Itunes Match question

Hi
Has anyone had any experience with ITunes Match? I have a modest library of songs (about 5500) in my Itunes library and would like to use Itunes match as a cloud backup. However, I have the following questions:

1) After matching my library with the Itunes catalogue of songs, those not matched will be uploaded into the cloud. Will this upload use my data allowance?

2) If I go for Itunes Match, will it stop the syncing function (syncing to iphone)? The reason for asking is that I understand songs in iPhones will be wiped out and you have to access songs from the cloud using wifi or my phone data plan which I don't want to do. I still prefer to keep my songs in my iphone and sync to my library.

3) if you have used iTunes Match, what is your general experience? Is it easy to use? Tedious? Any feedback would be useful.

Thanks in advance.

pw_168 said:

1) After matching my library with the Itunes catalogue of songs, those not matched will be uploaded into the cloud. Will this upload use my data allowance?

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No, because you will not be using your phone to upload these songs. They are synced on your Mac or PC, which uses Ethernet or Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet and thus should be uploaded from there.

2) If I go for Itunes Match, will it stop the syncing function (syncing to iphone)? The reason for asking is that I understand songs in iPhones will be wiped out and you have to access songs from the cloud using wifi or my phone data plan which I don't want to do. I still prefer to keep my songs in my iphone and sync to my library.

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Your premise is only partially correct. You can still use iTunes to sync songs locally onto your phone, *then* turn on iTunes Match. The songs you just synced will be there. You can later turn iTunes Match off, change the locally-synced songs, then turn it back on again. Only songs that are *not* included in your sync will have the "download" button next to them.

See here for more info: Toggle between iTunes Match and local syncing | Macworld

3) if you have used iTunes Match, what is your general experience? Is it easy to use? Tedious?

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I found it very confusing to set up at first (see your second question), but once set up correctly it's been a joy. Sometimes I'm in a mood for a song I know I own but have idea if its on the iPhone or in the cloud, but now it doesn't matter. I select it and I am listening to it.