Does iTunes Match actually save space?

I'm not understanding what you want to do. You want to be able to stream your music from the cloud, not have any songs stored on the iPhone, but then also not use any mobile data when you stream that music? That isn't possible.

iTunes Match does indeed mirror your iTunes library in the cloud and those tracks are availble in the cloud without being stored directly on the iPhone. However when you are away from your home Wi Fi network and you play the music you will use mobile data. Also, when a song is streamed a temporary copy is downloaded to the iOS device, in a temporary cache, so the track will be availble for later listening.

To not use mobile data you'll need to download tracks to the iPhone before you leave your home Wi Fi network.

Michael is correct. That cache file will get bigger and bigger as you use iTunes Match. I have had it as big as 8GB before and it shows in iTunes as other when viewing your iPods usage.

Restoring gets rid of it but it will grow again when you begin using iTunes Match.

hexonxonx wrote:

Restoring gets rid of it but it will grow again when you begin using iTunes Match.

There is no need whatsoever to restore an iOS device to delete the cache of streamed music. Simply go to Settings > General > Usage and tap Music (you may need to scroll down in the list). Then swipe across "all music" and tap DELETE.

Michael,

You appear to know this well. Is there a way to delete just the tracks that were cached/streamed and not the ones that I've downloaded? This method would wipe out everything, which is not what I want to do.

Thanks

At this time there is no way for a user to manage the cached tracks.

One thing I tried is working, knock on wood. I just go to settings then music, then I slide the iTunes match slider to off, then switch it back on. My memory went from under 200MB to 4GB. I'm going to keep trying that when I get a warning that my memory is almost full again. Hope this works for everyone else! Knock on wood again!

Michael you seem to be very knowledgeable on this subject, so I figured I would ask you this before I go to friends lol.

I want to purchase a subscription to iTunes Match for the same reason as Melikakarissa, I want to free up space on my iCloud. What I was wondering, though, is if I have the minimum 5gb space of iCloud, will I have to purchase more space when/if I purchase iTunes Match? Also, will I be able to listen to any song I have in my music library? Whereas with iCloud, it has automatically added 20 songs that I’ve purchased from iTunes. This is annoying because I have a couple thousand songs that I would love to have access to at any point in time.

I hope this makes sense!

iTunes Match does not use iCloud storage. In fact, nothing iTunes does uses iCloud storage. And, yes, if you subscribe to iTunes Match you will have access to your entire iTunes library on all your devices from almost anywhere.

Hi, hoping someone still sees this as it's just (mostly) answered the question I had....

In doing what Michael says and going to settings, useage, music and then swipe to delete; does this just delete the cache files? I assume it doesn't actually delete the music from the cloud and if you wanted to listen to it again then you could re-download it from the cloud?

Nothing is removed from the cloud when you remove all the music from the iOS device.