Apple today announce Apple Music, its new music streaming service. While I’ll have more to say soon, it’s worth pointing out something on the Apple website. It looks like Apple Music is going to be, in part, an unlimited iTunes Match, with no 25,000 track limit. Here’s what Apple says:
How does Apple Music know what songs are in my personal library?
With an Apple Music membership, your entire library lives in iCloud. We compare every track in your collection to the Apple Music library to see if we have a copy. If we do, you can automatically listen to it straight from the cloud. If you have music that’s not in our catalog, we upload those songs from iTunes on your Mac or PC. It’s all in iCloud, so it won’t take up any space on your devices.
So if you’ve struggled with the 25,000 track limit for iTunes Match, you may now have a way to get your entire library in the cloud, for $10 a month.
You’ll still be able to use iTunes Match, for $25 a year, if you don’t want Apple Music, but it looks as though Apple Music will duplicate the functionality of iTunes Match.