Does the 25k song limit in iTunes match apply to Apple Music's "iCloud Music Library"?

[Michael Lach]

In his excellent MacWorld article, Kirk mentions (emphasis mine):

 

"While the main feature of Apple Music is streaming from Apple’s massive collection of music, Apple Music also matches your music library and uploads tracks that aren’t in Apple’s library.

There is also a 25,000 track limit

, as with iTunes Match, but Apple’s Eddy Cue has said that this limit should be increased to 100,000 when iOS 9 is released."

On Apple's AppleMusic Membership webpage (emphasis mine):

 

"Your iTunes library is still yours. You can access

your entire collection

from Apple Music or the iTunes app on Mac or PC."

These statements seem contradictory. What is the number of songs that I can upload and sync via AppleMusic?

 

More to my interest, I have 150k songs in my iTunes music library. I'd like to have them backed up in the cloud and easily accessible across all my devices. Can I do that with AppleMusic? (Once the bugs are fixed.)

[kirkmc]

Yes, that limit applies to Apple Music. Apple considers that an entire collection isn't very big.

[Michael Lach]

Well, that's a bummer. Here's hoping that changes with El Cap and iOS 9, and that Eddie Cue figures out a way beyond the 100k song limit.

[Busta Uppa]

If your library exceeds 25,000 songs, iTunes will simply not allow you to activate iCloud Music Library. Which also prevents you from adding anything to "My Music." So no integration with your library, no saving anything for offline use.

 

You can search for and stream individual items, but that's it. The experience is akin to just looking up music on YouTube like most kids do today.

 

I reeeeally hope they fix this. I understand that they can't simply offer unlimited cloud storage, but why do we even need our whole libraries uploaded in the first place? I'd be fine with having my full selection of music at home only, with just the Apple Music stuff available when I'm away from my own network. It's dumb to lock out the most attractive features of the service for the sake of the music locker thing.

 

 

 

Edit: here is the message I get when I attempt to activate iCloud Music Library:

 

The wording is deceptive. It makes it sound like you won't have your entire library available in the cloud, which would be fine. Instead it just prevents iCloud Music Library from activating entirely, which in turn imposes the limitations I described above.