What happens to your existing music collection when you join Apple Music

With your Apple Music membership, your existing music collection is available on all of your devices.

When you first join Apple Music, we identify the songs in your personal music collection and compare them to the Apple Music catalog.

  • Songs that you bought from the iTunes Store are automatically available in your Apple Music library as long as you use the same Apple ID with Apple Music that you used to buy the music.* 
  • If we have your version of a song in the Apple Music catalog, we make it instantly available to access on all of your devices for the duration of your membership.
  • If we can't match certain songs in your collection to songs in the Apple Music catalog, we upload a copy of yours to iCloud Music Library so that you can play it on all of your devices.

How Apple Music handles your uploaded songs

  • You can have up to 100,000 songs in your music library. Songs that you buy or bought from the iTunes Store don't count against this limit.
  • Only songs under 200 MB or less than 2 hours are uploaded.
  • If you have songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats, we create an AAC 256Kbps version and upload it to iCloud Music Library so that it can be played on all of your other devices. Your original music file remains untouched on your Mac or PC.
  • Songs that are encoded in AAC or MP3 formats that don't meet certain quality criteria won't be matched or uploaded to iCloud Music Library. 
  • Songs that contain Digital Rights Management (DRM) must be authorized for playback on your Mac or PC to be matched or uploaded.
  • Songs that you upload from your computer won’t take up space on your other devices, unless you download them to your device to listen offline.

Apple Music is not a backup service. Be sure to back up your iOS devices, and your Mac or PC, so that you have a copy of your music and other information if your device is ever replaced, lost, or damaged.

Voice Memos stored on your iOS device or in your iTunes Library on your Mac or PC don't upload to your Apple Music library.

Get help

If you're not a member of Apple Music, learn the best way to get your music on all of your devices.

If you don't see some of your music, make sure that you have iCloud Music Library turned on.

 

*If you don't see a song, it might be hidden. Learn how to unhide items.

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