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iOS 5.1 and iTunes Match, Part 2: It Mostly Works Now 

11 Mar 2012

As I mentioned earlier this week, the recent iOS 5.1 (and iTunes 10.6) releases fixed a handful of the lingering issues that existed with iTunes Match.

The big remaining issue was really the fact that Smart Playlists that rely on the "limit" option in iTunes still didn't work. (There were a couple of other issues, with tracks that were tricky to get into iTunes Match, and sporadic play count updates.) Well, I spent some time this weekend poking around with things to see if there were any other improvements in the latest release.

And there are. Big ones.

First, I had two tracks that I had never been able to get into iTunes Match. They are some old mp3s I ripped in college (legal rips, even!) and burned to an archive CD during one of my moves between computers. The media seems to have corrupted a bit overtime, and no magic mp3 repair could get them into a state that would make iTunes Match happy. But, you know, new iTunes, new iOS, why not give it a shot?

Well, it worked. They were added and uploaded to iTunes Match in about 30 seconds. No errors, no problems.

So, if you've got some old tracks hanging around that you were never able to get into iTunes Match, it's probably worth another shot.

That brings us to those dreaded Smart Playlists. My big one that had been nerfed by iTunes Match was my "Best Recent Adds", which is the best 50 songs (by rating) that were most recently added to my iTunes. It was useless on iTunes Match, as it seemed to go off of the date the songs were added to my iPhone (or iPad) rather than the date they were added to my collection.

Googling around, I found this Apple support discussion where someone mentioned turning iTunes Match off and back on on your iOS device seemed to make these Smart Playlists work. "What the hell?", I figured.

Well, again, it worked.

I went onto my iPhone, turned off iTunes Match, force killed the Music app (probably not necessary, but I'm impatient), and then turned iTunes Match back on. I waited about 15 minutes for things to load again (here's a tip: go to your Podcasts screen, where there should be a nice iCloud cloud and progress bar -- that'll show you how far you are). Once it had loaded, I checked out my smart playlists&emdash;and now they worked!

Most of them, at least. There's still one or two that seem to act a bit weird (those based off of updating play counts). But the ones based off limits seem to work.

With iTunes 10.6 and iOS 5.1, iTunes Match seems to now:

The only thing left, as far as I can tell, is getting play count syncing working. It still only seems to sync the first track you play, never updating the rest of the play counts (which is why some smart playlists won't look like they are working). Something to hope for in iTunes 10.6.1 or iOS 5.1.1, I suppose.

I would say that, if you were waiting for iTunes Match to sort itself out, it's pretty darn close. For my money ($24.99/year, in fact), it's easily worth it, just for the off-site backup of my music (and the streaming to my Apple TV).