Do I need both Apple Music and iTunes Match?

Apple Music and iTunes Match offer the same kind of service for your music library. However if you have been using iTunes Match and not Apple Music's iCloud Music Library, then the first thing to do before cancelling would be to make sure that your music is all downloaded to a computer and available offline before cancelling iTunes Match.

Otherwise, if it is not available offline, cancelling iTunes Match, means no more access to that library found in the iTunes Match service.

If you wish to just use Apple Music, you would need to then have Apple Music scan and match / upload your library again.

Note that Apple Music will DRM protect all your songs and tracks even if they were not protected originally. So if you ever cancel Apple Music you will lose access to all DRM protected songs.

Using either iTunes Match or Apple Music it is always a good idea, to have a local backup copy of all your owned songs.

Beyond your own library, songs downloaded from the Apple Music subscription service, that are not part of your library are not really yours and as a such will no longer be accessible if you discontinue the Apple Music subscription.

Hi there,

In the beginning of 2016 Apple stopped to put DRM on uploaded songs. (https://m.imore.com/how-unsubscribe-itunes-match), see also FAQ at the buttom of the Apple Music membership page: Apple Music - Membership - Apple

Do I need iTunes Match with Apple Music?

No. Apple Music includes all the benefits of iTunes Match to make all of your music available on all of your devices.

Some articles seem to suggest, that switching from Match to solely Apple Music seems to require indexing the whole Music again. Therefore you should download your library before ditiching Match

No, Apple Music works exactly the same way as iTunes Match in that regard. It uploads music it cannot match to the Apple Music catalog exactly the same way iTunes Match does.

Access your music collection on all of your devices with Apple Music - Apple Support

If we can’t match certain songs in your collection to songs in the Apple Music catalog, we use iTunes on a Mac or PC to upload a copy to iCloud Music Library. After the upload, you can access it on all of your devices.

Is iTunes Match required to upload music into iCloud that you convert and download into iTunes from YouTube? Currently, when I convert and download a song into iTunes from YouTube that isn't in Apple Music, the song will get uploaded to my iCloud Music Library and then synced across all of my Apple devices. I'm not sure if this will continue to work if I cancel iTunes Match as Apple Music seems to only sync all songs that are actually in the Apple Music catalog.

Any help you (or anyone) can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Does it? Because as I read it, Apple Music, whenever a Track could not be found in the iTunes Store converts the Track locally to iTunes AAC, then uploads it. What iTunes Match does or at least did was upload the song as it is. So when you delete your local copy, what you download from the cloud is exactly what you had in the first place. For example a 128 kBit/s mp3 would also upload as an mp3 whereas Apple Music transcodes it to AAC 256 kBit/s and then uploads it.

It does. The question was whether Apple Music also uploaded songs that were not in the catalog:

SquatchSlaya wrote:

I'm not sure if this will continue to work if I cancel iTunes Match as Apple Music seems to only sync all songs that are actually in the Apple Music catalog.

Yes, it also does change the format, and DRM protects the songs. Not sure if it changes the bitrate though.

Oh, awesome! I was not aware of that. Thanks a lot for your help man!