Will joining Apple Music mess up my iTunes Library?

Hello.


I have all my music currently stored in my iTunes library, and it mainly comprises of hundreds of CDs that I have burned over many years. It is currently showing me that it has 14,520 items in it, using up 149.45GB of space on my Mac and my iPod Classic. My default for listening is my iPod Classic, either docked into my hi-fi system at home, or via a Bluetooth adapter to headphones or a speaker when outdoors.


I have my own way of organising (sorting) my music, which is dependent upon whether a particular track is of a popular genre, classical or from a soundtrack. One difference between me and the default, for example, is that I sort individual singing artistes by surname. Another is that I sort albums for each artiste chronologically.


I am tempted to join Apple Music so that I will have access to much more music on my iPhone, but I am concerned that doing so will mess up my uniquely sorted collection of music in my iTunes library. I remember trying something called iTunes Match a while back in order to get my library accessible online, but I ended up with duplicated tracks and tracks appearing in the wrong places in my iTunes library, which necessitated me immediately unsubscribing and then spending a very long time re-sorting all my stuff. It was a very traumatic experience!


Would there be any danger of that happening again if i joined Apple Music? Or is it completely separate from one's iTunes library?


Thanks.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 27, 2020 4:06 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 29, 2020 5:37 PM

Those that experienced issues are users who uploaded their libraries to the cloud, either via Apple Music Sync Library or iTunes Match, and their music was not matched correctly and/or metadata tags were different.


You can subscribe to Apple Music and choose not to use the Sync Library option, just use the streaming features.


I’m not a subscriber, so I can’t say from personal experience how well that works, but you can read more about it here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204930

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 29, 2020 5:37 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

Those that experienced issues are users who uploaded their libraries to the cloud, either via Apple Music Sync Library or iTunes Match, and their music was not matched correctly and/or metadata tags were different.


You can subscribe to Apple Music and choose not to use the Sync Library option, just use the streaming features.


I’m not a subscriber, so I can’t say from personal experience how well that works, but you can read more about it here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204930

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926

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Will joining Apple Music mess up my iTunes Library?

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