Access Your Music and Movies on All Your Devices - iConnected: Use AirPlay, iCloud, Apps, and More to Bring Your Apple Devices Together - page 32

Figure 2-9
View songs you've previewed in the iTunes app on any device.
Use iTunes Match
iTunes Match (shown in Figure 2-10) is a little hard to get your head around at first. Perhaps
that's because it actually offers the too-good-to-be-true matching service it claims. For a mere $25
annual subscription, iTunes Match scans all the songs in your iTunes music library (yes, even those
ripped from your friend's CD collection or downloaded from another store) and determines whether
they match a song available in the iTunes Store.
All the songs from your library that are matched become available to all your devices via iCloud
at full 256Kbps AAC quality (that's nice and clear for those unfamiliar with the jargon). So, in effect,
iTunes Match not only lets you make legal those ripped and even pirated songs in your library for a
fraction of their original cost, but it also improves the quality of those hissy tracks you may own.
That's not a bad deal for an annual subscription that costs less than a couple of albums. Even better,
you get to keep those higher-quality versions even if you don't renew your iTunes Match subscrip-
tion.
Songs that can't be matched are uploaded to iCloud in their original form so you can access them
on all your devices, too. They do, however, take a while to transfer, so it's a good idea to clean up your
iTunes library before you sign up to iTunes Match.