iTunes Match Problems with iPhone Playback

November 28, 2011 10:57 AM

I've had some problems with my iTunes Library on my iPhone since signing up for iTunes Match and am hoping the hive mind can help. Specific details on album art, track navigation and song options ahead.

Since activating iTunes Match on my iPhone 4 (iOS 5.0.1), I've noticed some troubling problems with music playback. Specifically, in order of annoyance to me:

1) The music player no longer follows the "skip when shuffling" option that I have checked on hundreds of spoken word / deep cut Broadway tracks. If I shuffle all songs, it'll play whatever is stored on the phone.

2) If I skip past a song, I can't go back to it once a new song has started. The "previous track" button just restarts the track that is currently playing.

3) Album art doesn't display for random tracks. If I tip the phone to landscape view, the album art often displays, which tells me it's happening track-by-track, not for whole albums.

All this is happening when I'm not on Wifi, so it's not like the iPhone is trying to pull songs from the cloud and not heeding the song options I mentioned in problem 1. These songs are all stored locally. Any ideas?

posted by moviehawk to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

1) I can't help on this since I pretty much don't use that tick box. Before iTunes Match came along, the playlists I had on my iPhone are what I'd shuffle from. When I shuffle from my master library, invariably it comes up with songs not on my device (I have it set that way in iPhone settings) and there's a lag before the music starts playing. Note that songs will stream from the cloud on wifi or 3g if you don't want iPhone doing stuff on the cloud, see what happens in airplane mode. There's also a setting of only play what is on iPhone in the phone's settings.

You might try the standard tick/untick/tick troubleshooting. That is, turn off iTunes Match on the phone, then turn it back on. Untick the skip in shuffle, then tick it again. And so on and see if that helps.

2) This is odd. It works as it always has on my iPhone. Hitting the back button goes back. If you haven't rebooted the iPhone in a while, you might try that.

3) This happens to me too. I've had problems with cover art issues and iTunes getting messed up since my first iPod Color. I just tried playing some random tracks and noticed no cover art but tried tipping it to landscape mode and the artwork appeared.

I think many of the issues are bugs that may get fixed in future updates. Make sure you fill out the feedback form from iTunes to add to the tally of bugs Apple needs to fix.
posted by birdherder at 11:43 AM on November 28, 2011

Response by poster: birdherder, in my experience it only streams from the cloud if you allow that, and by default it's off, which is fine with me. The bigger issue is that songs in the cloud or on my device don't follow the skip when shuffling option.
posted by moviehawk at 11:59 AM on November 28, 2011

There are apparently a boatload of issues with Match at the current time. I waited to learn more and see how it performs before signing up. Apple HAS to fix these problems and they will, given a little time. Their credibility with the Cloud rides on it. I have been collecting troubleshooting articles that I read on MacSurfer.com. There seems to be something there addressing a Match issue nearly every day. You may want to check out that site for some answers. Go to the Reviews/How To/Tips section.
posted by konig at 11:44 PM on November 28, 2011