I subscribed to iTunes Match the other day (it just came to the UK) and was thinking – now that iTunes Match is backing up my library, ratings, playcounts and all that awesome stuff, I no longer need to include it in my time machine backup, right? It's matched 99% of the songs in my library and I'm not going to miss the others a great deal – I use Spotify very heavily as well, and if I don't need to backup my music (~100gb) I no longer need a larger backup hard drive 😀
ITunes Match – No More Backups Needed
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Best Answer
No, you don't need a backup any more. iTunes Match stores nothing in the Cloud, it activates your songs in the iTunes Store, and only the songs iTunes doesn't have are uploaded to the Apple Server.
But if your HDD suffers damage, you have to download all your 50 GB again.