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I have upgraded to Mavericks and made a couple of iTunes updates around the same time. I had previously rated hundreds, maybe thousands of TV shows and all of those ratings are gone.
I love Apple support, but iTunes' support is among the worst support organizations I've encountered. Their email-based support is of no help, even though the ratings are stored on their servers when iTunes match is used.
Can someone assist? Using a backup library file is not an option as I don't have one.
2013-12-09 09:38:39
As Jan points out, the database (rather than the music itself) is not backed up on the cloud. Two copies of the file are kept, in different formats - iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml, and sometimes it is possible to recover the library (the .itl file) from the "backup" (the .xml copy), but not after using iTunes, since the .xml file will have been replaced too. All I can suggest is that in the future you back up those two files regularly. In fact, given the cheapness of hard drives and the simplicity of using Time Machine, back up everything regularly, it's worth it.
2013-12-11 11:27:32
I found a folder with backed up itl files but when I try to restore them, still no sign of ratings.
2013-12-08 19:19:39
iTunes Match is only a music service. Therefor only the ratings of your music and within it's limitations - all matched songs plus the 25.000 unmatched once - are stored in the cloud.I'm afraid all your movie or TV show ratings were stored in the iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl) and if you don't have a backup of it they are lost.You should, in general, keep a backup of your iTunes Library or better your entire user data. At this point it could have been lost by either, the upgrade to Mavericks or the iTunes updates. There are various reports where the iTunes Library has (sort of) reset because e.g. an anti-virus program has prevented iTunes from upgrading the iTunes Library file after a software update.
2013-12-11 18:51:02
I'm convinced your are right that iTunes Match is no longer relevant to this conversation since it only applies to music and I am talking only about ratings for TV Shows.I did find ITL files (not XML files) in the User > [Me] > Music > iTunes > Previous iTunes Libraries. But alas, when I open iTunes from any number of the historical files, there are still no ratings to be seen (except the ones that were locally stored on my computer at the time). All of the other TV Shows that were back up in the iCloud have no ratings, furthering the likelihood that it is true that the ratings are managed in iCloud.