I HEART CHAOS

Apple’s long-awaited iTunes Match service went live today before it quickly became overwhelmed with traffic. Obviously. If Apple’s servers couldn’t handle Siri pinging the internet to find out how to dispose of a dead body for a week or two after the launch of the iPhone 4S, I hope no one was expecting a million people using iTunes Match would go smoothly.

There are some key differences between iTunes Match and other cloud music options. Like rivals Amazon MP3 and Google Music beta, Apple’s service lets you store your entire music collection in the cloud. But while the competing services require you to upload every song to their servers (a weeklong process for some), iTunes Match simply scans your collection and instantly matches their existing files to your account. The only uploading that is required is for obscure or unlicensed tracks that aren’t already in iTunes.

There is, however, one more key difference that could make iTunes Match a less than desirable cloud music service. Unlike Google’s and Amazon’s cloud players, iTunes Match does not stream — so you’ll be required to download anything you want to listen to. So while you can hypothetically have your entire music collection on your iPhone, you will pay for it in flash storage.

iTunes Match is $25/year, which is cheaper than something like Spotify, but will it be worth it? If it can keep up with demand, maybe.. but the fact that it’s just storage and not streaming is a bummer.

Via