iTunes Match and Apple Music

Secondly, what is the advantage of iTunes Match if I am subscribed to Apple Music?

I suspect if you use the match aspect of Music you don't get DRM-free downloads the way you do with Match.

My thought was that any music of mine that was not in the store; ie. songs that were uploaded to Match are not available without Match. In which case, I can probably live without Match if I decide to subscribe to Music.

According to Apple's marketing material for Apple Music, it does the same thing with songs it can't match: It uploads them and lets you access them from all devices, presumably to the 10,000 song or whatever upload limit. I think Limnos may be right. With Match you get DRM-free downloads of matched songs from your iTunes library. You get them forever, even if your cancel your Match subscription. Cancel and you lose the ability to download those songs to all your devices, but what you've already downloaded, even to your iTunes music library, you get to keep. With Apple Music, cancel your subscription, anything you've downloaded for offline play becomes inaccessible until you renew.

I figure that makes the most sense, since Apple says Music does the same thing Match does. So, succinctly, it's like to work out that Match downloads are not dependent on an ongoing Match subscription, Apple Music downloads are dependent on an ongoing Apple Music subscription.

I have iTunes Match. I painstakingly went through the upload process and then downloaded the files from the cloud onto my computer. I saved the originals as a back-up in case a file got replaced that I did not want.

Now, I am interested in trying out iMusic but am hesitant as to exactly what will happen to my music and will it go through this whole process again? I want to try it but not at the sake of my library. Also, if I were to change, I assume I would no longer need match and will that too screw up my library?

If you cancel iTunes Match, the new Apple Music

will store virtually all your existing music in the cloud,

just as it did with iTunes Match. The caveat to this is

should you ever cancel the new Apple Music @ $9.99

per month, you will have no music in the cloud. Any Apple

Purchased music is always available via iTunes. I would

consider iTunes Match your cloud of music irrespictive of

what you do with Apple Music. Note, if you firmly decide to

pay the $9.99/month indefinitely, that would alleviate any

need for iTunes Match. There's the Rub. Hope it helps.

The new Apple Music Service allows full access to the iTunes Library and also acts as a cloud by loading any music from your existing

Library. If you already have iTunes Match, the foregoing becomes mute as your library has already been in the cloud for $24.99 per year.

Should you cancel your iTunes Match subscription, I advise you plan on being an Apple Music member permanently which may suit your needs.

If you ever cancel the Apple Music subscription, you obviously lose the applicable benefits. That means no full access to the iTunes Store along with

Losing any songs you stored on your device. Moreover, you also lose the icloud Storage that's part of the Apple Music Service. Without iTunes match,

Thousands of songs you originally loaded into the iTunes Match cloud are lost. If you have a large library, the original iTunes Match may be your

savior should you ever opt out of the $9.99 Apple Music Service. Hope this helps.

It does help. I'll keep Match as a back-up for sure. I was mostly concerned about the upload process but I guess I am covered. I just wanted to make sure my music did not get screwed up.

I also read in one article that there is some technicality that means that if you are subscribed to Apple Music and you cancel your Itunes match subscription, any tracks that are part of the Itunes Store, but not part of Itunes Music (because the artist didn't authorize streaming e.g. the Beatles), you may hear any Beatles tracks that you own in a lower sound quality if you don't have both Apple Music and Itunes Match subscriptions.

I have not validated this with any other source, but that's what I read this morning.

Regarding the point that if you cancel your Apple music subscription and you don't have Match, you will lose all your stuff, I suspect that Apple will warn you about this and give you the option to immediately sign up when you cancel your Apple Music subsription - at least they will get a lot of complaints if they don't do that.