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I've got iTunes match, and my whole library is backed up in the cloud. Is it possible, with the service, to host my music in the cloud, delete my whole local copy that takes up a whopping 50 GB on my small hard drive, and stream to my MacBook from the iTunes servers like I can on my iPhone?


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I haven't tested it (Match is not available for my country) but from the details it looks like you should be able to delete the songs locally and rely on the cloud storage to stream:

Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream it to any of your devices. Just browse the complete list of all your music stored in the cloud. To listen to a song, tap the iCloud icon next to it and your song starts playing. You can store up to 25,000 songs in iCloud (more if songs are purchased from the iTunes Store), but only what you want to play is stored on your device. So you have immediate access to a huge music library without taking up storage space.

Have a look at this Mac Rumors discussion, it seems that after a song is matched and you try to delete it, a copy will be kept on the HDD in order to play it faster and not redownload it.

Edit: I assume you're aware of the perils of solely relying on cloud storage for your music library: it will only work while connected to the cloud, availability is subject to Apple's benevolence (with little warranty) and terms of use might change anytime.

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It works but +1 for the edit: I would keep a copy on an external HD and would not only rely on Apple. –  Matteo Mar 2 '12 at 9:02

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