After Setting Up iTunes Match Can I Delete All Music on OSX, to Later Re-Download?

[HappyDude20]

Thread title states it best:

I have 3GBs of free space on my Mac. I'm selling my Mac and have 8GB's of music and want to get iTunes match for my future iPad purchase. Therefore, after I upload all music to iTunes match can I delete music only to later be able to re-download it on a new future Mac (including my future iPad)?

 

[Bear]

Thread title states it best:

I have 3GBs of free space on my Mac. I'm selling my Mac and have 8GB's of music and want to get iTunes match for my future iPad purchase. Therefore, after I upload all music to iTunes match can I delete music only to later be able to re-download it on a new future Mac (including my future iPad)?

I would recommend you get an external drive to back your Mac up to before you sell it and then when you get a new Mac you can use migration assistant to recover your data. Apple clearly states that iTunes Match is not to be considered a backup of your music.

 

[Rigby]

In theory you could, but I would strongly suggest to back up your original files. If you don't have an external drive, an 8GB thumb drive or SD card can be had for less than $10.

 

[SanjeevRana]

My dev iMac recently had big issues and I had to format everything to start from scratch ... I just downloaded all the Songs from iTunes Match after settings up iTunes

Note that iTunes Match should be all set up and synced before you start deleting or you will miss some songs ... also be aware of the 25000 limit

 

[snarfquest]

.. also be aware of the 25000 limit

Oh seriously? There's a 25k limit. While 90% of the music I have is from.... umm.. an older generation and I really don't buy music anymore... I have 21912 songs in Match/iCloud. While I don't see purchasing another 3088 songs any time soon I was completely unaware I was actually close to this limit.

 

[moderngamenewb]

I would recommend backing up to an external to play it safe. One, incase something does go wrong. Two, if by some chance you have internet problems while trying to setup your itunes, you can at least use the external. Plus, backing up all files in the iTunes folder (including the library data file), you can easily get back your playlists too if any end up going missing. Plus, it's helpful to have the external on handy just incase you decide to delete music from iTunes Match, but later want to put them back.

 

[philipk]

Not only can you do it, I highly recommend that you do that.

As said above, backup first to a hard drive. Also burn 2 or 3 DVD's of the files to keep.

The reason that I think it is a great idea is ALL of your matched files will be downloaded with iTunes Plus files. They are almost always superior to your own ripped files.

When I was confident with iTunes Match, I deleted all of my matched files and got the iTune Plus versions. I still have the old files if I discover a problem with any iTune Plus file.

Finally, I am currently ripping all my CD's to lossless files for a Sonos system. I am not using iTunes for ripping. That gives me the best of both worlds. Lossless for Sonos and iTunes Plus for my IOS devices.

 

[jdechko]

I would recommend backing up to an external to play it safe. One, incase something does go wrong. Two, if by some chance you have internet problems while trying to setup your itunes, you can at least use the external. Plus, backing up all files in the iTunes folder (including the library data file), you can easily get back your playlists too if any end up going missing. Plus, it's helpful to have the external on handy just incase you decide to delete music from iTunes Match, but later want to put them back.

Three, if there's ever a glitch or lapse in your Match Subscription and Apple deletes your library, you still have your music. As many have said, iTunes Match is not a backup.

 

[crzdcolombian]

Oh seriously? There's a 25k limit. While 90% of the music I have is from.... umm.. an older generation and I really don't buy music anymore... I have 21912 songs in Match/iCloud. While I don't see purchasing another 3088 songs any time soon I was completely unaware I was actually close to this limit.

did you get 22k matched? Match uploads a ton of mine. The ones I bought on CD and from Amazon MP3 store a couple X-mas ago when they sold CDs for $1 to $3 on black friday. Even when itunes match actually matches a song it takes a very long time. I thought they would just look at your library and then automatically match them. It took almost 2 weeks to match 17K songs then upload 3,000. I have all my music on a external HD and a old imac I have. I sold a macbook pro with a decent sized HD which was pretty full with almost 50 digital copies and 22K songs. I got a macbook air which is awesome but the 3-4k songs I have not matched that are being uploaded take almsot a 1/3 of my new HD.