25,000 Song Limit

This may help you:

http://www.macworld.com/article/163599/2011/11/dealing_with_itunes_matchs_25_000 _track_limit.html

If a iTunes library has more than 25,000 songs iTunes won't match the whole library. If I understood the article right (I am not a native english speaker) you have to split your library into two libraries.

If you will delete enough songs to get your intial library down below 25,000 songs it will start. After that it has either matched or uploaded your songs, highlight the uploaded and see how many that is. The uploaded songs are the ONLY ones that count towards your 25,000. But you have to get below 25,000 to get it started. Please see my other post on has the 25,000 limit changed with explicit steps. After you get it started and it has finished the initial steps then you can start adding your music back to your library until you have reached the 25,000 uploaded song maximum. You most likely don't have near as many to upload as you think. But you have to get the library below 25,000 to start and then add back after each time itunes match completes.

My library was really large and I deleted enough to get started and then started adding back and i'm no where near the 25,000 downloaded songs that is the limit. Most of my library was matched and therefore it didn't count towards the 25,000.

1. Start by downsizing your library enough to get started.

2. Let match do it's thing and finish with what you have in there.(This may take awhile so don't quit. Just walk away from it and let it do it's thing for however long it takes. Don't turn it on in your device yet.)
3. After match has finished, check how many had to be uploaded and that will count against the 25,000.

4. Start adding back into your library bit by bit and go to store, update match and let it do it's thing again.

5. Keep repeating the process until your whole library is back.

6. Now turn it on in your devices (ipod, iphone, ipad)

I'm sure you won't hit the 25,000 uploaded songs.

I don't know what happens when you've uploaded 25,000 tracks. Just remember to let match completely finish before you add more music and only add about 500-1000 songs at a time and then let it finish. As far as how that it matches and leaves one track unmatched and has to upload it, I have no idea. I didn't fuss with it, or about it. It matched 15,000 out of 25,000 songs. I was glad about that. I don't think it has to do with bit rate or anything. Some people have said if the time of that song is off a few seconds of what the one itunes store has is. I'm not going through and editing 2 or 3 seconds off of a bunch of tracks right now. (but I might on one or two to see if it works). But you could try that. If you don't know how to do that in iTunes let me know and I can tell you. Let me know if you have any other questions.

That doesn't sound good. I'm in middle of trying the steps above too. I turned iTunes Match off on all my iDevices, completely deleted my stuck at 25k (upload+matched songs) library which took awhile since if I tried deleting all at once it seemed like most of the songs kept not deleting. Had to delete a little at a time and keep updating iTunes Match. After finally making sure there was nothing left on iCloud, I got my library to exactly 25k songs in my library. Steps 1 & 2 are finally completely done. Now just waiting for the long Step 3 uploading process to end (2761 of 5636 Items Uploaded). I'm following the steps listed above but I hope my feeling that this isn't going to work is wrong. I really want to have more than 25k available on my iDevices.

I'm confused. At what step does this happen on? Step 2 or Step 3 or does this show in the library next to the song? I know it does not have anything to do with the size of your library as far as gigabytes cause most of my uploades were in excess of 25 minutes. So it has to be something else. I will continue to play with my library and let you know if i can replicate the problem. I would email support and ask why this is happening because it specifically says 25,000 songs that are not in the store.

Here is specifically what it says on their website.

A subscription to iTunes Match ($24.99 a year) adds everywhere access to the music you've imported from CDs and bought elsewhere. Match first determines which of those songs are for sale in the store and automatically adds them to your iCloud library, no uploading required. It then uploads any music it didn't find a match for. The result is your complete library in the cloud, playlists and all, with a minimum amount of upload time required to get it there. You can keep up to 25,000 songs in your library--songs purchased from iTunes don't count against that number. To activate the service use Turn on iTunes Match in the iTunes Store menu on your computer.

I'm going to watch the keynote againt to see what is said.

I'll be back.

Here is what the screen shot of my step two when I was doing over 25,000 said. I did this just to see if it would.

is you problem happening after this step or before this step.

How many songs have you purchased from iTunes?

I have 2,000 purchased songs in my library. I will continue to add until I get this to happen. If this is truly the case that stinks. I was always under the impression that the only thing that counted towards your 25,000 limit was what itunes did not have. If it is in fact the case that matched songs count towards your limit, I will definitely be leaving feedback about this. There is no reason that matched songs should count towards the limit. Apple already has them in their library and there is no more storage space required for these. But whatever. I'm sorry if my work around did not work after all. I'm still add songs and trying to replicate the issue, but needless to say it takes longer than apple said. I've been at this ever since the official US launch. I've run it none stop and I'm still going. I guess the only other thing to do is create another library like other users have said and then just add the music to that library that you know you would want to have access to from your mobile devices.

Another alternative (that's worked for me) is to set up two smart play lists: one for checked tracks and one for unchecked tracks, and change the media type in the second playlist.

1. The one with checked tracks should be those you want to sync with the cloud, so needs to be less than 25,000 limit.

2. The one with the unchecked tracks should be those that you don't want to sync (you may want to do this stage after the item 1)

3. Select all tracks in the "unchecked tracks" playlist - and change their media type to "audiobook".

4. Restart the iTunes Match process

This method saves you from deleting any tracks.

I have about 25,790 songs in my library. So if i temporely remove 1000 songs i could start iTunes Match.

After i compleet the uploads / match what will happens if i add the other 1000 again to my library? Will there be 25,000 available in iTunes Match and the exceded one's not and they stay available in iTunes?

thanks