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Quietly and without much fanfare just before Christmas, Apple launched iTunes match here in the UK – a service which had been running in the US for some time.  Even though I am computer literate and pretty techy (ok, geeky) I had trouble wrapping my head around exactly what iTunes match as a service did.  On Christmas evening, I subscribed – and after testing it now for a good few weeks I hope this review will achieve twin goals of explaining the service and rating it.

iTunes Match is activated through iTunes on your PC, and then needs to be enabled on your other devices.  You go to iTunes store and sign up for it there.  Make sure that you are signed in with the apple ID that you want to use, if you are like me and have ended up with several over the years.  Once you have signed up, iTunes Match will go into action – working on your existing audio collection.  This can take many many hours, but you can carry on using iTunes as normal in the meantime.

What iTunes does during this period is basically analyse your music collection.  If it finds a “match” within the iTunes store then it simply flags up that you own that CD.  If there is no match within the store then it uploads your CD onto remote “cloud” storage up to a maximum of 25,000 songs.  Once you have done this you simply activate iTunes match within the settings on your remote devices – and your locally stored music collection is wiped and replaced with your entire music collection with a “cloud” symbol beside it.  So MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOT COPIES OF WHATEVER MUSIC YOU HAD STORED BEFORE YOU ACTIVATE THE SERVICE ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE.  How the service works from herein depends on your device :

iPhone and iPad

Your music collection appears on your device with either a cloud symbol next to it or not, depending on whether it has been downloaded or is still “in the cloud”.  See this iPhone screenshot for an example :

Managing your music on an iPhone is easy.  If it is stored locally, you simply swipe on it in the same way you do with an email.  You get a delete button pop up – tap it and the song will be deleted from the local storage but will still be available in “The Cloud”.

It works in a very similar way on the iPad – although the bigger screen obviously gives you a prettier interface :

So managing your music collection is simple and easy to do – how about playback?  On both the iPhone and iPad you have the option to “download all” songs off an album or you can just tap on a song.  If you play a song, it will take about 30 or 40 seconds to buffer (on a 3G connection) before it starts playing, and then the playback quality is surprisingly excellent with no pauses or glitches notable in extensive testing.  However, you are not truly “streaming” the song as it will always download to the device when you play it.  Thus, proactive management of your collection is necessary to prevent local storage filling up.  What I tend to do is on my way to the bus for the morning commute I download a couple of albums I want to listen to that day, depending on the mood I am in, so they are there immediately for me to listen to.  One interesting side effect of having iTunes match is for the average work day, I don’t tend to use my iPhone 4S for music at all.  This is because in the morning I am usually reading “The Times” on my way into work, and on the way back reading a magazine or a book.  The limited storage on my iPad 2 has prevented me using it for music up to now.  But since Match I can just download the albums at the start of the day, and then delete them at the end.  Downloading takes less than a minute per album with my Three mi-fi and then I can read my paper whilst controlling my music from the same device.

One final thing to mention is that iTunes Match is also available on Apple TV.  How it works here is slightly different though.  Without Match, in order to use the Apple TV successfully you need to have iTunes running on your PC.  With Match you don’t – the Apple TV can stream directly from the Cloud.  It works extremely well and is a feature that Apple could probably do with publicising more.

Of course, iTunes Match can be used as a backup service too.  Have a hard drive crash, as I did recently, and you can simply re-download all your music from “The Cloud”.  However good this service is, however, the file quality and format (AAC 256 kps) means that I don’t see this service as viable.  I rip all my music as the universally accepted MP3 at 320kps.  However, for those who are a little less fussy than me – this backup service is a worthy addition.  iTunes match also doesn’t differentiate between bought digital music and albums acquired by, ahem, “other means”.  If it is in your collection it will be available anywhere.

So, iTunes Match – is it worth the yearly subscription?  I would suggest very strongly that it is.  It is a service that has genuinely revolutionised how I listen to my music on the move.  It gives me access to over 700 albums when I am on the move, and there is no need for my PC to be on for me to use it.  I can go on holiday, and still have access to my entire music collection.  For £21.99 it is a no brainer.  Sure, it would be nice for the songs stored on the cloud to be the same quality as the ones you have locally, but I understand why Apple don’t offer this service – the storage would be astronomical!  It would also be nice for your videos and movies to be stored but to be honest with mobile internet speeds being what they are in the UK this is impractical at the moment.  Hopefully when 4G networks arrive Apple will add this.

If you have any questions about the service or this review feel free to ask and I will respond.  If you like this review or have found it useful please consider sharing using the tools at the top of the article.  Many thanks.