iTunes Match has gone live, taking a punt...

[professorhat]

Yed and no - iTunes Match will allow you to access your iTunes collection from your iPod Touch / iPhone / Mac / PC (not an iPod Classic or Shuffle as far as I'm aware) from iCloud. However, firstly, in order to get the music into iCloud, it needs to be stored in iTunes. Once it's there, from what I've read, in theory, you could then remove your iTunes Library and only access from iCloud, but you'd then have to keep paying for the iTunes Match service or it would be gone (assuming this is a collection imported from CDs rather than purchased from iTunes).

How big is your music collection? Will you be using your laptop for travel and if so, do you need your music collection with you when you are travelling? I think you'd be much better off looking at storing your iTunes collection on an external drive / NAS, so long as you're happy to keep that at home and not be worried that you didn't have it whilst travelling (given iTunes Match would give you access to it in these circumstances of course!). This would then allow you to sync and update your collection with your Classic / Shuffle as well, when local to the external drive / NAS.

 

[landzw]

in theory, you could then remove your iTunes Library and only access from iCloud, but you'd then have to keep paying for the iTunes Match service or it would be gone (assuming this is a collection imported from CDs rather than purchased from iTunes).

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I beleive you have hit the nail on the head. i think over time as braodband services can cope with the speeds needed to stream films and TV content you will find those up in the cloud too, for those who have ATV you can stream your TV programs that you have already purchased without your computer on. Though some may not like it but the future is gearing up for all of our info to be stored in the cloud so we can access it as and when we need it.

If you use a iCloud account and go to www.iCloud.com you can go into your iCloud and see what been stored there ( not sure but i think you need a @me.com email address )

 

[Overdose]

I can access my NAS from anywhere in the world, so I suppose I have my very own cloud.

 

[professorhat]

in theory, you could then remove your iTunes Library and only access from iCloud, but you'd then have to keep paying for the iTunes Match service or it would be gone (assuming this is a collection imported from CDs rather than purchased from iTunes).

I beleive you have hit the nail on the head.

You mean that, as soon as you stop paying the subscription, access to all your music stored in the cloud is then lost? Yes, not a good future is it?

Hence my advice to keep storing things locally to prevent that issue.