I read very different things about keeping my music collection intact. I have iTunes Match and think the music is all uploaded to iCloud. But I also read about needing the iTunes Library that lives locally within the music folder in Windows. Does it matter if I select to copy a new song to itunes in addition to having it in my music folder?
Whatever Apple may say when describing iTunes Match it isn't a backup service, nor is fidelity guaranteed. If you have a track that is matched or uploaded then if you were to download that elsewhere it might not be exactly the same as the original. If you want to remove the local files on your computer for reasons of space I would recommend you copy them all to an external drive, ideally two, before you remove them. That way if you discover that the matched version is wrong, e.g. clean vs. explicit, or the quality of a stream/redownload doesn't match the original, or you inadvertently delete something from your iCloud Music Library in error you will have the source files to add back into your library.
tt2
Where is iTunes Match data?
