The [Still] Puzzling Nature of the 25K Song Limit and Why Apple Care is Golden.

[iRube]

My entire three month free trial of Apple Music consisted of troubleshooting iCloud Music Library. Specifically what the 25,000 song limit was exactly and what the phrase "You can have up to 25,000 songs in your music library. Songs you purchased from the iTunes Store don't count against this limit." means (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204925).

Perhaps I was in denial but I really wanted it to be true. But alas the engineers working on my case determined that the total for an iCloud library was 25K and that included purchased and Apple Music.

I relented and decided to start over. But a 35,000 song iCloud library is not easy to delete. I tried deleting the whole library at once but the entire thing returned by next morning. It took several hours but I managed to remove about 12,000 items by selecting about 10 albums (about 100 songs) at a time and updating each time. I wasn't getting any feedback in iTunes whether or not I was making any progress but no error messaged popped up and my network was showing a higher amount of data being moved. I did get my cloud to work after all. When you tally it all up the blame lays mainly with me; I chose to play lawyer with Apple Care, repeatedly citing their own support document which read "Songs you purchased from the iTunes Store don't count against this limit." That approach did not succeed in fixing anything. To this day I have not heard of a satisfactory explanation for the contradiction that is iCloud Music Library and the 25K Song Limit. Have you? If so please chime in!

One silver lining to the story: I did get a sincere apology from the senior advisor who handle my case and Apple shipped a 4 TB LaCie Porsche external drive via FedEx to my house. Got it today. I consider that a stellar gesture on Apple's part.

I'm now enjoying Apple Music for what it is and not for what I think it should be. I have weighed the pros & cons and have decided that I'm pretty happy with the service. And I'm anxiously awaiting the mythical 100,000 song limit!

Cheers,
the iRube

 

[Just_Me_D]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[crankerchick]

Interesting. I always thought it was 25k limit and songs purchased through iTunes didn't count. Some things I've read claim that "Matched" songs also don't count, but I never believed that to be true. I'm getting close to the limit of 25k, so I, too, await the "pie in the sky" 100k limit.

 

[swandy]

#1 - whoever you spoke to at Apple Care is totally wrong - the 25,000 limit does NOT include any purchases from iTunes. Just the songs matched/uploaded from your personal iTunes Library and any songs you add to My Music from Apple Music. My current library is already around 25,700 of which about 2,000 were purchased from iTunes.
#2 - Perhaps I am missing something, but why the free hard drive as a "thank you"? Very nice of them, but a strange concession on their parts.

 

[iRube]

#1 - whoever you spoke to at Apple Care is totally wrong - the 25,000 limit does NOT include any purchases from iTunes. Just the songs matched/uploaded from your personal iTunes Library and any songs you add to My Music from Apple Music. My current library is already around 25,700 of which about 2,000 were purchased from iTunes.
#2 - Perhaps I am missing something, but why the free hard drive as a "thank you"? Very nice of them, but a strange concession on their parts.

1.Please let Apple know that. 2. No idea why that particular item; not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

[swandy]

1.Please let Apple know that. 2. No idea why that particular item; not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

1 - Nope, just let the person you were speaking to at Apple Care who did not even bother to read Apple's own manuals. LOL