Well, I was going to subscribe to iTunes Match for $25 a year (getting tired of managing three different devices’ sync folders, thought it would be nice to be able to stream anything on demand), but apparently there’s a 25,000 song limit on music you haven’t bought from iTunes.
I’m not going to front like 25,000 songs isn’t a lot of songs — it is! — but it’s less than half my music library. Not talking illicit downloads, even; my CD and vinyl rips are well over 25,000 songs, and I’m not convinced I should be penalized for having broad tastes, deep curiosity, and a preference for spreading my music-purchasing dollars out over many different retailers, formats, and price points.
I didn’t want to say much more that that; it’s a small complaint in the scheme of things, but I was looking forward to the idea of being able to pull up albums I’d only just remembered I had, or hadn’t thought to listen to in ages, or even just shuffling and being surprised by the corners of my collection. I wouldn’t really be surprised if Apple quietly got rid of the limit once the service is established; permanent cloud access is too appealing and obvious a leap to make. Checking around, it looks like Google Music and Amazon’s Cloud Player have similar limitations for now. And Spotify has a whole nest of interrelated issues that mostly just depress me.
Speaking of which, if Match ever does drop the limit, and I try to use it, and find that they use generic album artwork instead of the high-res jpegs I’ve painstakingly applied to every song in my library, sometimes changing it within albums to indicate which are the bonus tracks — you’re not wrong, it is sad — it might be a dealbreaker for me. I’m impossible to please, is what I’m saying.
