iTunes Match question.. Is it for me??

[mr wrong]

I do not own any ios devices. Still have my trusty 5th gen iPod which spends a majority of it's time in my car. I was thinking of giving iTunes match a try for the sole purpose of listening to my iTunes library on my work computer.. I have a few questions before I pull the trigger.

1- Would I need to load iTunes on my work computer, or is there a website, or lightweight app I could use?

2- Will iTunes Match change, or have any affect on my main iTunes Library (tags, or otherwise) where all my local music is stored, and synced with my 5th gen iPod?

3- If I delete a track from Match on a remote computer, will the changes reflect on my main iTunes library?

4- If I delete a track from my main iTunes library, will the changes reflect on Match?

I know that there are free/cheap services, but I would like something that mirrors my iTunes library anytime something is added/deleted, and Amazon Cloud, or Google Music do not do this..

Thanks in advance..

 

[skruggie]

This is exactly what I use itunes match for - yes, you can open itunes on your computer at work with match turned on, and you can stream your entire library.

Any tagging changes you make with match at home will reflect any instance of itunes you use with match enabled on another computer. They will always be mirrors of each other. To me, that's the best part of this whole thing, something I had been wanting for years out of itunes, the ability to keep a library completely synced from more than one place.

The only place where this really causes issues is having a library with more than 25,000 tracks - which is the situation I am in, so I don't keep my primary library with match enabled, I use that as my master, with a second library at home for playing matched tunes, and my work computer has match enabled so that I can access my fully matched library from work.

And, what's really great about using match on a computer as opposed to ios, is that its truly streaming, it only downloads if you specifically tell it to download.

I really don't think match on ios is ready for primetime by any means - my matched library is about 21,000 songs, and without fail my ipad always chokes when I try to use it. Still using pandora on the ipad, I"m finding match to be completely useless in that regard.

I know this more than answered your basic questions, but these are my observations over the past month or so.