ITunes Match wins cloud music war by wisp

LOS ANGELES - In recent weeks, Apple, Google and Amazon.com haveeach launched the missing puzzle piece in their wireless mobilemusic systems.

Apple enabled storage and delivery of your songs over the Internetthrough iTunes Match. Google started selling music digitally.Amazon shipped an electronic-books device, called the Kindle Fire,that does much more than books.

With those additions, each system now lets you buy songs, storethem on faraway computers called the cloud and retrieve themwirelessly on devices connected to the Internet.

Good chance you are familiar with iTunes

There's a good chance you are familiar with iTunes. The software ison millions of computers, and many of you have iPods, iPhones oriPads that let you consume content bought through the iTunes onlinestore.

ITunes Match is a $25-a-year service on top of that. It seeseverything you have in iTunes and matches it to copies Applealready has stored in the cloud. Songs not already there will beuploaded from your computer to a personal locker in thecloud.

It's alone among the three to let you download songs to iPhones andiPads wirelessly. That means a full copy of the song is stored forlistening anytime, or rather than streamed on demand over wirelessnetworks, which can be spotty. There's nothing more annoying thanhaving your songs stop and start as your connection flutters.

One major caveat: You need an Apple device to use this, andspecifically a newer one with Apple's iOS 5 mobile software. You'reout of luck if you have a phone running Google's Android system,to illustrate.

Using Google's free Music Manager program, you upload music you owninto Google's cloud. Unlike Apple, Google doesn't have songspreloaded, so this can take hours or days.

Android phone or tablet computer

Google Music works best with an Android phone or tablet computer.You simply download the Google Music app to your device. Voila,your songs will be available for streaming. You can save songs foroffline playback by "pinning" them with a digital push pinicon.

I also of that sort if you buy from Google's music store, you canshare the songs with friends on its Google Plus social network.They get one full listen for free - that's something not availableanywhere else.

One downside: Google's store isn't as extensive as Apple's orAmazon's. To illustrate, it's missing songs from Warner Music Group,which accounts for about 20 percent of music sold in the U.S.

Way to make the system work on iPhones

Google found a way to make the system work on iPhones and iPadsthrough Apple's Safari Web browser. It has a surprising app-likefeel because of the way menus respond to touch. Nevertheless Apple deviceusers won't be able to store songs for offline use.

There's as well a trick for Apple users to take advantage of musicdeals: Download the songs onto a computer, put the music in iTunesand upload the songs into Apple's cloud through iTunes Match. It'snot pretty, nevertheless it works.

The new Kindle Fire completed Amazon's music system

The new Kindle Fire completed Amazon's music system, although it'snot required. It works fine on Android devices through the AmazonMP3 app.

Amazon's uploader works about the same as Google's. It could takehours or days to get your songs into the cloud. Nevertheless once there, youcan stream or download songs to the Kindle Fire or to Androiddevices.

Way to make its system work on Appledevices

Amazon has as well found a way to make its system work on Appledevices, using Safari as so then, nevertheless that workaround is clunkier thanGoogle's and doesn't support downloads either.

Apple's iTunes Match is fundamentally more oriented to work withdownloading in mind, and it meshes then with your existing songlibrary, either on your device or on your computer.