It’s that time of year when my iTunes Match subscription renews and I don’t know what will happen if I cancel it. One day need to figure out how to find iTunes Match tracks that are not on streaming. Or do I even care anymore? Just throwing money into Apple’s services revenue pot.


@manton If you have Apple Music, Match is included. Says so in a doc somewhere.

@manton I cancelled it a couple of years ago, no ill effects as long as you still have Apple Music, best as I can tell. All my old tracks are still there.
@agiletortoise Same here. @manton

@manton In in the same boat. I think it’s safe to cancel, but it’s only $25/yr…

@mikethefifth @manton Thanks for this. That’s a huge caveat I was not aware of when I canceled Match.

I stopped it a few years ago. The songs end up being greyed out. Any way you can retrieve/download the original uploads on your Mac ?

@agiletortoise @manton same here except for tracks missing from Apple Music but are in my collection. For example Genesis Three Sides Live plays different versions than I had on CD. Not noticeable on devices that have my rips but are lost as far as the cloud is concerned. Fortunately I still have all the CDs, which I’m slowly archiving in Lossless.

@Munish I created a smart playlist of just Match songs and I’m going to download them when I find the space. Not sure it’s possible after cancellation.

no you can’t. It just greys out. I did not know back then and lost many tracks. I can find them via Apple Music subscription, but that original music has gone 🥺

@manton I think that if you get a list of MPMediaItems from your Media Library and your Match files are not downloaded locally, Match tracks will have isCloudItem == true && hasProtectedAsset == false

@fishyswaz Something similar seems to work with smart playlists. I'm going to download everything that matches and cancel, seems best to just archive the tracks myself instead of paying indefinitely.

I’ve had it for years from when I burned my hundreds of CDs. Keeping it because I had a lot Hawaiian music CDs that have never gone to streaming
