Apple Music items greyed out after iTunes Match ended

[petemc]

I was an iTunes Match subscriber from 2011. Everything was working fine and all my music was happily stored in iCloud. I had a 140gb library so I deleted the source files from my computer and streamed everything via iTunes Match.

When Apple Music came out I subscribed instantly and enjoyed a bug free experience. I let my iTunes Match subscription lapse in February this year because I was under the impression that I no longer needed it. Apple's own site states;

"How does Apple Music know what songs are in my personal library?
With an Apple Music membership, your entire library lives in iCloud. We compare every track in your collection to the Apple Music library to see if we have a copy. If we do, you can automatically listen to it straight from the cloud. If you have music that’s not in our catalog, we upload those songs from iTunes on your Mac or PC. It’s all in iCloud, so it won’t take up any space on your devices."​

As everything was stored in iCloud and nothing on my computer but cached music I believed everything would just work via Apple Magic. However, since my iTunes Match subscription ended I've had a lot of tunes appear greyed out and on iOS I get "Item not available". I've checked their iCloud Status in iTunes and it says either "Uploaded" or "Waiting" and there's a little dotted cloud symbol. I have no idea what that means. The music is uploaded and yet iOS and Mac OS can't play it.

I chatted with Apple for 3 hours and they said...

iTunes Match = imported songs being in the iCloud. Apple Music = All of iTunes catalog being available to you but you will need to reorganise your library if you use Apple Music only and re-download the songs.​

3 hours going round and round in circles. It was my understanding that Apple Music would take over from iTunes Match and I would no longer need it. I can't work out the pattern to the broken songs. Apple support couldn't adequately explain why their site said Apple Music will upload your unmatched tunes.

I've resubscribed to iTunes Match and they insisted that within 72hrs all my music will work again. I can't see that happening.

 

[burgman]

Another Apple Music horror story, somewhere that I can't remember I read that if Itunes match lapses your library stays on Apple's servers for some length of time so if you change your mind. 30 or 60 days but not sure. Good luck. I would never delete my local copy of my music, also I use Google Play Music as a backup.,

 

[petemc]

Another Apple Music horror story, somewhere that I can't remember I read that if Itunes match lapses your library stays on Apple's servers for some length of time so if you change your mind. 30 or 60 days but not sure. Good luck. I would never delete my local copy of my music, also I use Google Play Music as a backup.,

It's been 4 months I think. I'm guessing my data is gone.

Completley agree about deleting local library. I was just short on space and I needed to prioritize uploading of other data. My mistake. If I'd only got it into Crashplan

Vinyl ftw! Assuming my house doesn't suffer from some fragmentation issue.

 

[Brookzy]

How did you manage to re-subscribe to iTunes Match? Did you do it yourself or did the Apple support person do it?

 

[petemc]

How did you manage to re-subscribe to iTunes Match? Did you do it yourself or did the Apple support person do it?

I did it. I got so bored of Apple's support person that I figured it can't make things worse so re-subscribed. They claim everything will be fine in 24-72 hours. I do not understand how but they said Apple Magic. I felt the need to set something on fire.

 

[Brookzy]

I did it. I got so bored of Apple's support person that I figured it can't make things worse so re-subscribed. They claim everything will be fine in 24-72 hours. I do not understand how but they said Apple Magic. I felt the need to set something on fire.

I see. I'll add a couple of thoughts in case they're helpful:

Regarding re-subscribing to iTunes Match:

• If you were able to re-subscribe to iTunes Match, then the matching service provided by Apple Music was using the inferior metadata matching system.
• Apple is migrating Apple Music members to the superior iTunes Match fingerprinting - a couple percent of users each day. Accounts that have switched to fingerprinting can no longer subscribe to iTunes Match - it won't let you.
• If your Apple Music was matching with the metadata system, this may have been a cause of some of the greyed-out tracks.

Regarding the "waiting" status:

• Now you have re-subscribed to iTunes Match, update your iCloud Music Library by going to File > Library > Update iCloud Music Library in iTunes. This will start the matching process again. The waiting status you mentioned means "this track is waiting to be matched/uploaded".
  • Hopefully after a while your tracks will be matched. This might take a long time.

Make a local copy of your matched and uploaded tracks* to back up to make sure this won't happen in the future:

• You can quickly identify your matched and uploaded songs by making a Smart Playlist. Go to File > New > Smart Playlist. With the options in the image below, a playlist will be created with all your matched and uploaded songs.

​

• Select all the songs in the playlist, right click, and click Download (or Save Offline - depending on your version of iTunes).

*In your case, this is possibly all of your tracks, but in a 140GB library some things might have fallen through the cracks!

You don't need to worry though - you have your track names and that's the most important thing. Greyed-out tracks can be fixed eventually. When you lose your track names and playlists is when things get messy!

 

[burgman]

It's been 4 months I think. I'm guessing my data is gone.

Completley agree about deleting local library. I was just short on space and I needed to prioritize uploading of other data. My mistake. If I'd only got it into Crashplan

Vinyl ftw! Assuming my house doesn't suffer from some fragmentation issue.

Really never got into pops and clicks

 

[petemc]

I see. I'll add a couple of thoughts in case they're helpful:

Regarding the "waiting" status:

• Now you have re-subscribed to iTunes Match, update your iCloud Music Library by going to File > Library > Update iCloud Music Library in iTunes. This will start the matching process again. The waiting status you mentioned means "this track is waiting to be matched/uploaded".
  • Hopefully after a while your tracks will be matched. This might take a long time.!

Some tracks were "waiting" before I resubscribed to iTunes Match. Not sure what that means. Hopefully things may appear but nothing so far.