How to handle iTunes Match with multiple libraries (one account, 5 family members)?

One person sets up Match on their computer using the iTunes account. Uploads everything to match.

I would recommend waiting until that person is done, and do computers one at a time. No particular reason, just seems sensible.

Next person sets up match using same iTunes account details. Uploads their stuff. They will then see everything the previous user put into the system, unless you select "Hide music not on this computer" in the view menu. Previous user will now see their stuff too.

Rinse and repeat.

This is how it worked with my multiple machines anyway... As long as every computer uses the same iTunes account for the store, you all get access to the same Match account.

I subscribed. Everything uploaded fine. When I go into my settings on iPhone, to enable iTunes match it says I am not subscribed. This is because I already had a me.com account and iTunes would not let me merge. How can I get the iTunes match to play the music on the old ID with the phone and pad on the new ID?

Go in to Settings / Store on the iPhone and change the store account to the one you subscribed to Match from. That worked for me. But Apple really need to let us merge accounts.

My wife and I each have an iPhone and share an iTunes account. We share a master music library but each manually manage our music on our iPhones. So she has certain songs on her phone and I have different ones on mine, both coming from the same master library. I'm trying to figure out if I can use iTunes Match. I don't want to see her songs on my iPhone. A poster above menioned "view only songs on this computer", but is that an option for my phone as well?

Once you enable iMatch on an iPhone, the same type of option appears..."show all music." Turning this on or off will show or hide the music that is not on the phone but in the cloud.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the info. Just to clarify, if I turned on Match on my iPhone, then immediately turned off "show all music" would I see only the songs I had on my iPhone before turning on Match? Would I then have to re-download them all from the cloud to my iPhone? I'm just trying to gauge how hard/involved it will be to turn on Match and keep mine and my wife's songs separate.

No, it will only show the songs previously synced and on your phone. Also for clarification, if you were to show all music, it would populate all the artist and all the songs in the library on the phone, but the ones you do not have on the phone would show a cloud icon for downloading to the phone. This will be the way to essentially use iTunes Match on the go. You will be able to look through your entire library and download a song you want to listen to at the moment. With hiding the songs, that would not be possible.

I hope this helps.

So say I have 800 songs on my iPhone and 1600 in my iTunes library. If I turn on Match on my iPhone, then turn off "show all music", I should see only those 800 songs that were on my iPhone before turning on Match. Will those already be downloaded on my iPhone or will I have to fetch them from the cloud to take adavantage of the 256k bitrate? I'm not following whether Match actually wipes all the songs off the phone itself, only the ones with lower bitrate, none at all, etc.?

You will only see the "800" songs and they will already be on your iPhone so no fetching required. This is all under the assumption that you have already turned on iMatch on the computer and let it go through its process of matching and/or uploading. For songs that were matched and you know are at a lower bitrate, you can go through delete them off your hard drive and redownload them from iCloud. This will allow you to have the higher bitrate versions. For unmatched songs, you are out of luck for a higher bitrate version if it was a lower bitrate version to start with. Unmatched songs are simply uploaded to Apple's servers for iCloud purposes.

I hope this helps.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

I have exactly the same problem with multiple iTunes libraries and one account for purchasing. Is there a way to keep the playlists of the family members like they have been without iTunes Match?

This May help: Many Apple id's under one cloud

Thanks..that worked for me. For some reason I have two accounts. Don't remember doing that but guess I did. It works now.