Panic cofounder and gift to the Internet Cabel Sasser posted on Bluesky a screenshot of his upcoming iTunes Match renewal — $24.99, due November 14 — which he says he still pays “religiously” and “superstitiously,” despite also having an Apple Music subscription. A few minutes later, he added: “But I think Apple Music does the same thing!!!”
It does. And since I literally wrote the book on iTunes Match, allow me to explain.
iTunes Match turns fifteen on November 14. Its original pitch: Apple scans your music library, matches the songs it already has in its catalog, uploads the ones it doesn’t, and makes your whole music collection available on all your devices. When Apple Music arrived in 2015, it brought that same feature along for every subscriber — it’s now called Sync Library. Same matching, same uploading of the unique-to-you stuff, same 100,000-song cap. That includes the bootlegs, the college recordings, and the Napster-era MP3s that plenty of Cabel’s repliers said they keep paying for Match to protect. Apple Music handles those, too.
There are two small exceptions. First, DRM: With Apple Music alone, matched songs you download to another device can come down as Apple Music’s copy-protected versions, while iTunes Match gives you DRM-free 256 Kbps AAC files. And second, your cloud library lives only as long as your Apple Music subscription remains active. Cancel Apple Music and that sync goes with it, so if you think you might quit someday, $25 a year to keep your library in the cloud is relatively cheap insurance.
One more thing, since “superstitiously” suggests some of the appeal is peace of mind: Neither service is a backup, and Apple says so. Back up your actual music files no matter what you pay Apple.
For everyone else already paying for Apple Music, you can let iTunes Match lapse. It’s okay.
