25,000 Limit

Hey nackerm,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities!

I'd be happy to answer your questions about iTunes Match. As you may have seen in the following article, iTunes Match is limited to 25,000 songs. The great thing about iTunes Match is if the songs you own were purchased from the iTunes Store, they are "Matched" rather than "Uploaded". Therefore:

iTunes Store purchases made with the same Apple ID being used for iTunes Match do not count towards the 25,000 song limit.

iTunes Store: Subscribing to iTunes Match

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4914

Thanks,

Matt M.

I don't have iTunes Match, but my understanding is that the 25,000 limit is the maximum number of non-iTunes-purchases that will be attached to the account, whether by matching with existing songs or by uploading novel tracks. Unless you purchased 25,000 of your 50,000 tracks directly from Apple I doub't that iTunes Match will be able to act as a complete streaming service/backup of your library. Again, I don't have first hand experience, but I believe that if you have more tracks than can be added to the service you don't really get any control over what is and is not included.

If your main aim is to backup your library then see this user tip.

tt2

So, if I had 50 songs which, for the sake of this example, have not been bought and downloaded from the iTunes store, and 10 of them are already held on the Apple database then only 40 would be uploaded. My question is, does the 25,000 limit relate to the 50 songs or only the 40 that need to be uploaded?

In your example, it is the 50 that would count against the 25,000 limit, since they are not purchased from the iTunes Store.

If you are near the 25,000, you may wish to consider a better cloud/matching service. Amazon Cloud Player Premium allows up to 250,000 songs, and costs the same US $24.99 per year as iTunes Match.