Today Apple launched the much rumored iTunes match, out of beta and into everyones hands. The launch comes as somewhat of a surprise, since Apple launched the new beta software for developers only a few days ago. Beta testers didn’t have too much time to play with the newest build of iTunes match before it went live. iTunes match itself is a great idea, but not the first of its kind. iTunes match is really just a rethinking of the idea that Lala.come started a few years ago. After scanning what music you have in your library, iTunes then matches what you have with what iTunes has in the store. Then the music that you have synced to your cloud, becomes available anywhere.

Having your entire library (up to 25,000) songs available anywhere is a great tool to have at your disposal. Having access to the entirety of your library really does make having the largest iPhone available a moot point. The strength of your data connection makes a much bigger difference in the event that you need to access your music. Verizon and Sprint customers may have some issues with live streaming for the time being. However, as the service becomes more permanent and newer iPhones become capable of accessing Verizon and Sprint’s 4G speeds, the tides may change as far as carriers go. (That is a discussion for another time however…)

Quality is another issue that I would want to double check on before hopping into iTunes match. Matching your library doesn’t change any of your local data, but uploading things that you did not purchase from iTunes, lowers the bitrate of the music. Lowering the quality of the music I have is not necessarily something I want to do. I like having high quality tracks, and purposely lowering them doesn’t really appeal to me. In a lot of cases, I would prefer to have the full quality available to me at the sacrifice of the storage space it takes to have them. But that is something everyone will have to choose for themselves. Not everyone is an audiophile.

iTunes match is a great service for those who have a lot of music and not the largest capacities on their devices. Not having to use up space on your devices would be wonderful, as long as accessing the music in the cloud isn’t too much of a trouble, or a drain on battery life or data. For me, I want to wait a little while and see how things go for users who decide to be an early adopter. When it becomes more clear how everything works, I’ll make a decision if it is a service for me.