iTunes Match with more than 25,000 songs

Another workaround is disabling some songs by changing their type from Music to Audiobook. If you have some material that is spoken word that might work better anyway, plus you can apply it to any songs that you are fine with not having in the cloud but still want to keep in your iTunes library. It could be stuff you rarely listen to, or make a playlist of one star songs to exclude, whatever.

Still not as good as having everything available (even if apple charged a higher price for it), but for people with libraries that are slightly over it might be an acceptable solution. And for me, WAY better than creating a separate library or actually removing songs. Besides preserving playlists, ratings, play counts, it lets you revert the change easily, just change Audiobook back to Music.

Changing to Audiobook sounds like a reasonable workaround, but iTunes (on my Mac) won't let me change the "media kind" setting from "music". Every tune I tried it on, the "media kind" button (in the get info/options tab) is grayed out, regardless of the "iCloud status" of the tune, and regardless of how many tunes I selected to edit (one or multiple tunes). Do I need to turn iTunes Match off first, then change the "media kind" to audiobook, then turn Match back on? Or is there some other trick or fix needed?

TIA, -Ed

Are you trying to disable songs after running Match? If they've been matched/uploaded, you may need to remove them from iCloud before you can change the type.

Thanks for this suggested workaround. It worked like a charm. In my case, I had to switch about 1500 songs from "Music" to "Audiobook." This took quite a bit of time but it was time well spent--I've been meaning to clean out my music library for years!

I saw a post from a DJ earlier who had more. Folks like me, with large collections, are some of the first to want to tak advantage of this service. I have been digitizing my collection since the early 90s. It adds up to a lot of songs.

I would be willing to pay twice as much for twice as many non-iTunes songs (50,000).

Same problem here, I downloaded the latest version of iTunes last night and went to upload my 26,260 song music library (all legit!). But most were loaded from CDs so I am over the 25,000 song limit for the iMatch in the cloud. I'd be willing to pay more also as I don't want to manage two libraries and I want a seemless use experience with my laptop (PC) and my iPad2 with the iMatch. I really hope they increase the storage capacity. Some have commented that "most" people don't have music libraries this big, but I don't think that is true. With so many computers offering huge hard drives now from 500gb to 1.5tb, I'm sure there are many people out there with large music libraries. I don't think mine will get much bigger because now when I add, I also delete songs I no longer listen too and I'm almost at capacity in my 160 gb iPod classic. Shouldn't Apple at least offer a storage plan which has that in mind? If you sell a 160 gb iPod classic then offer iCloud storage to hold that many songs.

I had over 25,000 and I deleted enough to get in and then checked my purchases and added what I wanted.

Lets be real, when we have libraries this big most of us don't listen on a REGULAR basis to all the songs in the library.

You might want access to those songs but why not pick the songs out of albums you like the most and delete a lot of the stuff you know you'll never listen to and enjoy this service.

Create a library of stuff that you KNOW you'll listen to and add maybe stuff in until you reach the max.

The majority of people that own libraries larger than 25,000 songs haven't listen to all the songs in their libraries, much less more than a couple of times.

We just want access to them.

Not really an iTunes Match work around but I'm in the same situation as the rest of you. I had toyed around with the idea of pairing my library down to under 25k but at the rate I buy new music it was just going to fill up again. My solution was to use my HTPC and Subsonic. I can access/stream my library from anywhere, even from my iPhone or iPad, and even download the music to my phone and use it in-app. It works really well and should tide my over until this arbitrary limit is changed or removed.

Well, I have boxes and boxes of CDs sitting in my basement, every one of which I imported into iTunes. For new music, I use Amazon and download MP3s because I'm not comfortable with the idea of having my music stored in proprietary formats (like AAC). I am a big fan of iTunes, but I'm not so big of a fan that I would predict that Apple will be just as dominant two decades from now as it is today. Maybe, but who knows, and I can get high bps MP3s that will certainly play on something years from now. Anyhow, this is just a complaint. I will hang tight with my 75,000+ songs on my MacBook Pro and iMac and enjoy them the way I do now. I'm perfectly content because it is true, as pointed out, that I can't listen to all of it all the time (although Apple Genius Mixes have really opened up shuffle play for me in a fantastic way!), so carrying stuff on an iPod or iPhone is just as good as the iCloud for the way I listen, which is largely as a sort of radio channel with random play. Rest assured, one day Apple will open up the service to larger collections for a premium price. The cost of storage continues to drop, so it's certain to change. Plus, Apple will see eventually that people with the larger collections are the "heavy users" who buy disproportionately more, so it's ultimately to their advantage to accommodate us. It will be interesting to see.

Add me to the list of people happy to pay more for more storage. Pushing 30k tracks at the moment, and would happily pay double for double the storage.

I have 50k+ fully legal tracks, but <1k from iTunes. Even worse, I probaby have another 1k or so CDs to rip, so probably at least 10k more tracks to add 😟

Like others, I'd be very happy to pay an amount proportional to the number of tracks - as it stands, iTunes Match is of very little use to me 😐

+1 on eliminating the 25,000 song limit - even if it means paying above and beyond the current annual fee. I own a rather large CD collection (10,000+ and still growing) and I could really use having all of it at my fingertips. I am a recording engineer and producer. Being able to play a song while having a discussion about its characteristics is invaluable to me 24/7.

Come on , Apple!

Thank you.

+1 here for paying more for more "storage".

Rapidly approach 25k and I'm concerned about what's going to happen once I pass it. Most of my songs are "Matched" anyway so it's not like Apple is storing copies of them. Maybe only 2-3k of my tracks are "Uploaded".

Thanks for the consideration!

Everyone should understand one thing - the reason they MATCH and provide you with a new song file (256 Kb AAC) is so Apple can have ONE file, with tens of thousands POINTERS to that ONE file. The file is not COPIED to each users account. If a user has 25,0000 songs then that list for that user should be less then 500K in size (Just Pointers). I say this because I wanted to point out that it IS an arbitrary limit that Apple has imposed on everyone.

Please correct me if I am wrong, I work with computers and that is how I would set it up if I did something like Match - They just delete what you upload after they confirm it was a true MATCH. I just want you to know that I LOVE the fact the service is available - I plan to keep a local copy of every file if I loose internet but keep the backup in iCloud.

I have a larger collection however I just need to spend some time deleting the crap (I had OCD on this also) but I just love having that odd song that someone likes that I don't - oh well I can get a real-time service now if it gets bad and buy on the fly from iTunes for that NEED.