Is iTunes Match a separate subscription? I'm not happy with Google Music ever since they rolled it into Youtube Music, which has similar issues as the Music app now, where they're more interested in selling you more subscriptions than letting you play the music you already own. But I'm already paying for iCloud storage, so can I just use the space I'm already paying for to store my music?
It is a separate subscription [1], and hardly advertised at all anymore. I use it instead of Apple Music, and pay 188 HKD/a, that's around US$ 25 per year.
Here's basically what it does:
* you add your music library to it.
* what it recognises, it matches, and upgrades to 256 kbit/s AAC encoded quality.
* what it doesn't recognise, it uploads and stores.
* all of it is now available on all your devices (and you can download/delete local copies at will).
I was thinking of "upgrading" to Apple Music (as part of Apple One), and I'd hate if that functionality (specifically the uploading/syncing of "unmatched" songs) were removed!
Ah, another subscription. Things like that used to work without having to pay ransom. Apple deliberately deteriorated the user experience to bully us into buying those subscriptions.
If you manage your music library via iTunes, you can sync with USB or WiFi and not pay at all, just like back in 2001 (though back then it was Firewire).
