Scan and Match Arrives in U.S.

Google Music has always been a very nice music locker, but while European users were able to use its iTunes Match-like scan-and-match feature since last month, U.S.-based users only got access to this tool on Tuesday. Until now, U.S. users had to upload all of their music to the service, which could obviously take a while. since Tuesday, Google can just scan your music collection and rebuilt it on Google Music without the need to transfer gigabytes of data.

Unlike Apple and Amazon, which charges about $25 per year for their respective services, Google offers this service for free. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and there are no limits to how much storage these songs take up. Google said it would stream your music back to you at up to 320 kbps. Unlike Apple’s service, though, Google will only let you re-download your music at a similar bitrate to your original.