iTunes Match Hits the UK (for Real this Time)

All wrapped up and delivered in time for the year's end.

Earlier this week,someone at Apple got our hopes up when they accidentally pulled the trigger on iTunes Match for a few select countries outside the U.S. Apple quickly corrected the mistake, commenting that iTunes Match would not function outside of the U.S. or Brazil, but we were disappointed that Cupertino did not at least give us an estimated release date to look forward to.

Then again, perhaps Apple didn't say anything because the company knew we'd be waiting less than a day for the service to launch officially. Making good on its promise to deliver the service to international markets before the end of the year, the Guardian reports that Apple today made iTunes Match available to iTunes users in the United Kingdom.

Launched in the United States last month, iTunes Match allows users to scan and match tracks in their iTunes library, including songs from CDs or elsewhere, with tracks in the iTunes Store. The service will then automatically add any music with a match to your iCloud library while tracks without matches will be uploaded from your computer. Once that's done, you'll have instant access to your music library from up to ten devices. What's more, all of the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality -- especially handy if your copy of the song or album was of a lower quality.

Of course, a nifty service like this doesn't come for free and one thing this week's false start did give us was an indication of how much this will cost UK customers. While our cousins in the U.S. will be paying $25 per year for the privileged of iTunes Match, we'll be paying £21.99, which is considerably more.