I think you're mistaken. I have currently 78K tracks in my iTunes library, more than half classical music. I have thousands of CDs, and review classical CDs, and get a lot of music from various labels. I know a lot of classical music listeners with very large libraries, many larger than mine. 

It's not the iTunes library he's referring to its iTunes Match cloud.  Please tell me this wasn't another lame label rule like those affecting the iPod, etc.?

I find it hard to believe you have that many legitimate albums and songs. Thousands of CDs? An average CD costs what? 10 bucks? You're saying you have spent tens of thousands of dollars on music? I highly doubt it. Some way or another, I'm sure a lot of your collection is pirated.

I barely have 1000 songs and almost all of mine is pirated.

Yes, I've spent a lot on music, and for the past 25 years have been buying CDs. But as I said, I also review classical CDs, and get a fair number of them for free. 

Seriously that is nothing. And spending tens of thousands on music? I have definitely spent that. A lot of people do that.

Or rather, used to do that.

OK, You have 1000 tunes, mostly pirated, and you're shocked that people spend fortunes on music. On evidence presented, that makes you around 18-20? Maybe even younger. You'll get there, if it means anything to you.

Oh, if there's anything left to buy, that is.

I own over 2600 CDs (every single one of them bought, no former record store employee here), ~1000 legal (eMusic.com) download albums, and hundreds of my own (original) home-recorded tracks.  Current track count is over 40k, every single one of them legitimately acquired.

I also own thousands of cassettes and hundreds of LPs, which in today's "licensing" environment should entitle me to download digital versions without repercussion, but I don't go there.

I've been collecting music for almost 30 years.  I've spent over $1200 this year alone on recorded music.

Next time, try to honestly consider your own lack of understanding and experience before accusing people of things based on nothing but your own lacking.

I'm 31 years old and have been hoarding music for the better part of twenty years now.  My wife's CD collection is even bigger than mine. 

While, admittedly, some of my collection has been "burned" from friends, the majority of it comes from music we have purchased/collected (and a lot of it even digitally transferred) ourselves.  While I have bought loads of music online (especially from emusic), we haven't bought much on itunes.  Mostly just a song here and a song there, whenever we are given a gift card. 

I have to say that I find these limitation disturbing.  My collection well exceeds 25k songs and most of it isn't even available on itunes (or spotify either, for that matter.) While 25k songs sound like a lot- at an average of 12 tunes on an album- it only equates to about 2,100 albums...  Split between two people, this is 1,050 albums... Over the course of 20 years this equates to a little more than 50 albums a year... Sadly I can say that we have easily purchased this much music (a lot of it used or on impulse at a show, but whatever)

 

I was looking forward to release of iMatch so that our lives would be simplified and we could listen to anything from our collection at almost any given moment, but I have to say that I'm disappointed.  Would gladly pay more than $25 a year for a service like this that could accommadate us.

Even 100 albums a year at ten bucks a pop is (only) $1,000 a year.  Most people I know easily spend more than that on cable TV (not counting internet service) or their cell phone service.  

And classical music is often well beyond 12 tracks per album the way movements are often indexed, so a classical collector could exceed 25K tracks with a ten-year collection easily. 

I hear ya on that.  A lot of my collection is made up of 'anthologies' that contain well over 20 tracks per album.  And I probably spend around $1,000 in music each year (though my 'collecting' habits usually involve scouring used record bins and antique stores for out of print LPs, cassettes and CDs.)

I really thought that the iCloud would be the solution to by cataloging nightmare.  Guess not

one option is free and that is AudioGalaxy app! You can install it on your iphone and android phones and the file limit is 200,000 songs the only catch is it streams via your PC either from an external drive or your hard drive over WIFI or 3G, Edge (yes even on Edge) and 4G! Its free the only catch is you have to have your PC on. Also you can stream from the Audiogalaxy website (if you dont want to use your phone) on whatever pc or mac you would like.
http://www.audiogalaxy.com/#/faq

To all the liars who suddently claim that they have more than 25,000 songs in their *legal* music library, because they have a lot of review albums in their hands:

If a label sent you a cd to review, you need an additional license to do what your lame excuse implies.

Actually... in the recent UMG vs Augusto case, the court ruled that promo CDs fall under the first sale doctrine.  Not that it helps much in this instance

I know people who have a vinyl collection well above 5000 vinyls... so why not the same for cds ?

I'm sitting here looking at two bookcases full of CDs that were all legally purchased over the years, probably 2000 in all.  I got some of them back when you could buy one from BMG and get 12 free, then quit and do it again. I got many of them used. And I paid full price for many many of them. But all legally owned.  They are all ripped and in my iTunes library, which is at around 23,000 right now, so I'm not quite hitting the 25K limit. But the way I buy music, it probably will be less than a year before I do. Maybe the limit will be higher by then. Who knows?

Where and when did Apple ever claim that this an amnesty for piracy?

You claim that iTunes Match exonerates pirates. Unless Apple states that, then such a claim is unjustified.

 

- Versus