iTunes Match help and?

[simonpeter2]

I just signed up for itunes match, i had some glitches and searched for solutions and now am even more confused. Hopefully someone can help ...

First off i will say all my songs have not yet uploaded from my computer, at first I thought that was the problem but somethings still don't make sense so I stopped until I figure it out. I am using an iphone 4 and the latest version of itunes.

1) greyed out songs - these ones i can't play from device or cloud. Again at first i thought iy was becuase they are not uploaded, but doesnt seem like the case. One playlist that I already had on my device before the match library update had only 5 songs, after updating with Itunes match that playlist still had only 5 songs but 4 were grayed out and one was available to play. At first i thought what the heck, it deleted 4 of my songs, so i played the one song in the playlist, after that song it proceded to play the other 4 greyed out songs? Afterwarded they were still grayed out and i still cant play them directly? Makes no sense to me, hopefully someone can help.

2) keeps using my data to dowload songs from cloud - so i was in the mood for a song on the cloud - selected the play from cloud and it played fine, but then it continued on and started playing/downloading all the next songs from the cloud. Not great for me because its using my data and storage on my iphone for songs i didnt want at this time. Is there a mode or function to do just a single song play/download from the cloud? If not in the native app how about an app that lets u que the next song while a different song is playing , just to get it away from the cloud songs?

3) Last but least if i start getting some of the other issues i have read about or cant get the above working is it possible to get a refund within a certain number of days of buying itunes match.f

Thanks in advance.

[Jesse Hollington]

One very handy tip for troubleshooting iTunes Match is to make use of the iCloud Status column in iTunes. This is off by default, but you can turn it on by selecting View, View Options and enabling it from there.

This will provide you with a better indication as to the status of the tracks that you're trying to upload to iTunes Match, and you can in fact sort on the column in order to group tracks by status. Ideally, everything should be Purchased, Matched or Uploaded, but it sounds like you're probably going to encounter a few that show Error or Ineligible.

In most cases there's no hope for Ineligible tracks, as these are either outside of the iTunes Match parameters (e.g. 96kbps or higher bit-rate, under 200MB in size) or are DRM-protected tracks purchased from a different iTunes Store account (usually in a different country).

Tracks that show Error usually mean some other, unknown problem occurred when trying to match or upload those tracks. Sometimes you can get around this simply by converting the track in iTunes to another format (e.g. MP3 to AAC, or AAC 128kbps to AAC 256kbps). You'll theoretically lose quality by doing this, but if it allows the track to be actually matched to the iTunes Store that won't matter, as you'll get access to the 256kbps version regardless.

You can also create Smart Playlists using the iCloud Status field to help you track down problem tracks. See Smart Playlist and iCloud Status Field and Instant Expert: Secrets & Features of iTunes Match for more information.

As for streaming tracks from the cloud on your device, the same rules apply for track playback as they do for tracks already on your device, so you'll be stuck continuing the playlist or the album under normal circumstances, although you could set the track to repeat if you're concerned about not downloading the next track. You can also turn off "Use Cellular Data" (under Settings->Store) to prevent this from happening over 3G, or turn off the "Show All Music" option under Settings->Music to filter out iTunes Match content that is not already downloaded to your device.

[simonpeter2]

I'll play around with my itune settings when I get home and check the songs status. On holidays at moment , thus the reason I wanted to try Itunes match.

One odd thing though, I am on holidays in a city with an Apple store so I popped in and asked some questions about my issues, as far as the song list continuing to stream the tech guys at the store all said it shouldn't keep playing and stop after the one cloud song, at least they said that is what happens with thier phones? Any other input on what should or does happen from other readers using itunes match?

[Jesse Hollington]

That would only be the case if they have either turned off "Use Cellular data" and are not on Wi-Fi, or if they have turned off "Show All Music." In the first case, the Music app will not stream any songs that not on the iPhone simply because you've told it not to stream over 3G -- what would actually happen is that it would simply skip over any non-downloaded songs, moving to the next one in the album or playlist that actually is available on the device, obviously stopping playback if there are no more locally stored songs. In the second case, any songs not on the iPhone should be hidden entirely, thereby leaving nothing around to continue playing.

Otherwise, the Music app works with iTunes Match in the exact same way as it would if the music was actually on your device -- that's actually kind of the point of the service is that it's seamless and transparent and basically makes your iPhone behave as if the entire music library was actually on your device.

[decafjava]

Originally Posted by Jesse Hollington

Otherwise, the Music app works with iTunes Match in the exact same way as it would if the music was actually on your device -- that's actually kind of the point of the service is that it's seamless and transparent and basically makes your iPhone behave as if the entire music library was actually on your device.

Hmm so how do smartplaylists work then? I have 2 or 3 static playlists I store on my phone (eg. one where I put whole albums I want to listen to, be it opera or a concept album or whatever) so how that would work is pretty straightforward. My smartplaylists however tend to work by picking songs from a static playlist (so I can make my own mix-and-match station) based on "last played" criteria. I currently only sync the smartplaylists to my iphone to save space. Every time I sync, it updates. Now how would this work with itunes match???

[Jesse Hollington]

Unfortunately, Smart Playlists are a bit of an exception. Of course, they've never worked all that well on recent iOS versions anyway (since about iOS 3.1), but iCloud does add one more wrinkle -- Smart Playlists that are based on other playlists are not supported, and in fact iTunes will pretty much tell you this outright...

Most other Smart Playlists should work fine, however, insofar as they normally work on iOS in the first place, although obviously the Smart Playlists have to contain content that would otherwise be in iCloud (i.e. music and music videos).

I'd recommend checking out our article, Instant Expert: Secrets & Features of iTunes Match for more information.