How to upload personal songs to Apple Music and stream them
Find out how to upload songs you have collected over the years to Apple’s server and stream them on all your devices where you use Apple Music.
When you subscribe to Apple Music for $10.99 a month, $16.99 a month for family, or some other plan, you obviously get online and offline ad-free listening access to more than 100 million songs.
Aside from that, an Apple Music subscription includes an old, lesser-known matching-and-uploading feature (iTunes Match) that lets you upload your own songs and stream them online.
So, if you have been downloading songs from the Internet, ripping CDs, or buying from elsewhere to create a curated collection, subscribing to Apple Music means you can take them with you. No need to switch apps to listen to them.
How it works
It’s a simple process that involves using a Mac or Windows PC to add your song files to the Apple Music app, where they will automatically be matched and uploaded to the cloud.
Match: If the song in your personal collection is already available in Apple Music’s catalog of 100+ million songs, then that song file is not uploaded from your computer to Apple’s server to save time and Internet bandwidth. Instead, it’s just matched, and Apple Music’s catalog version is added to your music library.
Upload: If a song from your personal collection isn’t already available on Apple Music, then its file will be uploaded to Apple’s server and made available in your Apple Music library so you can stream and download it on all devices where you use Apple Music.
When songs will not match or upload
The following songs in your personal collection won’t match or upload to Apple Music:
- The song bitrate is less than 96 kbps
- The individual song file size is more than 200 MB
- The playtime of a song is longer than two hours
- The file is a music video (MP4 or other video formats)
If some of your local files match the above conditions, they become ineligible to upload to Apple Music for streaming on other devices. As a result, they will only be available inside the Music app on your Mac or PC where you imported them.
Add custom songs to Apple Music
1) Open the Music app on your Mac or Apple Music on Windows PC. Make sure you have an Apple Music subscription, and it works in the Music app.
2) Click File > Add to Library from the top menu bar.
3) Select individual songs or the song folder in the Finder interface and click Open to add them to the Music app.
4) The Music app will now automatically match or upload the song to your library. You can check the status by clicking the tiny information icon ⓘ next to “Updating Cloud Library…” in the lower-left corner.
5) Once the song is uploaded, open the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, other Mac or PC, Apple TV, Android phone, Tesla car, smart TV, or anywhere you use Apple Music, and you’ll find the uploaded song there ready to stream or download.
If you delete the song from inside the Music app on any of your devices, it will be removed from everywhere (except the original macOS Finder or Windows File Explorer folder/storage disk).
Also, check out: How to find where the Music app saves songs on your Mac
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2026/05/01/upload-songs-to-apple-music/
