Can I delete all original music files after Music Match upload/matching?

[bluesteel]

About 3 years ago I subscribed to iTunes Music Match. The service uploaded or matched all my music tracks that I had added to iTunes, about 100GB. After 3 years, I still have the original 100GB of music files on my Mac, but now I want to delete them. If I delete the original music files, will I be able to download all my Music Match music and use it drm-free if I decide to cancel Music Match and leave iTunes all together?

I don't have plans on leaving Music Match or iTunes, but I just want to delete all my original files, and I want to know that if, in the future, I decide to download all my music from Music Match, that it is mine to keep drm-free. Is there any reason to keep my original music files other than if they are higher quality than what Music Match provides?

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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[bluesteel]

Excellent! Thank you very much for the info

 

[Juicy Box]

If I delete the original music files, will I be able to download all my Music Match music and use it drm-free if I decide to cancel Music Match and leave iTunes all together?

Yes, you can delete them all and download them later, but I would keep a back up of all your songs.

I have been a long time iTunes Match subscriber, actually, since it was launched.

Back in 2015 when Apple was having all sorts of Apple Music issues, all of my iTunes Match songs disappeared.

This issue was common back in the fall of 2015 for people using the Apple Music trial, but I didn't even participate in the Apple Music free trial, and I still lost all my music.

After all my music disappeared, I contacted Apple Support which was a horrible experience.

I refused to continue to talk to the first lady, she had no idea what iTunes Match was or how it worked. The guy I was transferred to ended up knowing about iTunes Match, he said he used it, but wasn't able to help and escalated my ticket to Apple Engineers.

The Apple Engineers contacted me two weeks later, said that they couldn't recover any of my music because I never had any music uploaded using iTunes Match which was obviously not true.

Luckily I had a physical back up of about 95% of all my music.

Point of the story, don't count on Apple or any other cloud service to keep your data safe and secure.

 

[bluesteel]

Point of the story, don't count on Apple or any other cloud service to keep your data safe and secure.

Great advice. You are right, anything can happen. I need to rely on myself, not Apple. I think I will download all of my music from Apple and keep it on a long term external HD. Its nice knowing that the quality of the matched tracks will be good.

 

[Rigby]

Great advice. You are right, anything can happen. I need to rely on myself, not Apple. I think I will download all of my music from Apple and keep it on a long term external HD. Its nice knowing that the quality of the matched tracks will be good.

I would strongly recommend to keep a backup of your original files (i.e. not re-download them from Apple). The reason is that the matching algorithm doesn't always work perfectly. For example, it might change a song to a nanny version with "explicit" lyrics removed, change a live version to a studio version, or switch those precious mono Beatles songs to stereo ones. 100GB storage is cheap, not worth the risk of losing something.

 

[bluesteel]

I would strongly recommend to keep a backup of your original files (i.e. not re-download them from Apple). The reason is that the matching algorithm doesn't always work perfectly. For example, it might change a song to a nanny version with "explicit" lyrics removed, change a live version to a studio version, or switch those precious mono Beatles songs to stereo ones. 100GB storage is cheap, not worth the risk of losing something.

I never thought of this, great point. I will definitely keep all my originals AND I will download a copy of my iTunes music library. Best of both worlds.