by 
iTunes Match is great, but what happens when you hit the 25,000 song limit? The solution isn’t pretty
You can keep iTunes Radio, Spotify, Pandora and the like. I like collecting my music, just as I have since I was a kid. I’ll never sell my audio CDs or get rid of vinyl. Between that and stuff I’ve downloaded from iTunes and other music services like Amazon.com and Emusic.com, I’m somewhere in the vicinity of 24,000 songs. I also use iTunes Match, which has a 25,000 song limit. What happens when I hit the limit? Turns out things get weird.
Recently Kirk McElhearn, who writes the iTunes Guy column for Macworld, explained to a reader what will happen when that limit is reached. McElhearn writes:
One problem is that when you hit the 25,000 track limit, all sorts of strange things happen. I’ve heard from people who’ve told me that uploads get wonky, that iTunes displays various error messages about connecting to the servers, and that, even after a number of tracks are culled, there can still be issues. Sometimes, even after getting a library below the 25K mark, it won’t upload new songs, even though iTunes Match says it’s updating. Sometimes it’s hard to download songs. And automatic updating can be unreliable.
Based on my current rate of acquisition, I’m less than a year from hitting that 25,000 song threshold. It’s an existential dilemma for me. for obvious reasons. There’s some good news here, though. If you’ve bought music from iTunes, that doesn’t count against your 25,000 song limit. Only music you’ve acquired through other means — ripping from audio CD, or other download services — seems to affect the limit.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably used iTunes and a lot of other methods of adding music to your library. If you want to know how many of your songs are from iTunes, there should be a “Purchased” list in the iTunes sidebar, right below “iTunes Store.” That may not give you a complete list, however. To be sure, you can create a Smart Playlist to figure it out. Here’s how:
To make a smart playlist that shows all your iTunes songs Open iTunes Click on the File menu. Select New then select Smart Playlist. Make sure Match the following rule: is checked, then… Select the pop up menu that says “Artist” and change it to “Kind.” Make sure the next pop up menu says “contains.” type “Purchased AAC” in the text field. Click the OK button.
iTunes will generate a smart playlist containing all of the files that you’ve bought from iTunes. For me that’s 2241 songs, so I’m a little further back from my 25K limit than I thought.
But if you have hit the limit, or you’re close to it, the best solution — again, according to McElhearn — is to actually split your iTunes library into smaller chunks. Your library has to be under the 25,000 song limit for iTunes Match to work.
To split your iTunes library Open iTunes. Click on the File menu and select New, then select “Playlist.” Name the playlist “New iTunes library.” Drag any music you want to move from your existing library. Click on your Mac’s desktop to activate the Finder. Click on the File menu. Select New Folder. Name it “New iTunes Library.” Return to iTunes. Make sure you can see the folder you just created on your desktop. Make sure the “New iTunes Library” playlist is selected, then click the first song in the playlist. It should be highlighted. Type Command-A (Select All) to select all the songs in that playlist. Click and drag them into the folder you created on your desktop. In iTunes, click the File menu, select Library and select Export Playlist. Save the playlist to the desktop or somewhere else you can easily find it. Quit iTunes.
That will copy (duplicate) all the songs in your New iTunes Library playlist into that new folder. Move that folder to a safe location, such as inside the Mac’s Music folder. It will also generate a .XML file that iTunes can read which contains all the metadata associated with those files — whatever ratings you’ve applied, play counts and other details that aren’t actually embedded in the music files themselves.
To see your new iTunes library Open iTunes while you hold down the Option key. iTunes will tell you to Choose iTunes Library. Click the Choose Library… button. Select the folder containing your new iTunes library. Click the File menu. Select Library then select Import Playlist. Find the .XML playlist file you just created. That’ll rebuild the metadata associated with those files. Quit iTunes.
The final step is to relaunch your old library and delete those files. Right now those music files in your New iTunes Library folder exist in two locations: there, and the old iTunes library.
To delete the new library files from the old library Open iTunes while you hold down the Option key. Click the Choose Library… button and find your original iTunes library (again, probably in your Music folder). Click on the New iTunes Library playlist you created. Click on the first track in the list. Type Command-A to select all. Hold down the Option and the Delete keys. iTunes will ask you if you’re sure you want to delete these copies of the selected items. Click the Delete button.
It’s a really convoluted process, but Apple doesn’t give us a good way to handle it when our iTunes libraries get larger than the authorities decreed we should be able to have. I expect this isn’t Apple’s doing as much as the music publishers it has licensing arrangements with.
Whatever the situation, it’s ugly. I’ve ranted about iTunes before – I think it’s a fat, bloated pig on the Mac, and having to jump through hoops like this just to manage my music library and a service I pay Apple for besides certainly isn’t making me change my mind. But whatever. You do what you have to.
Have you had to split your music library? Or did you decide iTunes Match wasn’t worth the hassle? Let me know what you think in the comments.
