While many of us Apple fans expected iTunes Match to launch alongside iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S last week, it was for some reason missing. Why, you may ask? Perhaps nobody will ever know. But now we have a more likely timeframe. 

But first, maybe I should explain exactly what iTunes Match is, for those of you who may not know. iTunes Match is Apple’s solution to music streaming. For a mere $25 a month, Apple will take every song in your musical library in iTunes and allow you to download it to any of your devices again, for free.

It was widely expect to launch at the same time as iOS 5. However, it was not. Apple has long offered a beta of the service for registered developers only – and now an email to said developers confirms that all the accounts were reset on October 27th. This suggest an impending launch of the iTunes Match service – likely sometime in the next week. I know I’m looking forward to my music in the cloud – what about you guys? Any ideas on dates? Replies in the comments!