Sams Teach Yourself iTunes Match in 10 Minutes

Lesson 3. How to Work Around iTunes Match’s 25,000 Song Limit

Do you have a massive music library that holds more than 25,000 songs? If so, iTunes won’t let you upgrade to iTunes Match. You can’t just tell it to match certain playlists or anything—it’s all or nothing. Or is it? In this lesson, you learn a trick that enables you to use iTunes Match even if your library is enormous.

Limits Were Made to Be Broken

Apple doesn’t say explicitly why iTunes Match works only with music libraries containing 25,000 songs or fewer, but it’s not too difficult to guess. If your library contains that much music, you’re likely an avid, frequent listener, and Apple needs a lot of storage space to store your music and a lot of bandwidth to stream it.

Don’t forget: ...