[erikstrottmann]

iTunes has two options for cloud syncing your library: $10/month Apple Music (which includes downloading or streaming both music you uploaded and the whole Apple Music catalog) and $25/year iTunes Match (which lets you downloading or streaming music you uploaded, but not the whole Apple Music catalog)

[wasdfff]

I wonder who the target is for itunes match. I always figured people with massive physical libraries aren’t using iTunes to begin with.

[eridius]

There's 2 ways Apple handles music you've ripped. If the music's fingerprint matches that of something they already have in the iTunes Store, your iCloud Music Library will be populated with the iTunes Store version of the song, so you can download that on your other devices. Only the original uploading device retains the original file. This is usually a good thing as the iTunes Store version is frequently better-quality than whatever MP3 or AAC you had ripped.

The second way is if the file's fingerprint doesn't match any song in the iTunes Store catalog, then with iTunes Match, iTunes will actually upload the whole file and your other devices will then stream or download that exact file. There are some limits here; I think there's a limit on the song duration (not sure what it is but I'm pretty sure songs over 1 hour are past the limit), and there's a limit on total number of songs (at launch this was 25k; I think they've raised it higher but I don't know what the current limit is). Whatever the limits are, I do know my father's music collection (all manually ripped from a massive CD collection) is too large for iTunes Match, so he's stuck managing music the way we all used to do before Apple Music and iTunes Match came along.

As far as I'm aware, the Apple Music subscription supports the first mechanism but not the second, and the iTunes Match subscription is needed for the second option. That said, I'm not 100% positive.