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iOS 8.4 to be released 8 AM PT on Tuesday, iTunes Match song limit will increase to 100,000 with iOS 9

apple-music

Apple directors have been somewhat talkative over the weekend about the imminent release of Apple Music. Former Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers, who now works as a Senior Director of Apple Music, blogged about the product’s launch. He reminisces on the history of digital music and radio saying that seeing Apple Music on stage at WWDC ‘it was hard not to feel like the last 20+ years was leading to this day’.

Interestingly, Apple will be releasing iOS 8.4 at 8 AM on June 30th which includes the newly revamped Music app to support Apple Music. This is slightly earlier than the usual 10 AM release window. The change in scheduling seems to be in service of Beats 1, Apple’s worldwide radio station, which will start streaming from 9 AM on the same day.

Meanwhile, Eddy Cue has also been leaking some tidbits about Apple Music on Twitter …

In a series of tweets, Apple SVP Eddy Cue explained to a customer how Apple Music and iTunes Match work together. Essentially, Apple Music includes the same matching and uploading unrecognised songs process as iTunes Match so Apple users don’t have to subscribe to both Apple Music and iTunes Match to get all the features.

Cue revealed that the same 25,000 song library limit will apply to Apple Music at launch as exists with iTunes Match today. However, for iOS 9, Apple is ‘working’ on raising that limit to 100,000 songs allowing users to take advantage of the additional features with much larger libraries.

Apple Music requires iOS 8.4 due for release at 8 AM on June 30th. For developers currently running iOS 9, Eddy Cue also said that a new iOS 9 beta seed will add support the service. Beats 1 is Apple’s new worldwide 24/7 radio station led by Zane Lowe. It will feature shows and interviews with Dr. Dre, Drake and Elton John.

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Comments

  1. appgarlaschelli - 9 years ago

    So will there be another iOS 9 beta on Tuesday?

    • Joefrey Kibuule - 9 years ago

      You’re probably going to have to wait until the following Monday when the 3rd beta would have been released anyway, two weeks after beta 2.

    • SMIDG3T - 9 years ago

      Did you not read the last paragraph?

      • appgarlaschelli - 9 years ago

        The last paragraph does not say whether the next iOS 9 beta will be released on Tuesday or the following Monday. I was just hoping I didn’t have to wait one week more just because I’m running on iOS 9

    • Atlas (@Metascover) - 9 years ago

      It will probably just work with the current beta. You can already hear the ad for Beats1 right now and search for artists.

  2. iSRS - 9 years ago

    So now I won’t need to subscribe to iTunes Match anymore? The FAQ had said they were complimentary. I guess it doesn’t matter. Apple Music is free until close to my renewal.

    • appgarlaschelli - 9 years ago

      I have canceled my iTunes Match subscription a couple of days ago. The Apple web page says that all features of iTunes Match are included with Apple Music as well so I guess there’s no need to pay 25$ extra.

      • Storing your own personal music collection (CD rips, non-iTunes purchases etc.) in the cloud is not a part of Apple Music.

      • iSRS - 9 years ago

        I am still on the October/November renewal date, what ever the first launch was.

        Wonder if my music will have to be rematched?

      • Jeremy (@Jpsnow85) - 9 years ago

        There’s some misunderstanding about iTunes match vs Apple Music. iTunes match is still worthwhile because if you ever cancel your apple music subscription you obviously won’t have access to all the music that you downloaded for offline listening. iTunes match backs up your personal library (e.g. music you’ve bought through iTunes or ripped from CDs, etc). Apple Music helps you manage your downloaded music for offline listening and has a 100k song limit.

      • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

        You can upload your iTunes library’snd ripped CDs to Apple Music also.

  3. PhilBoogie - 9 years ago

    YES!! Finally the 25,000 song limit is gone. And the new 100,000 song limit is more than enough for me. Freak me, this is, for me, great news. I can now finally upload all my bootlegs I’ve accumulated over the past 30 years.

    I wonder if the songs are stored encrypted or if sysadmins at Apple can rock their boat after having access to users’ libraries¿

    • wigwagworkshop - 9 years ago

      I am with you, I also have a ton of boots, of course a lot of them are still on cassette LOL

      • tmrjij718 - 9 years ago

        @wigwagworkshop What is this cassette you speak of?

      • darwiniandude - 9 years ago

        A cassette is a replacement cartridge for a personal shaving device, obviously.

  4. is Apple Music going to work with IOS 9 Beta on Tuesday?

    • peterplant - 9 years ago

      No, a new seed will be released on Tuesday

      • mikhailt - 9 years ago

        A new iOS 9 seed will be released is all we know. No one confirmed the date yet.

  5. is it going to work on Tuesday with iOS 9 beta 2?

    • jackhawley - 9 years ago

      It’s still a bit unclear. Eddy Cue responded to a tweet about it; hopefully he will respond again with the exact date. Here’s a link to Eddy Cue’s tweet https://twitter.com/cue/status/614632453542555648

    • mikhailt - 9 years ago

      It’s in the last paragraph: “For developers currently running iOS 9, Eddy Cue also said that a new iOS 9 beta seed will add support the service.”

      Which is all we know.

  6. Will iOS 9 beta got Apple Music too?

  7. Rainer BeardMan - 9 years ago

    So this means, if I’m using Apple Music my iTunes Match subscription is useless and I paid 6 month till Dec. for nothing.

    • I’m not 100% sure if Apple Match is still going to be around. If Apple discontinues Apple Match, they’ll send you a pro-rated refund (about $12 for 6 months). If Apple Match continues, it’s not useless.

    • TechSHIZZLE.com - 9 years ago

      Yes. You’re out twelve bucks. BFD.

      • appgarlaschelli - 9 years ago

        Actually he’s still in 18$ as the first three months of Apple music are free

    • krsooo - 9 years ago

      I have cancelled my iTunes Match subscription temporarily before and was refunded for the time I didn’t use.

  8. robertsm76 - 9 years ago

    Has anyone complied a list of which bands won’t be on apple music? Beatles? Ac/dc?

    • someone correct me if i’m wrong, but (apart from the Taylor Swift debacle) Apple Music will be the entire iTunes Catalogue?

    • Presumably any back catalog for artists not on the service won’t matter to fans, because they’ll already own the albums and tracks, right? I can’t imagine a Beatles fan not owning their albums in at least one format.

  9. Is Apple Music going to be on Apple TV?

  10. i cancelled my iTunes match subscription a while ago because of the limit. if it goes up to 100,000 it just might be worth it again! somebody finally put on their thinking cap! why would there be any sort of limit anyway?

    • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

      I was fine with the 25,000 track count limit, Obviously more is better, but for me, it’s the file size limit that’s annoying. I have lots of either big Lossy or Lossless that’s far larger than the 200MB limit size and it won’t upload those to iCloud. I hope they increase the file size limitation because I have files (DSD) that are HUGE, even compressed to AAC they are huge.

    • Ian Band - 9 years ago

      It wasn’t a thinking cap issue…it was a records label issue.

  11. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    Did they increase the size of the track size? They only allow files to be 200MB. That’s what is more important to me since i download a lot of songs that are much larger due to being lossless 24 bit, DSD, or simply really long concerts or songs in Lossless 16 bit.

    What’s with the limit for a subscription service? I don’t understand the concept. Is it that one gets iTunes Match capabilities if they buy the subscription to Apple Music?

    • Scott Tomlinson - 9 years ago

      If you look at this from the Apple Music website :

      “As an Apple Music member you can add anything from the Apple Music library — a song, an album or a video — to your collection. And that’s just the warm-up act. From there you can create the perfect playlist from anything you’ve added. You can save it for offline listening and take it on the road. You can even post your favourite playlists, albums and videos to Facebook, Twitter or Messages. It’s never been easier to share music with each other.”

      It would appear as though you the download limit will be 25k tracks at a time maybe? I just hope that this doesn’t count alongside the iTunes Match limit as I’m all ready at 25k!

      • mikhailt - 9 years ago

        The 25K limit at launch is for uploading your purchases to your iTunes account that Apple Music won’t have. It’ll extend to 100K later.

        What this basically means you pay once for Apple Music and if iTunes finds song in your library that Apple Music doesn’t have, it’ll upload it as part of iTunes Matches and the limit is for 25K songs.

        It has nothing to do with downloads.

    • sometoast - 9 years ago

      Lossless files are going to be converted to 256k AAC on upload anyway, regardless of their original size.

  12. Stephen (@MorningZ) - 9 years ago

    Damn, was kind of hoping that here 2 days prior that the “GM” version of 8.4 would be available in the developer center, but it’s still Beta 4 available… maybe tomorrow

  13. rod410 - 9 years ago

    Is anyone else having issues with their iTunes Match service on the iPhone? All of my music is unorganized now.

  14. Matías - 9 years ago

    Still nothing on availability of Apple Music? :(

  15. greyitout - 9 years ago

    8 AM or 8 PM?

  16. charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

    Funny, all these people asking questions about beta releases. As part of the dev program I used the iOS8 beta (and Yosemite) last year. Never again.

    • Teenagers don’t have a lot to use. I used to run everything on Betas. Who remembers Rhapsody? :)

      I even had Copland “running” at one point. Showing my age, I know. Copland was so cool though. It was going to be Mac OS 8, but it was never released thanks to Steve Jobs returning and Apple buying NeXT.

  17. Ryan Morano - 9 years ago

    I’ll wait for the guinea pigs to test 9 beta 3 to make sure it supports Apple Music. I tried 9 beta 2 and the bluetooth flickered on and off nonstop. My Apple Watch was unusable. Had to revert back to 8.4 beta. So unless both work, I’ll stick with 8.4 on Tuesday.

  18. Ian Band - 9 years ago

    What I would like to know is whether iTunes Music will just “move over” my iTunes Match file, or whether I have to once again “match” my music to iTunes Music. All of my CDs are ripped in Apple Lossless, and I have so much that is NOT in the Apple library, that it took 3 days to down-convert from Apple Lossless and upload (and I have a fast connection. Anyone know the answer? I have not been able to find it.

  19. freediverx - 9 years ago

    I still hate Apple’s UI for anything music related. I’m currently running iOS 8.4. When viewing “My Music” why can’t I see information about an artist by simply clicking on their name?

    Instead, I have to click on a completely generic “…” button (and depending on the page I’m on, there may be several of these buttons with different functions), then select “show in iTunes store”, which opens the iTunes app to a page for the current song or album, and then I can click on the tiny artist name in 4-point font, after which I’m taken to a page with the artist’s albums, songs, and videos, which are all compressed and require clicking a “see all” button.

    There is zero information about the artist, the albums don’t even show what year they were released, there’s an obnoxious $1.29 button next to each and every item on the page, and there’s no way to navigate back to where I was before.

    if Microsoft or Google designed something like this we would have boatloads of comments ridiculing them.

  20. Josh Mobley - 9 years ago

    This may seem like a silly question but, if I don’t renew iTunes Match in favor of apple music and, it replicates my iTunes Match service…. What happens if I don’t renew apple music? Does my music collection vanish? I know that sounds crazy but Apple music is considered a rental and streaming service.

    For instance, in Apple music, when you download music for offline listening, those songs are no longer available if you don’t renew. At least, I’m assuming that’s how it works. I just have to believe that they recognize the songs you have purchased and leave them untouched.

    Sorry, it’s a silly question over all but hey man, you never know.

  21. Jeff Mitchell - 9 years ago

    I assume that if one is not located in a launch country for the Music service, then the 8.4 update will not be available, right? I’m in Canada and we likely won’t see the Music service for at least 6 months to a year (if then, Beats never came to us after all)…which means iOS 9.

  22. GadgetBen - 9 years ago

    Hoping they will put the green lights on with Apple Pay UK at the same time

  23. Am I getting my times right could someone confirm, 8.4 will be avaialble to download only an hour before Beats One goes live. There’s no way everyone is going to be able to download the update without serious congestion to be ready for that. Was looking forward to being there when the ‘on air’ light goes on, but with the software needed to listen still very possibly downloading, this seems a little bit too close to call.

    • Joe - 9 years ago

      This is actually exactly what I was thinking when I read that. My very first thought was that it sometimes takes more than an hour just to download the update depending on my connection. I assume this will be a fairly small download, but it can take hours for people to even realize that there is a new download. I would have thought that 8.4 would have come out either the day before or Beats 1 would launch in primetime in the evening.

  24. Aaron - 9 years ago

    so when indie artist can put they’re song on the service?

  25. Juan Pablo Rivera - 9 years ago

    Does anyone know with apple music if you download music for offline listening will you be able to load that music to an ipod Classic

  26. Steve Grenier - 9 years ago

    I am debating if I want to keep iTunes Match or not. I would love it if they would expand it to support videos.

  27. Tom Wyrick - 9 years ago

    I’m a little unclear on the future of “Music Match” too? I get the idea from Eddie Cue’s original tweet that he’s answering a question about Music Match by essentially saying with Apple Music, you’ll be able to upload up to 25,000 of your own tracks that aren’t already in Apple’s own music library to stream any time you like, as long as your subscription is active … and when iOS 9 is released, we’ll up that to 100,000 tracks.

    So in other words, he never really addressed the original question.

    Some people (like me!) really aren’t interested in streaming music. I tend to listen to my music off of my mobile devices while I’m in transit to and from work, and that takes me through areas on the metro and train where there’s no cellular signal. And while yes, I get that it lets you download tracks ahead of time to store offline for these situations? I’d rather just pay to own the tracks on my devices than pay to rent/borrow them. I don’t want a bunch of offline music content that’s suddenly unplayable because I didn’t keep up my monthly subscription fee!

    iTunes Music Match was a service which interested me for it’s relatively low annual price of under $25, except the 25,000 track limitation with it is too small. As others said, I don’t even need 100,000 tracks with it but at LEAST double it to 50,000 or so. It’s relatively worthless to me if it just stops in the middle of analyzing my music collection and tells me I have too many songs and it can’t continue processing them.

    I fear that starting tomorrow, Apple is just going to tell everyone that the old Music Match is obsolete because Apple Music does everything it used to do, plus more. (EG. No need to worry about keeping backups of your whole music library as long as Apple keeps the masters in their cloud-based library for you to stream and listen to, and they’ll still let you upload copies of the rest of it.) But that’s conveniently disregarding the KEY issue, that is, it’s not a service that lets you download non DRM-locked tracks that will still play when you stop paying the monthly subscription fees.

  28. David McIntyre - 9 years ago

    I’m not clear whether I need to purchase an iTunes Match membership as well as iTunes Music to take full advantage of music on my iPhone.

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Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.