my friend — how can she tell whether she uses itunes match

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my friend — how can she tell whether she uses itunes match

My friend L. may be getting an Apple Music subscription from me this Xmas, via an Apple Card. She is chary of this for reasons I can barely grasp. She is weak in computer understanding. We don’t live near each other, so I can’t look at her iMac. I am stronger than her in computer understanding, but I am no guru.

I want to know whether she presently uses iTunes Match. Can anyone tell me what to ask her to do to find out? Thanks in advance, I do know that she uses iTunes, not the new Apple Music app. I don’t know if she uses the iCloud Music Library, or even how that library differs from iTunes Match. Can someone tell me the difference?

I myself use iTunes on my iMac, which is too old to use the new Apple Music app. I do have a subscription to the Apple Music streaming service, so what I see in iTunes on my iMac differs from what L. sees on her iMac.

L. tells me that in the past, she objected when Apple supplied the music on her iPhone — not her iMac, her iPhone — with album art automatically. L. thought this was wasting storage space on her iPhone. I have tried (as yet unsuccessfully) to find out from her what was the cause of this automatic filling in of iPhone album art. My thinking is that she must have been using iTunes Match and/or iCloud Music Library. If she manually copied music from iTunes to her iPhone, album art wouldn’t fill in automatically, would it, unless it was already present in iTunes, right?

So ... any help you gurus can give me about this situation will help me advise L. and maybe will let me get permission from her to give her Apple Music via an Apple Card.

Posted on Nov 27, 2020 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

274,610 points

Nov 27, 2020 9:57 AM in response to Eric P. Stewart

Your friend can use the advice in See or cancel your subscriptions - Apple Support to check on their subscriptions.

Both Apple Music and iTunes Match use iCloud Music Library (the i is dropped in Catalina/Big Sur) which is the component that matches or uploads existing content in your library, along with playlists, and syncs changes between libraries and devices. Apple Music provides access to the bulk of the iTunes Store catalog on a rental basis.

Purchases from the iTunes Store may arrive on the device automatically and would usually include artwork. The overhead for artwork is about 1%. Generally not worth losing sleep over.

tt2

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Answer 2

Nov 27, 2020 12:19 PM in response to turingtest2

The link you provided is outdated. Instead, use "See your purchase history for the App Store, iTunes Store, and more." It has different instructions under "See your purchase history on your computer." But those instructions don't give a way to, for example, unsubscribe from iTunes Match. Instead, if you are using iTunes and not Apple Music, you can cancel that particular subscription by clicking https://finance-app.itunes.apple.com/connecting-client?targetUrl=https%3A%2F%2Ffinance-app.itunes.apple.com%2Faccount%2Fsubscriptions and using the list of subscriptions that shows up under "Store" in iTunes itself. Click "edit" next to (in this case) "iTunes Match," and then click on "Cancel Subscription." My cancellation of iTunes Match will take effect a year after I last renewed my annual subscription, which will be on June 30, 2021.

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Answer 3

Nov 27, 2020 10:30 AM in response to turingtest2

Hmmmm ... I checked my own subscriptions and find I have both Apple Music and iTunes Match. I got the subscription to iTunes Match long ago, the one to Apple Music more recently. I thought Apple Music replaces and includes iTunes Match. Why would my subscription to iTunes Match not have automatically been merged into my subscription to Apple Music?

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,610 points

Nov 27, 2020 11:20 AM in response to Eric P. Stewart

There was a time when Apple Music didn't completely cover the same features as iTunes Match. There might still be an edge case use for Apple TV 2, but that might not be supported at all any more. If you have a subscription to Apple Music you don't need iTunes Match as well. Apple won't cancel the subscription for you however.

tt2

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my friend — how can she tell whether she uses itunes match

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