iTunes Match questions

[bclizzle]

Im having trouble finding actual information on itunes match.

i have 7k songs on my mac at work. this is where i store all of my music. i have a laptop with maybe 100 songs on it. a 64gb ipod with 99% of my music. and a 16gb iphone with a playlist of my favorite music...

my issue is that when i get new music, whether its from a download on my phone, i upload a cd to my imac, or i download mp3's on my laptop. my music is scatter everywhere. and its a hassle to keep all of my libraries updated.

my question is, will itunes match help me? i know the jist of it, it will clean up my libraries and so on, but what else will it actually do?

thanks in advance.

 

[hooper2]

I am looking for more info from developers who played with this too. For me, I'm curious to what the cache size is and if you can set it manually. I am leaning toward a 16gig for budget reasons, but also with the thought that Match will make it much easier to "have" my music but not eat up tons of space on my iPhone.

 

[bclizzle]

seen a couple more threads, no real answers to my questions tho

 

[blurb23]

If I have my entire library on my iPhone but nothing on my computer, will iTunes Match/iCloud fill in the library on my computer?

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

If I have my entire library on my iPhone but nothing on my computer, will iTunes Match/iCloud fill in the library on my computer?

The way I understand it, in a word - no. You must first sign up for iTunes Match on your computer via iTunes. Once signed up, your iTunes library will be scanned to find all songs Apple can match, from their library of music - all encoded at 256kbps AAC. The matched songs are then stored in your iTunes match account (in the cloud). The songs Apple could not match are then uploaded to the cloud. That way, your entire iTunes library can be accessed by all iOS devices that have iTunes Match turned on.

In other words, once your iTunes Match cloud library is set up, you can access your library from any of your compatible iOS devices and download any missing songs from that cloud library onto the iOS device. I have found nothing indicating whether any matched music in the cloud can then be used to replace the same music files on your computer.

One other thing that iTunes Match can do for you is keep all your iOS devices synced up with purchases. In other words, say you buy a song on your iPhone. Once the purchase is complete, my understanding is that the same music file will then be downloaded to your computer as well as all other iOS devices.

For me, I would really like to replace any matched songs I have on my computer (those encoded at less than 256 kbps, that is) with Apple's copy, but I don't know if that will be allowed. Apple has yet to say anything along those lines, and the rumors are all over the place. I guess we'll have to wait for Apple to let us know if that is possible.