iCloud Library & iTunes Match Active, Deleting physical songs?

Hey Jim,

Thanks for the response mate so the goal I’m going for is if I had downloaded a song years ago and it’s on Apple Music, I’ll replace the one I have with Apple Music version and if the songs are not on the store like old game soundtracks I used match to upload it to the cloud so I can listen on all my devices, I already have my whole library on an external drive

so If say I deleted my whole library folders From my external drive would they in theory Still stay in the cloud with match or would I be greeted with the “this item could not be located would you like to search” dialog box the main reason for me asking this is I feel that I have a whole library of music sitting on my drive doing nothing at all as everything is being streamed and downloaded from the cloud if you get what I am saying haha 😆

once again I really appreciate your response 😁

I can confirm with my own experimentation that as long as you have an iTunes Match subscription you can safely delete the physical music files from within the iTunes music folder the items will still play from the cloud as long as the music has finished uploading to the cloud :)