I have an iTunes Match subscription and iTunes Radio, but I am still receiving commercial advertisements on iTunes Radio. Why?

Here are relevant sections of chat with Apple Support person "Randy." (I'm Mark)

Randy: iTunes Match is designed, when you enable it, to disable the local content in lieu of accessing it via iTunes in the cloud.

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Randy:
 You can have songs available for off-line play.

Mark: 
How?

Mark:
 And is there any way to get commercial free iTunes radio without enabling the other Match features (that I don't need) on the iPhone?

Randy:
 On your phone create a playlist and at the bottom there is a button or selection to download all.

Mark:
 So I download from the Cloud instead of my Mini for off-line play?

Randy:
At this time there is not a way to enable pieces of iTunes Match selectively.

Randy:
 Yes. Download from the cloud. Also, when you play songs in iTunes Match on your phone it stores them in the cache for off-line access.

Mark:
 I think what I need would be a good option. It seems a little crazy with Match to have to download from the Cloud for offline play when I can do it so much more efficiently from my Mini without using bandwith.

Mark:
 Just so I'm clear, can you tell me how to download my ENTIRE libary to my iPhone for off-line play?

Randy: 
That would easiest by creating the playlist on your computer, then drag all the songs or albums to the playlist.

Randy:
 Next, give it a few to update on your device, the download all for that playlist on your phone.

Mark:
 OK, I'll try that. And when I add new CDs to iTunes my Mini, do I have to do the same thing? In other words, synching locally iPhone/Mini no longer is of any use?

Randy: 
Newly added content should upload to iTunes in the cloud and you can access it from your phone. You may even want to make a play list and when you phone refreshes iTunes Match, you will see it on your phone also.

Mark:
 OK, thanks for your help. Oddly for Apple, this is complicating my life rather than simplfying. I'll have to see if commercial free Radio is worth all this hassle.

Randy:
 I understand.

Mark:
 With all due respect, this seems like something a Microsoft engineer would have cooked up!

Randy:
Thank you, Mark, for contacting iOS chat support. I hope you have a wonderful day! If there is nothing further I can help you with, please click the "End Chat" button on the upper left corner of the chat window. There will also be an option for email if you would like a record of our conversation as well. We are here 24/7 if you need to contact us again for anything.

Thanks for all your assistance, Michael. I love my Apple products because of their typical elegant simplicity, so this experience is a bit of a surprise for me!

Oddly that chat reads like it was written by an actual human. Heh.

You are of course welcome for the help.

Michael may be trying to be helpful, but he fails to tell you that he doesn't know the answer. Don't take that personally Michael. I don't know the answer either, but what I found is that when I enables itunes match on my iphone, looking for artist, playlists, etc., were in fact being looked for in the cloud because there was a long pause before things showed up. Then I turned itunes match off in the settings, and access to my music was as before. My take home is that when itunes match is turned on, the cloud becomes the preferred source, but when it's off, you revert to the saved files.

I don't know what question you're answering, maxpower0, but my answer to the OP is correct. To listen to iTunes Radio ad-free iTunes Match must be enabled either in iTunes or on the iOS device. That is the correct answer to the OP's question.

If you are responding to my conversation with PugetSoundguy, then I do believe I know the answer to the question. I clearly state my disagreement with the "Apple Tech" that has been referenced. I've been using iTunes Match since the beta and I am confident I have a firm grasp of how the service works, and is supposed to work. Given new information I'm willing to change my opinion of how the service is designed to work but as of now I have not been presented with that information.

You're welcome, Tim.

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Hi Michael,

I just subscribed to iTunes Match to eliminate commercials from iTunes Radio on my Apple TV. I just fired her up and BAM! There's a commercial. What am I doing wrong?

And by "just subscribed" I mean yesterday.

I don't have an Apple TV so I'm afraid I can't help with that. You should post your question to the Using Apple TV forum.

I thought I'd add my two cents here. I just enabled iTunes Match on my phone (iOS 7). The music that was on my phone is still there (it was all already uploaded to iTunes Match from my computer). So I didn't have to re-download it.

You can also hide all the music not on your phone. Unfortunately, it doesn't hide the playlists whose songs are not on the phone, so I have to wade through all my playlists to get to the ones I want. Oh well.

I don't know if I'm getting ads on my phone now (haven't tried yet), but I am getting them on my computer, even though iTunes Match is enabled. But I started a different thread about that.

I am getting ads on the desktop but not on my laptop or ios devices. Match is defintely turned on for the dekstop. The other issue I am having is that on the desktop the streaming appears to go into a sleep mode after 30 minutes.

Not super impressed with Apple radio so far, still using Pandora as my primary .

I can confirm that I just now enabled iTunes Match and it did NOT remove any songs on my iPhone 5s running iOS 7.0.3.

Immediately after enabling it I went to Music and there was a progress bar saying "Loading iTunes Match" which took about a minute. Immediately after it was done I put the phone in airplane mode and selected several songs at random to play on the phone. They all played fine. The phone has 2647 songs in it.

Prior to all this I had enabled iTunes Match on my MacBook and allowed it to complete the process of matching and uploading songs.

Yeah, this is a poor design. If I'm a Pandora One subscriber, and I start Pandora, it does a quick check to see if I am a current subscriber. You can tell if this works because the launch screen changes to indicate Pandora One. Apple should have implemented in a similar fashion, rather than requiring me to turn on iTM, and then re-sync music to the device. Not everyone listens to iTunes Match cloud-based music. I understand that Apple just figures you'll pull it all from the cloud since iTR is only available in the cloud, but the truth is that sometimes I'm not connected. Oh well, it's a first world problem, but it's a pain.

I had this issue today. Here's a screenshot of the ad next to one showing I am subscribed to iTunes Match.