If you own an iOS device, you are likely used to iTunes Match, which Apple launched in 2011 with the release of iOS 5. This feature let users scan their entire music collection and then matched the tracks to a iTunes database of songs. In theory, this allowed iOS owners to store their tracks on Apple's iCloud service so that they could be streamed to iOS products.
That was the theory. The fact was that when you obtained your songs from the iCloud service, they had to download to your local storage device first. So technically, it wasn't a streaming music feature after all.
Now, Cult of Mac reports that with the first developer beta of iOS 6 now available, the iTunes Match service on iCloud has now finally been turned into a true streaming music service. The story reports that with the iOS 6 beta, users can now listen to a song on their iTunes Match collection immediately without having to first download that track. The option to download songs is still there, however.
This is a big change and puts iTunes Match into competition with other streaming music services such as Pandora and Spotify. Of course, we might have to wait a few months before this new feature is launched, along with the rest of iOS 6.
Source: Cult of Mac
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