How iTunes Match Ate Half My Data Plan
Short Version: After turning on iTunes Match and telling it to download songs from the cloud to my device, turning off iTunes Match, and syncing those songs from the computer instead, it continued to download the same songs, wasting away half my data plan.
A few days ago I turned on iTunes Match on my computer. Last night the last few tracks (that hadn’t matched in the iTunes Store) finished uploading and it was all set. My music was now in the cloud. I was doubtful of Match, but gave it a shot. I turned it on on my phone, and hell ensued.
The first thing that happened after turning on Match: existing tracks from my library were deleted. I’m not quite sure why Apple does this. Nevertheless, I started downloading a few large playlists from the cloud, over WiFi. About twenty minutes later, only a small fraction of the tracks had finished downloading, so I turned Match off and instead synced with the computer. Match was off.
I was about to leave the house, so I checked my data usage. 300 MB down / 100 MB up for the month. Not bad, considering it’s the end of the month and I have a 2 GB plan.
At 1:24 PM, five hours after I had turned off Match, I get a text message. I had supposedly used 50% of my data plan, 1 GB. Odd. I had done around 3 checkins, posted a photo or two, and hadn’t watched a single video.
An hour later, I get a text message saying I had used 75% (1.5 GB) of my data plan. I thought the culprit was Spotify, odd since I hadn’t been listening to anything. I also checked my usage under Settings.app > General > Usage > Cellular Usage and it was up to around 320 MB down / 110 up. Not anywhere close to 1.5 GB. I turned off 3G.
Fast forward to 6:30 PM. I’m on WiFi again. iTunes Match has been off the entire day. I try downloading an app, and a few minutes later it’s still says “Waiting…” under it. Why wasn’t it downloading my app? I wasn’t downloading any apps and hadn’t bought any songs.
I head over to the iTunes app. Under More > Downloads, and I’m shocked.
The songs that I had started downloading from iTunes Match continued to download after I had explicitly turned Match off. And what’s more, the songs that it was downloading were already on my device- they had been synced from the computer in the morning.
