iTunes Match- excluding songs from iCloud?

Hi,

I am currently signed up for iTunes Match and have nearly 24,000 songs in my library. Almost 1500 of those are tracks I use in my classroom (I'm a music teacher) and I really don't need them to be on my iCloud. As I get closer to my 25,000 song limit, I wonder if there is a way for me to intentionally EXCLUDE those songs that I don't need on my iCloud to prevent them from taking up unnecessary space.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks for your help!

-ND

I wouldn't worry too much about it. iTunes Match's "25,000" limit refers only to songs that iTunes *can't already match and must upload manually*, not a hard limit of 25,000 songs period.

But among other ways to exclude songs that I haven't yet seen or thought off, the stuff you use for music teaching should really be in its own iTunes Library anyway (iTunes supports multiple libraries), and of course each library can be included (or not) in iTunes Match.

According to MacWorld writer Kirk Mcelherarn (MacWorld March 2012 issue, page 74) you can not even sign up for iTunes Match if your library contains more than 25,000 songs (or tracks). Seems to me that since it's a $25 yearly fee, Apple could certainly allow for excess by charging extra depending on the amount you wish to match?

While I would be very hesitant to say Kirk is wrong (since he's much smarter about this stuff than I am), his assertion may represent a bug of some kind rather than a policy.

I say this because of the following copy, taken directly from Apple's iTunes Match page:

"Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream it to any of your devices. Just browse the complete list of all your music stored in the cloud. To listen to a song, tap the iCloud icon next to it and your song starts playing. You can store up to 25,000 songs in iCloud (more if songs are purchased from the iTunes Store), but only what you want to play is stored on your device."

source: Apple - iTunes - Match (emphasis mine)

IOW, iTunes-purchased material is not counted as part of the 25,000. My original post was inaccurate about what qualifies as not counting against the total, however I am still correct that more than 25,000 songs in a collection can be stored in iTunes Match, since iTunes-purchased songs don't count toward that limit.

Thanks for making me go back and double-check!