Apple has released iTunes 10.5.1 which marks the official launch of iTunes Match.
As part of iCloud, iTunes in the Cloud takes what you buy on iTunes on one device and pushes it to all your other devices, wirelessly and without syncing. And with iTunes Match, even the songs you’ve imported from CDs are stored in iCloud — so you can access them on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, Mac, or PC.
With iTunes in the Cloud, the music you download to one device automatically appears on all your devices. So the song you buy from your Mac at work is ready and waiting for you on your iPhone when it’s time to drive home. Regardless of where you click or tap Buy, iTunes will automatically download your new songs, apps, and books to your other devices over Wi-Fi or 3G.
When you buy a song, TV show, app, or book from the App Store or the iTunes Store, iCloud stores it in your purchase history. So you can download what you want, from any of your devices, to whichever devices you choose.1 For example, if you don’t want your iPad to automatically download everything you buy on your iPhone, you can choose just the things you do want to download — song by song, episode by episode, app by app, and book by book.
With iTunes Match, even songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC — whenever you want and wherever you are, without syncing. iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year.
Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are, your music is already in iCloud. And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes has to upload only what it can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it to any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.
Use Software Update or download it here.
No yet in the UK. 🙁
Anyone know whether the process saves your modified song data on the original machine, like added lyrics and better-quality artwork? Given that all 18,000 of my songs have album artwork and most have lyrics, I’d hate to match it and lose all of that info.
@DJEK
iTunes Match is USA only for the time being.
@Spellman. A user on Appleinsider said that all meta-data tags are unchanged. If you added lyrics or artwork, nothing changes, but nothing new is added either.
Thanks! I think that’ll make it a lot more appealing to people with large curated libraries like me. Surprised it’s not more widely known.
@MikeK
Thanks for the info.
until they work out letting you merge/consolidate iTunes account, this is of no use to me – I don’t want to pay to match a fraction of my music library – and have to pick which part, my pre or post-mobile me account id to match – they really need to allow a one time consolidation of iTunes accounts!
That honestly doesn’t sound like Apple’s problem. You should have only one Apple ID
the problem is not ours… the problem is that when you sign up for a mobile me account, Apple automatically created an iTunes account. Therefore, as in my case, I could not change my existing e-mail with years of purchases to the new mobile me e-mail, since it “already existed”. As much as I want, I can’t use my mobile me e-mail without causing the dreaded account “fragmentation”. A one time merge would solve the issue!!!
What I did was to sign up to iCloud with new ID, then went back and changed my itune store account , home sharing app store, back to the original account where all my purchases are.
Seems to work ok
The user @nunyabinez has created an excellent iTunes match FAQ. First post on this thread.
not appearing yet on Software Update for me.
How come my Software Update says there is no new software and 10.5 is still the only download on Apple’s site???
Are you in God’s own country, or are you outside in hell?
Well I grew up in God’s country as a true Texan American but now I live outside in hell. Georgia the state. 🙂
Is it supposed to eliminate most of your playlists?