How to Enable iTunes Match On Your iPhone or iPad

Apple released iTunes Match today, and users can now access their entire music library in iCloud on any authenticated iDevice running iOS 5. On the iPhone and iPad, iTunes Match can be easily enabled in the device’s Settings.

Once enabled, iTunes Match will allow you to download and start playing any uploaded track at any given time on multiple iDevices.

Apple turned on the iTunes Match option in the Settings app last month, but the toggle didn’t work until today. Once you have enabled iTunes Match in iTunes on your desktop, you can enable the service on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The Apple TV also supports iTunes Match for music streaming.

Before you begin, it’s important to note that enabling iTunes Match in iOS 5 will delete all of your locally stored music and replace everything with iCloud tracks. Once you enable iTunes Match, you will be warned that iCloud will replace all of the music on your iDevice with what you’ve uploaded to iCloud. Make sure that all of your music you didn’t get from the iTunes Store is backed up on your computer.

In iOS 5, navigate to the Settings app to turn on iTunes Match. Go the to the Music section and you’ll see the iTunes Match toggle at the top of the screen. Swipe this toggle and you’ll be prompted to enter your Apple ID password to enable iTunes Match.

You have two options once iTunes Match is enabled in iOS 5. You can turn on the “Show All Music” option, and all of the tracks that have been matched in iCloud will be viewable in your Music app. This means that you’ll see downloaded tracks alongside iCloud tracks that you can download by tapping the cloud icon next to each track and album.

If you leave “Show All Music” turned off, only locally stored music will be shown in your Music app. If you’re using iTunes Match for the first time, it’s good to leave “Show All Music” turned on initially. When “Show All Music” if off, only music that you have already downloaded from iCloud will be displayed in your iOS Music library. Once you have downloaded the tracks you want from iCloud, you can turn “Show All Music” off again to hide your entire track list. There’s no point in having a ton of tracks listed that you don’t plan on downloading to that iDevice.

As more music is automatically uploaded to iTunes Match, your iDevice will refresh on its own to reflect the added tracks. Again, turning the “Show All Music” option on will show you all of the available tracks that you can download.

iTunes Match costs $24.99 a year and is available for purchase in the iTunes Store.