Tal (and whomever else wants to chime in - request an invite!),

I recall you signed up for iTunes Match just before leaving on a vacation - how did it work out? Any problems? Are you still using it and do you think the small yearly fee is worth it?

I'm considering checking it out to make managing my music on my computers easier.

My setup is thus:
- A Mac Mini on my TV at home that serves as a media center / shared computer that my roommate uses occasionally.

- A Laptop that I take with me.

I have too much music to put it all on the laptop, so I generally choose a bunch of albums and copy over new things as I go.

Would iTunes Match be a good fit for me?

Good question. To be honest, I haven't put 100% of my music into iTunes Match yet, so the verdict isn't out. My mp3 collection (~1000 albums) is still sitting in some physical (ew) external (ew ew) hard drive (what's that?). So I'm still on Rdio most of the time because there's more music there.

That said, iTunes Match has been really good so far. I think it's recognized every album I've given it. Not always amazing at recognizing audio books, but for music it gets the job done at 1/5 of the price.

But even when I do move 100% of the music over, I might stay on Rdio anyway and move to the cheaper plan without device syncing. There's something to be said about putting on anything you want and not having to download files (huh?) first.

Hmm, if it doesn't match the album does it let you upload it and sync it across devices as if it had matched it?

I've tried Spotify, but was really put off by their UI. I generally like to browse by artist/album and they make that extremely difficult. And even if you search for a specific album/artist/song, you often get tons of shitty results like "best of" or "greatest hits" or covers. I wish they had a mode to only show the original album that a song appeared on.

Maybe I'll give Rdio a go and see if they are any better. Do they do offline sync like Spotify does on iOS devices?

I've been using iTunes Match since it came out and it's been great. I've got 25000 songs on the cloud so my limit is capped but it's been pretty smooth.

If it doesn't match the album on iTunes the song is still uploaded to their servers and synced across devices.

If you use iTunes the experience doesn't really change. In fact, it just feels having access to your entire library on all devices at any given time.

I've tried both Spotify and Rdio but I always got back to my own collection of music. I will say that Rdio's user experience is much nicer than Spotify and it offers offline sync as well.

@josh Really? I've had some audio books that wouldn't add to my library no matter what.

Rdio has offline syncing too. I think you'd love it, awesome service. Spotify is hideous. The new Winamp.

@tal Actually I can't speak to audio books as I don't listen to them often. The only issues I've had were with lost play counts and playlists during the early beta but I haven't experienced that since.

Personally I love itunes match. I have a macbook air which is the best laptop I've ever owned but sadly doesnt have the biggest hard drive (128 gigs). With iTunes match I dont need to have any of my music downloaded to it it can stream everything from the cloud.

Same goes to for my iPhone, and it even works pretty well over 3G

The only time i need to download anything is when I know I'll be away from an internet connection, which honestly hasnt happend yet.

Hopefully they get rid of the 25,000 song limit then it will be perfect

@Keith: I've been running into the iPhone storage dilemma more and more these days despite having a 32GB device. 90% of my music I don't listen to on a regular basis, but I want to have all of it accessible when I do want to hear it. I'm still considering if that infrequent desire is worth the $25. Thoughts?

@Josh: that's why I live by the Audible app for my audiobooks; losing your place is a severe pain, especially when you're listening to multiple books at once.

@chris: completely worth the $$

Apple doesn't advertise it this way but if you think about it it's also a complete backup of your music library. No more time machine external hd madness. That alone is worth $25 per year.

I enjoy iTunes Match. It is worth every penny of the $25 it cost for the year. I have been using it since the beta and it has had a few hiccups along the way but for the most part it seems to work as advertised. Every now and then it will magically turn off on one of my other machines (not iOS devices) and I will have to wait for it to update again, but on my iPhone and iPad I have not had any problems at all! Once the streaming is available in iOS6 it will be even that much better!

Streaming? I haven't heard of this - does it let you play stuff immediately instead of having to download it first?

Yep, on a Mac it always allowed for streaming and now iOS allows for streaming as well.

I recommend you check out Rdio.

I spent basically the whole decade from 2000-2010 trying various ways to get access to all of my music on all of my devices. At one point I even ran my G4 as a web server devoted to hosting my music so I could stream to multiple devices/PCs.

In the end, I found a subscription to Rdio has freed me from worrying about all of this. Almost every song I want is now available wherever I am. You will look forward to Tuesdays because it means you can listen to all the new stuff.

I haven't even opened iTunes in months. Unless you have a ton of hard to find / custom music, Rdio is a great choice, and it has a very album-focused design which you may like more than Spotify.