Over the years I’ve bought a few songs from iTunes. If I got a new computer or updated my iDevice and I neglected to back up my purchases they were lost unless I could remember exactly what song and which version it was that I bought.
When I’d ask Apple for help they’d tell me to log into my iTunes account and decipher the nonsensical list of music, movie, book, and app purchases. And on the off chance I remembered what song I downloaded, I would have to buy it again. Wait, what? Yeah, the whole iTunes deal was maddening.
iTunes in the Cloud changes all that. It’s not revolutionary. It just makes sense. Now, when I buy music from iTunes, iCloud stores my purchase history so I can see what I’ve bought—from my PC, Mac, or iDevice. Even better, I can configure all my devices to automatically download my new purchases to all my devices via WiFi or 3G. Wait, what? Yeah, the whole iTunes deal just got surprisingly simple.
Currently iTunes in the Cloud is only available in the U.S. and requires iOS 4.3.3 on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (GSM model, sorry iVerizoners), iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation, iPad, or iPad 2, or a Mac or PC (Vista or 7) with iTunes 10.3. If you meet these requirements let’s get started.
First, download iTunes 10.3 to your PC or Mac. Once installed fire it up and click the Purchased link on the left hand side.
Next select Download Previous Purchases in the bottom corner of the iTunes window.
From this screen you can choose to play music, download individual songs 
, or download all of them 
. If you’d rather not even worry about this step you can set up iTunes to automatically download your music, apps, and books.
On a PC click Edit -> Preferences and on a Mac select iTunes -> Preferences. Then click Store.
Now your PC and/or Mac will automatically download music, apps, and books whenever or wherever they are purchased.
As for the iDevice, accessing your music and setting up the Store is just as easy. From you iPhone open up iTunes and tap Purchased 
. You’ll now be able to view all of the songs you’ve purchased1 or just the ones not on your iPhone.
To download a song select the song, and tap the cloud icon 
next to it. To download them all, just tap the Download All 
button.
If you don’t want to manually download your purchased music, apps, or books, you’ll need to set up the iDevice’s Store preferences similar to how you did on the PC/Mac. From the home screen tap Settings -> Store and configure your automatic downloads as well as whether or not you want to download purchases over the 3G network.
That’s all you need to do. Now, whenever you buy a song, app, or book from whatever device you buy it from, iTunes in the Cloud will give you access to play and automatically download them to your device. I’ve been using it for the past two days and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty darn sweet (albeit many years late). Set up is cake, automatically downloads work flawlessly, and MobileMe still sucks.
iTunes Match (coming soon)
In the fall Apple will release iTunes Match. For $24.99/year you’ll get access to all your iTunes music including tunes you ripped from CDs or “borrowed” from anonymous friends. What’s really cool about it is that it doesn’t upload your entire library (unlike Google and Amazon). Instead, it scans your library to see if the song exists in iTunes’ 18 million song catalog and if it does it’ll stream it to you at 256 kbps. If your song is not in iTunes then it’ll be uploaded to iCloud at whatever rate it is on your device where it can be streamed for your listening pleasure. Stay tuned for more on iTunes Match. In the meantime, enjoy iTunes in the Cloud.
Whaddya think? Feel free to share your thoughts or questions below, or send me an e-mail at TiTy@y2kemo.com. 1Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer in the iTunes Store in which case you are SOL.
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