Apple Music will no longer add DRM to songs you upload to the cloud

Good news Apple Music subscribers: Apple is updating the way its “match” feature works.

Not only is the matching algorithm now better (matching from audio fingerprints instead of metadata), tracks you upload to iTunes from Apple Music will no longer have DRM. 

In other words, it will now work exactly the same way as the existing iTunes Match feature. 

When Apple Music debuted last year, one of the benefits of the service was that any music already in your iTunes library that you didn’t buy from Apple could be uploaded to the cloud for access later. 

Apple would simply match the tracks it could in its library (Amazon and Google both offer similar services). The problem – and what made Apple Music’s matching different from iTunes Match – was that it would attach DRM to any of those uploads. 

That might be OK if you stay an Apple Music subscriber forever. (Actually, no, I take that back. It’s never OK to put DRM on non-DRM content that you upload to the cloud.) But it presents problems if you cancel the service because any tracks you download back to your computer now have DRM on them. 

No more. 

As The Loop explains: 

This is, in fact, the same version of iTunes Match that iTunes users could pay for as a separate subscription since Apple began offering it years ago. I am one of those users. However, all subscribers to Apple Music will get the new version of iTunes Match at no extra cost. This update also means that all Matched songs will download DRM-free. 

This also means that if you’re someone like me — who both pays for iTunes Match (which is $25 a year) and subscribes to Apple Music — you can go ahead and dump that extra iTunes Match subscription. 

Like The Loop's Jim Dalrymple, I probably won’t be getting rid of my iTunes Match subscription immediately, just to be safe, but it's great that in the future dual users won’t have to pay that $25 a year. 

It’s also great that Apple is making the match experience in Apple Music a first-class citizen. 

One reason I use Apple Music over Spotify is the fact that all of my local music is accessible too. (I subscribe to both services, along with Tidal and YouTube Red, and I pay for Amazon Prime.) It’s awesome to be able to pull up an old playlist I made years ago or limited-edition versions of albums that aren’t in modern streaming catalogs. 

Now, Apple Music subscribers can take advantage of all that stuff without having their own files encumbered in DRM. 

Apple says they are rolling out the new match to 1 to 2 percent of Apple Music subscribers every day. You’ll know you have the new system when your matched files say “Matched” in the iCloud status column in iTunes on your Mac or PC.