With the anniversary of iTunes Match about to hit a few weeks ago, I wrote a column explaining how to download your matched music and cancel the service before its renewal date if you no longer needed it. But I left out one detail.
You can cancel the renewal of iTunes Match, but the expiration will remain a year from the last renewal. If you recently renewed, that could mean you have 364 days to take advantage of the details in my column.
That’s great if you want the time, but it’s a problem if you’re trying to accomplish something quite different: changing the country associated with your Apple ID. Apple will let you change your country so you can make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, and other digital stores associated with the country to which you’ve switched.
However, there’s a big proviso—Apple notes in its instructions for switching an Apple ID account’s country: “Cancel any subscriptions, including Apple Music, and wait until the end of the subscription period.” (This is one of several conditions, such as exhausting store credit and waiting for season passes to deliver all their contents.)
For most of us, the only annual subscription we might have with Apple is iTunes Match or Apple Music.
As far as I can tell, there’s no way to adjust the expiration date of a service, only its renewal. So you could be held back from switching countries for nearly a year, depending on iTunes Match or other renewal dates. It’s worth checking with Apple Support to see if there’s a way to prompt them to let you give up a service earlier, but from what I’ve heard from readers, you simply have to wait it out.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader David.
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Author: Glenn Fleishman, Senior Contributor
Glenn Fleishman’s most recent books include Take Control of iOS and iPadOS Privacy and Security, Take Control of Calendar and Reminders, and Take Control of Securing Your Mac. In his spare time, he writes about printing and type history. He’s a senior contributor to Macworld, where he writes Mac 911.