Turn off iTunes Match Permanently, and....

Nicely said. I'm so SO happy to get rid of it.......... sort like a bad relationship.

I had close to 25,000 songs in computer and was using iTunes Match. I also want to stop using it but when I turned off iTunes match, my song total went down to about 14,000 songs. How do I get back the other songs that were being "stored" in the cloud??

Thanks!!!

Sign-in to iTunes Store, start iTunes Match - allow the process to complete.

In your library view switch on iCloud Status and iCloud Download fields - sort on Download, select all with cloud symbol and download them to your local library - complete secure backup.

You should now find that you have all of your Songs locally - at this stage you can switch off iTunes Match with no reduction in the Songs available.

Hi Mracole...

Thanks for trying to help. So I switched back on Itunes Match and the songs are all there. I sorted by Cloud status and there are over 12,000 songs. Is there an easy way to select all those songs to download? And lastly, how exactly do I download them to my local library?

Thanks again for the help!!

Q1. Is there an easy way to select all those songs to download?

Yes

Q2. How exactly do I download them to my local library?

In library view, sort on iCloud Download.

Select 1st Song available for Download - scroll to end of download set & shift-click, to select all Songs not held locally - right click & select download.

Awesome thanks for your help!

I have another annoyance that maybe you can help with. When you upload a CD that has multiple artists like a compilation cd or soundtrack...iTunes doesn't keep the album as a whole but rather breaks up all the tracks and puts them in alphabetical order by artist. Now I know you can go and highlight all the tracks and "link" them together but to me that is a pain. Is there any way to set a default in iTunes that it keeps all albums downloaded together and not split up the tracks?? Even in an 1 artist album that has a guess appearance (Like Kenny Chesney feat. Zac Brown) it takes that 1 track and separates it from the rest of the album. To me this really makes no sense at all and I hate to have to manually go in there and fix these.

Thanks again!!

In the main library view, show the Artist and Album fields - sort by Album. This will keep compilations together as they were on the CD.

AHHH... Thank you so much for that tip!! Worked perfectly.

I hope it has helped out others too who were very frustrated by that!!

Thanks Walter for the kind comments. Glad the instructions were helpful. The iTunes Match premise is good, it just needs much better execution. I love what you said "iTunes Match is a solution worse than any problem" that's it excatly, but hopefully Apple comes up with a better solution at some point in the near future. Frankly, I'm not even missing it.

To anyone who turned off iTunes Match, don't forget to disable iTunes Match "Auto renewal" in your iTunes account so you don't get charged the 24.99 for another year. To do it.

1. Access iTunes Account Information by Logging into iTunes
From the iTunes Store, click either your iTunes email address or "Sign In" in the upper right corner and enter your user name and password. (password only if you are already signed in).

2. Under the "iTunes in the Cloud" heading Click the "Turn off Auto-Renew" button.

3. Click the "Done" button at the bottom of the page.

🙂------> and Thanks! Now that was super helpful to me as I didn't know about that feature. You are a great help.

I checked my store settings and iTunes Match is not on. But I have these iCloud icons beside some of my libraries. Does this mean anything?

Thank you Rod_V for your help. I purchased the iPhone 5 yesterday and have spent way to long a time trying to figure out why I could no longer drag and drop from my MacBook Pro iTunes library into the new iPhone 5. Your instructions were awesome! I should know by now that this Forum is truly the best place to go first when problem solving.

I have no idea what Apple's thinking was behind iTunes Match and Genius suggestions but I am VERY happy to have eliminated both!. I would think Apple would know by now we are all capable of managing our iTunes Library!

Cheers!

Candace

Great advice. I want to do it but 'turn off itunes match' is not active in the store drop down.

any ideas?

Hi narkurs, When you say "not active" I am assumming you mean that it is says "Turn On iTunes Match" in the iTunes drop down menu under Store instead of "Turn Off iTunes Match". If that is the case try turning iTunes match on first (on all devices), then try following the instructions from the begining to the end. That should work.