Can I keep my downloaded music from my own CD's on Apple Music if I cancel my subscription

When you cancel Apple Music anything that is currently located only in the cloud, apart from past purchases from the iTunes Store, will no longer be available to you. You would need to download your matched or uploaded content before you terminate the subscription. DRM protected media that you add via the Apple Music service will also stop working, even if you have it stored locally. I would recommend you make a full backup of your library on an external drive before you consider deleting local copies of files. Occasionally matched copies of tracks might not be quite the same as your originals.

tt2

Jametheus1 wrote:

Thank you for your response.

So, if I understand this, all of my personal CDs that I have purchased from Amazon, Target,etc. and have uploaded to my Apple Music account, will disappear if I cancel my Apple Music subscription? Is that correct.

Only if, as some do, you choose to remove the local copies of your media so you can free up space on your hard drive.

Also, it seems that if I want to back up my CDs to my Mac so that I can play them later without an Apple Music subscription, I will have to record these to a drive of some type (hard drive or SSD). Correct?

I would recommend that you have a complete backup of your iTunes library and any other personal data on an external drive at all times. You should guard against the failure of any one component, or operator error, by keeping backups.

I really wish that I had known this before I uploaded all of my non-classical music CDs to Apple Music and then gave the original CDs to a friend.

Have you removed the copies from local storage yet? If you have they can be downloaded again and backed up now. Note that if you sell or give away your CDs you're really under an obligation to discard any copies you have made.

I guess it was naive on my part to think that I could store the content of my own CD,s on Apple music and then retrieve it with or without a subscription.

Whenever you're not sure how things work It is generally best to do the research first, rather than press on with a set of assumptions in mind that might later turn out to be false.

tt2