I just tested this on 6 albums i have with just one song present. I played the songs one at a time and the results were as follows:
The download symbol still remains even after the song is played. Pressing it shows downloading of the song icon as usual, even after song is played. It does not double download, still says 1 song in settings (see below). I tried this with the first track I played.
The number count of songs in settings>general>about goes up each time you play a track.
The capacity on the device (iPhone 5) decreases after each song play.
A bug in iTunes does not show music downloaded when played (even though it does download) in the Audio section. It seems to go to Other section...
Conclusion: same as all the iOS 6 betas, the track still downloads when played, it is not streamed as some claims state. Capacity decreases and song count goes up in settings. iTunes doesn't seem to know whats going on!
To test: play a few songs from a playlist. Turn on airplane mode. Look at playlist, only songs which were played show up to press to play again. Other songs are greyed out.
(EDIT: all the other iTunes Match songs vanish apart from the previously played song/songs.
----------
That doesn't make sense...what you're syaing then is that my iPhone which might be nearly full would not play music before since there was no room for it to download songs?
Music has streamed since iCloud/iTunes Match was introduced..it might have taken up memory as a buffer (which is maybe what you mean by "download"), but once the song was over, it was not "downloaded to your device. You had to and still have to click on the cloud icon to truely transfer the song to the device.
If not...it is "streaming." Right?
Incorrect