Is itunes match limited to 25,000 songs or as many songs as itunes actually sells?

It's definitely hit or miss on my stuff. The more popular the artist or the older the tracks, the more likely it seems to happen. It really sucks when you've legitimately purchased a track from, say, Amazon (since singles there are almost always $0.99 vs. the variable but usually higher price in iTunes) and you get the clean version from iTunes match. I've given up on the workarounds--https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3498956?start=0&tstart=0--and just started to buy explicit singles at $1.29. To the original poster... don't let that turn you off of iTunes Match, the fact I can pay Apple $25/year to act as an offsite backup for this stuff and stream from it is totally worth it.

Apple doesn't actually store the songs for you if they're in itunes. They just take note that you have it, and let's you stream it from their regular itunes library.

Thats's what I thought, Smackfu & empath..... He didn't sound confident in his answers even when I asked him to confirm as I had always understood otherwise... I also asked him about being able to delete the physical files from my computer (to free up 100gigs of drive space), and if and when I ever decided to leave itunes match, I could d/l all the songs from the cloud, back to my drive with no problems.... I even asked if I should back up the 100gigs myself on a portable external drive, and he said that I should 'for extra protection' but the files are safe in the itunes cloud and would suffice if i ever wanted them back.... Kind of disheartening to receive such bad advice/response from Apple Care.... I don't put them on a pedestal, but this guys answers seem to be way off....I don't want to get him in trouble, but I do feel somewhat of a need to let them know....Ack. So, if this guy is really wrong then, the Amazon deal of 250,000 songs for $24.99 a year is an obvious better choice for my situation.......The interface s*cks so bad though....Ugh.

Google Music is free.

I just did this for my wife right before christmas: He's right in the sense that music sold on iTunes doesn't count against your cap, but, I found that a good number of songs that failed to match were available on itunes, but had been ripped from compilations, special editions of albums, etc. The real key is that if your iOS device is your primary listening source, you're much better off staying in the Apple ecosystem than jumping to Amazon or Google, it just works better over airplay, when being backgrounded, etc.

If what he is saying is true, then as long as itunes sells the song/album in their store, I can upload it from my personal collection no matter how or where I obtained it from.... I can tell you that this much, at least, is true. For me, songs that I have purchased from iTunes behave no differently than songs that I obtained through other means (ripping from disc, purchasing from other sources, or... other means). I have even "upgraded" many songs ripped at a lower bitrate to the higher iTunes Match standard. It is certainly possible to delete them and re-download them multiple times. Now, I have an order of magnitude fewer songs than you do, so I can't speak to how those songs over the limit would behave, but thought I'd mention it.

empath, I considered Goole PLay but it only the first 20,000 songs that are free according to their site, as well as their interface s*cks as well...LOL Oktober, I am pretty much trying to satisfy my OCD more than anything. I have no intention of selling off my CD collection (and one day hope to display it in a man-cave in the near future). I am also sure that I will never have the desire to listen to about 85% of the stuff I upload to any cloud....It's my OCD not allowing me to only have portions of my collection readily available through a cloud service as opposed to treking to my basement to find a CD to satisfy that urge...I guess that is what Spotify and the 'likes' are for.... but would still like to have a concrete answer....may trek to an Apple store this week and quiz multiple employee's..lol

You have a lot of live music. How do they define a "song"? I am about to do something similar with my music. I have a lot of live Grateful Dead concerts. Some are broken down into songs, but often those songs are 15 minutes long or some are coupled songs (Scarlet Begonias --> Fire on the Mountain) and will last even longer than 15 minutes. I have literally hundreds of concerts. I might have 37 versions of the same song. My point and question is my concern if I were you would be the live stuff not available on itunes.

Are you willing to run your own home server? http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp is the best home media streamer and has support for mobile apps as well. I haven't used the different iOS apps, but the Android app is quite good. You even get a yourname.subsonic.org server domain to play with after a donation. Of course, you'd have to have your server running when you want to use it and set up some port forwarding, but that's relatively minor.