Change iTunes Store country and keep Apple Music library?

Is there a way to change the iTunes Store country and still keep the Apple Music library? Preferably in an automated way.

The reason for asking is that the Apple support article on changing the iTunes Store country or region says that your Apple Music library will be lost if changing the country and does not offer any workarounds:

You won’t see the items from your iCloud Music Library that you matched, uploaded, or added from the previous country’s store

I have spent considerable time on building up my music library (adding from Apple Music) and would not like to lose it just because I'm moving to another country.

In my case it is not an option to use multiple Apple IDs or keep using the old iTunes Store country. Device versions are iOS 10 and macOS Sierra.


In theory if you have a friend who has an iphone and apple music and you both upgrade to iOS 11 then you can follow each other’s apple music playlists then get your friend to save and add your songs and playlists to their device, then on your device switch over app store countries, re subscribe to apple music in the new country and then do the reverse and follow your friends playlists and re add them back to your apple music library.


iCloud Music Library is, as the name implies, a cloud service. Unlike a service running on a local machine which might have the possibility of being overridden when Apple states it can't do something, there is no way to change what happens on their servers. They say it's no longer accessible after a country change, and that's what it means.

If you are changing to a country where you can use Apple Music, any music that you still have can be matched/re-uploaded after you change your country. This may not be ideal, but it's the only way to re-establish your library after a country change.