iTune Match 25,000+ library

I wonder what will happen if/when I finish running Match on this library here at work, and its up and running, but then I want to turn it on at home using the "work around" method of creating the new library and importing the 25k that I choose, etc...

Can you switch libraries like that? Or will I be forever tied to this one?

If you 'turn on' match on the library that has your 25k+, it will ERASE all that music, and replace it with the cloud music.

If you 'Option + iTunes' and create a new library, and connect that one to match, it will just add those 25k to your computer.

Overall it's working pretty well, and I'm mostly happy with it (now that it's nearing completion).

I still have a few songs / playlists that have not populated, or are not available for one reason or another, but that should all be worked out once it finishes.

How do you cancel Match? I just enabled it a few hours ago, but I don't want it right now.

JCarlock wrote:

If you 'turn on' match on the library that has your 25k+, it will ERASE all that music, and replace it with the cloud music.

Are you sure about that? That's the first I've heard that, and iTunes should NEVER erase any song files automatically from any computer.

iTunes match is definitely not for people who don't know or care to organize their music properly. Using iTunes match in that kind of situation will be a complete mess. Whenever I look at my friends' phones I can't believe how they can be satisfied with no lowercase uppercase uniformity, missing album names, wrong song title, no year, no track number and inconsistent cover art. It makes the iPod app luck so ugly. iTunes match is definitely aimed at more advanced computer users who would actually be able to benefit from the laundering aspect. Guys who always relied on limewire downloading singles wouldn't get much benefit from this service.

This is why it will never change beyond 25K (even if they match... I know what it says)... There is a lot of speculation regarding the arbitrary number of 25K... and it seems that that may be the magic number that Apple has agreed upon with the music industry to avoid TOO much piracy...

Think about it this way...let say you had a library FULL of torrented music that was indeed matchable to iTunes Store... now for $25 - you just your whole library matched (and replaced) without spending a dime on any of that music. I think part of the $25 is a so-called amnesty fee to pay off the record labels for so-called piracy breakage.

So I think they figured - alright in order to prevent UNLIMITED piracy - we will restrict the service to 25K songs. So I hear you shouting "I'm no pirate!!!!" Yes, however just like eveything that we purchase, it all has "theft" built into the price and I think this is capitulation towards the music biz.

However all that being said, I think that if you had 30,000 songs in your library that CAME from iTunes Store, then you should be able to have 30,000 MATCHED. It's not hard for Apple to determined which tracks came from it's own store.

I think some more tweaking is in order.

I have my 'big' library, and my 'match' library. Match library is 24950, other is 30k+. I have not tried to turn it on, on the 'big' library, however I did on my laptop, and it gave me a warning that it would erase all data and replace it with with cloud.

Could it be that if you let it finish it will indeed let you match 2 or more libraries? What if both are over 25K?

JCarlock wrote:

I have my 'big' library, and my 'match' library. Match library is 24950, other is 30k+. I have not tried to turn it on, on the 'big' library, however I did on my laptop, and it gave me a warning that it would erase all data and replace it with with cloud.

Did it say erase or replace? iOS devices also have a similar warning but they don't remove the music. It would be easy enough to test, just back up the second library first. I'll be doing just that once it's done on my first machine.

Does anyone know how match works when you have multiple iTunes Libraries? I have one that is only Music Videos, One that is only Movies, One that is all Holiday Music, one that's Country, and one that's everything else. If I sign up for Match with the Country loaded and later start up with the Holiday music, does it try to match those or do I get some kind of error?

If I sign up for Match with the Country loaded and later start up with the Holiday music, does it try to match those or do I get some kind of error?

No, you shouldn't get an error. If you start with Match running on one music library, then re-launch, load a different Music library, and then turn on iTunes Match for that library (it is off by default whenver you switch libraries), it will automatically add those songs to the cloud. Some will match, others will be uploaded.

I have one that is only Music Videos, One that is only Movies . .

Only music videos that the Matching process identifies as having been purchased from the iTunes store (and still available in the store) will be deemed eligible for the service, matched, and will show up on your other match-enabled devices. Other music videos and movies are not eligible for the service and will be identified by a cloud with a strike-through.

Probably what will happen is when you run match with each of the separate libraries they will added and the end result is that all those libraries will end up merged (and the same).