When Apple announced iTunes Match at WWDC back in June, it was a little unclear whether the service would allow you to stream your music library to your iOS devices as opposed to storing it locally — allowing you to access your tracks without actually taking up any of your precious storage space.
Following the launch of the iTunes Match developer beta yesterday, it has been confirmed that streaming is possible with Apple’s upcoming $25/year service.
If you’re unfamiliar with iTunes Match, it’s a new service that is part of iCloud and will launch alongside iOS 5 later this year. Apple describes the service as follows:
iTunes Match stores your complete music library in iCloud, allowing you to enjoy your collection anywhere, anytime, on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer.
If you sign up to the service at $25/year, iTunes Match will scan your entire music library (up to 25,000 songs) and then allow you to access it from any device linked to your iTunes account. So if you have Abba’s greatest collection on your Mac at home, but you forgot to sync it to your iPhone, you can still listen to it on the train by streaming it from Apple’s servers. Obviously you’ll need a data connection, but streaming music like this could save you a great deal of storage space on your device.
Insanely Great Mac has published a great walkthrough video of iTunes Match in action:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ShM5jm4sQ
[via MacRumors]