to match probably more than half of those songs. It obviously won't match if you ripped one side of an LP into one song.




That is actually exactly what I paid £22 for.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like this will work for me. I will continue to use ORB LIVE
 
Wow. It matched barely one third of my library. Will have to dig into it, see if there are some low hanging fruit reasons on why.
 
WeegieMac said:
I am aware of the argument around "ownership" once CD's are sold, ....
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So, if you are aware of the "argument" do you agree that selling the physical CD sells your "ownership" of a copy of the music - and therefore sells any "ownership" of copies that you've made under "fair use" provisions?

And therefore, of course, any copies of music on CDs that you have sold are therefore pirated music if you didn't delete them when you sold the CD?
 
gnasher729 said:
I have the impression that the same CD bought in different countries doesn't contain identical music. As an example, I've got one compilation CD with about 30 songs, not one matched, and it turns out that the songs on my CD are all a few seconds shorter that the ones on the iTunes store. Another example, on Suzanne Vega 99.9F all songs but two match; on my recording one song is twenty seconds longer and the other twenty second shorter than on the iTunes store. Or Genesis, Abacab: The iTunes store version is "2007 remastered", mine was bought 20 years earlier.
Click to expand...

If few seconds make such big difference then this algorithm is quite a failure. I know this for sure, because it even can't determine that songs i have came from iTunes, it manages to match just 1 album out of 4. All albums are normal, not some compilations or country specific releases that doesn't exist anymore. Still it fails badly.
 
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