iTunes Match 4010 error

[dbm]

Hi everyone,

Following the saga of a corrupted iTunes library which is now mostly resolved:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/music-audio-podcasting/323301-itunes-library-itl-corrupted.html

I now have an issue with iTunes Match. Since I have re-discovered all my media (around 11k tracks) from my hard drive iTunes Match wants to check them against my Cloud profile. They will all be there, as I was successfully using Match before and haven't ripped any physical CDs since.

Match keeps attempting to upload my library information to check against my information in the Cloud (which is a three-stage process) but every time it aborts at the end of stage 1 (Gathering information) when it sends the data to iTunes, giving me an error saying that 'We could not complete your iTunes Store request' and a 4010 error code. I have done a search on this code, and people have had it in the past and tried various things to recover it. I can access the store to purchase new music, by the way (from the Mac in question).

I have logged out of Match then back in.
I have logged out of iTunes then back in.
I have looked for media purchase on my wife's account rather than mine, and removed those from my iTunes library temporarily.

Naturally none of these things have cured the problem so far.

I haven't cleared my Match data at this point as I understand you need to re-upload all your music if you do that. This is a very last resort from my perspective.

It may be that this is a central iTunes problem. Certainly, many of the hits I got on my search seemed to show this was a systemic problem near the beginning of the service. But the Apple Service Status page is showing all green at the moment.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Has anyone else been able to fix it in the past?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

I'm on iTunes 12.1.0.50.

ETA: I've tried this on three separate days with no luck so far.

 

[dbm]

OK, after several hours of investigation I think I have solved this problem.

First, if you are having a 4010 problem with iTunes Match this seems to be a bit of a 'catch all' error code so this might not solve your specific problem. I has finally fixed mine, however.

By uploading my library to iTunes one album at a time I discovered that there were certain albums which were causing the 4010 error. When I looked at the Info for these albums / tracks I saw that they had specific information on the 'File' tab.

The problematic files had a 'Purchased by' data item which showed my wife's iTunes accounts, and a 'Downloaded by' data item which showed my iTunes account.

I also identified files which has 'Purchased by' showing my wife's iTunes account but did not have the 'Downloaded by' item. These could be uploaded to Match fine.

I think the items purchased by my wife but not downloaded by me must have been physically copied from the iTunes library on her MBA to the library on my MBP.

You may note that in my original post above I thought that I had deleted all the media downloaded against my wife's account but clearly I was wrong. I used the 'Family Purchases' widget at the top of the iTunes window to try to find all the purchases from my wife's account and this only showed a couple of albums, far less than actually belonged to her account. I would hypothesise that the media which was not found had been bought by her prior to Family Sharing existing.

So there you are - a laborious but successful fix. Eliminate any media which was 'purchased by' someone else then 'downloaded by' you.