If I have songs on my computer, iPhone or ipad can I choose to listen to them locally rather than via the cloud and only use the cloud when I need to so as to avoid having to stream my music when not necessary to do so.
Yes, all music stored in the cloud can be downloaded to iOS devices. Music on your computer is not touched and is all played locally unless you delete the locally stored version.
Yes, it will always play the local version if it is available.
Note, the download behavior is different on computers and iOS devices:
- On a computer, if you click on a song, it will stream it unless you explicitly click the
the "cloud" button to download it. Once you do so, the cloud button will disappear
unless you locally delete the song.
- On iOS devices, a song is downloaded automatically when you play it, *or* if
you explictly download it (an option which now only appears for groups of songs,
like albums or playlists). Again, once it's downloaded, it will play the local
version until you delete it.
I find the iOS behavior kind of annoying. I use genius a lot, which means my
iPhone slowly fills up with random tracks by different artists. Since they no longer show
the download status for individual songs (thank you, iOS 6), you have to turn off
the cloud songs in settings to see what's there and clean it up.
Itunes match
