What happens to your downloaded music when you join Apple Music?

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Level 1

15 points

What happens to your downloaded music when you join Apple Music?

I have 173 GB of downloaded music through iTunes, mostly from CDs, and a lot also downloaded from iTunes. Many are rare and hard to find artists. What exactly happens to those files when you subscribe to Apple Music? Do you lose control of them in some way? I see lots of issues with losing access to your own music and I am concerned by the whole thing about your own purchased music getting grayed out or hard to access when you subscribe, though I am interested in the service. Can someone please explain? Thanks.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jan 20, 2019 4:09 PM

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Answer 1

Ipod Lover Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 21, 2019 11:47 AM in response to LACAllen

Thank you for this. I have some follow up questions. What exactly happens to the AAC or whatever format the iTunes music files are in when you subscribe to Apple Music? My husband and I spent a lot of time uploading the 173GB of CDs 10 years ago and it was a messy process with lots of lost album artwork. All of the MP3 files were converted to AAC, and I just want to see whether they will undergo any file format changes by subscribing to Apple Music. It seems like Apple would just match the songs and then we upload versions of ours that don't match (which I suspect will be a substantial amount). Also, if we get a family subscription, will we be able to listen to all of our purchases, i.e., the ones purchased by my Apple ID and my husband's? Lastly if we cancel the subscription, I would just like to know that our iTunes library will look and sound exactly as it does today. Thanks.

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