ITunes 10.5.1 with Match Feature

Apple released its iTunes 10.5.1 that includes a new match feature. It scans a user's library for music that was bought from other than Apple store. If there is a match of this music in their own music store, Apple provides the user with the same quality cloud-based version of the song if he is subscribed to the matching service.

The feature made its debut at Apple's developer conference in early June, and has been in developer testing in beta versions of the music software since early August. Apple originally planned to debut it by the end of last month, but October came and went without any sign of iTunes Match or any explanation from Apple on its absence.

Over the weekend Apple hinted it would be launching the feature soon, after sending developers an e-mail noting that it was wiping out iCloud music libraries with matched tracks in order to prepare for the launch of iTunes Match. Apple had made several of these purges during iTunes Match testing, as well as during testing for iCloud backups of iOS devices.

iTunes Match is integrated with Apple's iCloud platform, which taps into the cloud to do things like ferry files, content, and apps between Apple devices. In this case, matched tracks are effectively licensed to users, letting them download music tracks to a device, even if they bought them on another device. Apple has also extended the capability to its Apple TV product in a recent update, letting users listen to music from collection without storing it locally.