I was quite surprised to find the new iTunes Match icon which must have appeared sometimes last week. Given the fight that the various groups representing rightsholders in Germany continue to put up against all kinds of Internet content services, I had not expected that to materialise for a long while (if ever). But it seems that for 25 Euro per year you can now officially put your library of non-iTunes-purchased music into Apple's digital locker, allowing you to stream it to all your fruity devices or just upconvert low-quality CD rips to 256kb DRM-free tracks.

Being not much of a music listener, iTunes Match itself is not a service I am interested in, but along with it comes iTunes in the Cloud, the ability to re-download songs previously purchased from Apple. Remember the broken track I got in October? Probably not, but I do. I was now able to click on a nice little cloud symbol and that got me a new version of the file, and this time it was complete. Happy. Plus I still have the voucher for another free song that I got from customer support. Double happiness.