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My relationship with iTunes Match has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride -- at first I was largely gleeful with excitement from the pelvis upwards. But then the train came off the rails and I was sent hurtling head-first into a pit of broken metadata, lost playlists and the twisted remains of a butchered music library.
In its working form, iTunes Match is a godsend. For 20 quid a year you can create a backup of your iTunes library in the cloud, including all of its music, playlists and metadata. If you lose your computer or just start using another one, you can bring your whole library with you, playlists and metadata included. And if you have any crummy old MP3s, iTunes will upgrade them to the versions it sells in the iTunes Store -- no extra charge, no DRM. Arguably this has more "genius" than the iTunes feature of the same name.
That's why I signed up on day one. But something happened a couple of weeks later (and I'm still not exactly sure what) and all of a sudden my library reset itself back to the state it was when I first signed up to Match on 16 December -- playcounts, ratings, playlist entries and other metadata was reset, reduced or scrapped entirely. No files added to my library since the 16th were deleted from my machine, but their associated metadata was annihilated.
It appeared as if Match took a snapshot of my 14,000-song library when I signed up (which it did), but then never updated it afterwards. Following my account's mysterious ultra-fail, it was this old, cloud-based version of my library that was seen to be the most up-to-date, not the version on my computer.
Fortunately, less than an hour earlier I'd made a backup of my library's database. So I closed iTunes, deleted its broken library, and restored from a Time Machine backup. Rejoice! The library was bang up to date. Until I switched Match back on, and the big reset happened again. Clearly the iTunes servers were adamant their version was the master, and my local copy was replaceable.
I restored my up-to-date offline library and left this machine without Match enabled for a few days while I looked up how you reset your iTunes Match account. And that's where the fundamental problem with the service rears its head: you cannot reset it.
I contacted Apple to find out if this was true, and it is. Fact of the matter, I was told, is that Match works fine for most people, so hard resets -- which would then require time-consuming rematching and uploading of local songs -- aren't an option.
It's a huge pitfall, because my problem could've been catastrophic if more than just a couple of weeks of my library's updates were lost; or, worse, I wasn't such a religious backer-upper. I can appreciate Apple's stance that for most people a hard reset is probably an unnecessary overkill, but I was not alone in my desperate need for this final solution. So my advice to Apple is: create an option to fully reset iTunes Match.
Hell, charge for it if needs be so people consider it a last resort. Just make it an option.
Fortunately, I have some advice for others experiencing a problem similar to mine, or a problem that requires a hard reset.
It has taken me days to pinpoint a way to do it, and there was no easy solution. There was no medium-difficulty solution, either. But I have discovered a method to reset iTunes Match. It's a lengthy and manual process, but here's how I did it.
Please follow these steps at your own risk -- these are the steps that worked for me, but we cannot guarantee they'll work for you. Always backup to be safe first and proceed with caution...
How to reset iTunes Match
Preliminary steps
1: Turn off iTunes Match on your current iTunes Library
2: You'll ideally need a backup of your library prior to proceeding, from before iTunes "broke" it. If you don't have one, all is not lost, but I strongly suggest creating a backup of your current library (instructions) first, after turning Match off. Copy the backup to a USB disk or external hard drive for best protection here.
3: In your current library, export any and all playlists (including saved Genius playlists) to XML-format playlist files and save them somewhere memorable on your computer (instructions).
You'll need these later.
Once you've done the above and created a backup of your library, proceed with the below.
Main steps
Step 1: When you're sure you've created a backup of your iTunes Library's database files (instructions again) and stored them somewhere safe, delete the originals. Or, ideally, use a different computer with a blank iTunes library for this whole process.
Step 2: Open iTunes and behold a brand new, empty library
Step 3: Turn on iTunes Match and choose to add your new, blank library/computer to iCloud, and wait for the process to finish.
Step 4: When your library is filled with greyed-out versions of your iTunes music, starting from the top select up to 999 songs and hit delete. Select the option to delete from iCloud but do NOT choose to delete the files from your computer (unless you're using a different computer and don't care about any local files).
Note: for some reason, deleting more than 1,000 stops this workaround from deleting songs from iCloud immediately, hence the 999 limit suggested.
Step 5: Choose "Update iTunes Match" from the iTunes menu bar after deleting 999 songs.
Step 6: Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your local library is empty. As the number of items in your library gets smaller, these two steps will take less and less time.
Step 7: Delete all of the playlists in this now-blank iTunes library
Step 8: Choose to "Update iTunes Match" again
Step 9: At this point choose iTunes Match from the left-hand menu. It should say "0 songs are now available in iCloud". This means you now have an empty iCloud library. Great!
But you're not done yet.
Step 10: Close iTunes
Step 11: Create a backup of your currently-blank iTunes library's database (how to find where these two files are), move them somewhere safe (again, a USB stick would be best) and then delete the original and empty your trash/recycle bin
Step: 12: Find your original iTunes Library (the one you backed up or recovered during the above "preliminary step 2") and put it back in its original place in the iTunes folder
Step 13: Open iTunes
Note: At this point you're working with your original working library, and you're about to connect it to an empty iCloud, but there are a few more things to do.
Step 14: Turn on iTunes Match and wait for the process to finish.
Step 15: Once iTunes Match has finished, you may be done. But, as happened with me, you may then notice your iTunes library now contains duplicates of every song in your library, and every one of your playlists. If this is the case, right click on the sorting bar above your music library in iTunes (where it says Artst, Album etc) and choose to add the "iCloud Download" sort field if it's not already present. Once it appears, click it to sort your library using this variable.
Step 16: You'll notice that roughly half of your library has an iCloud icon with a dark cross in it, hover and it'll say something like "Deleted from iCloud". Highlight all items with this status (they'll all be grouped together thanks to step 15) and hit either backspace, delete or cmd/ctrl+backspace.
Depending on your keyboard, one of these deletion methods will offer you to delete from iCloud (yes, again) with a check box (if it doesn't, click cancel and use one of the other deletion key combinations listed above). Check that box and hit delete item.
You'll then be prompted to delete from your computer. Choose "Keep File".
Step 17: The number of items in your library should now be the same as your original library. Now look at any playlists you have. Some may be duplicates, some may be empty, some may be broken in other ways. Delete them all (assuming you followed preliminary step 3 above and exported all your original playlists to XML files).
Step 18: In the iTunes menu bar, choose File
> Library > Import Playlist. Find the folder with your previously exported playlist XML files and import them.
Step 19: Repeat step 18 until all your playlists are imported. You will need to resort them into folders if you previously used playlist folders. Sadly it's not (easily) possible to export or import multiple playlists at once.
Step 20: Breathe. Choose to Update iTunes Match. Breathe again. This process may take quite a long time depending on the number of songs in your library, and it will upload any songs not matched to versions in the iTunes Store. You may also find you'll need to redelete a handful of duplicates or low bit rate songs iTunes Match doesn't support (below 128Kbps), or expunge unsupported songs from old playlists to force iTunes Match to sync all your playlists to iCloud, but essentially you should now be done.
This got my library back to normal and allowed me to use iTunes Match as Apple intended again. Was it worth it? For me, yes. After all this do I still recommend iTunes Match? Still yes, if only for the convenience of being able to upgrade old MP3s to iTunes Store versions. For £20.99 a year, that alone is worth the money in my opinion.
Of course, comments and other suggestions on fixing iTunes Match problems are welcome in the comments.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
