Are there any of you out there that have ever accidentally moved around any of your music files on your Mac? I have done this without even realizing that I had done it. Luckily, having an iTunes Match subscription saves you from having to figure out where you accidentally moved those music files to.
What with all the cloud backup solutions and cloud mirrored backups and all it's not out of the question that you might create a few errors in your iTunes library now and again by sheer accident. iTunes Match (your whole music library backed up and available through Apple's iCloud on all your Macs/PCs and iOS devices that you own anywhere you are) can help you smooth out the kinks quickly and easily. You might see some of these errors from time to time if you've really got your hands on your computer all that often like I have.
You have probably encountered this before at some point where you see the '!' symbol on the listing and go to click on it only to have your Mac tell you that you have moved the 'original file' from it's 'original location'. It then asks if you would like to go and 'find' the file through that handy 'Finder' dialogue window that pops up if you click on the 'locate' tab. Yes, you can do that if you want--that is the 'old way' after all and a lot of us are very used to having to hunt those 'prodigal son' files down and bring them back home, or IF you have iTunes Match enabled on your machine you can do it this the new and: easy way: just select all the tracks with said error and delete them. After that, the track listings will still be 'ghosted' there, but with one little addition--a download button next to each one. This is So, So handy! Just select them all, right finger click or two-finger tap and select 'download' and then iTunes re-downloads them in a nice 256Kbps download (even if the tracks you uploaded were of a lower quality than that). Brilliant!
This is an excellent way to yet again to take advantage of that iTunes Match subscription and a time saver, to boot. Then copies of those lovely tracks are right back where they were meant to be. Having iTunes Match doesn't just make it easier to import your iTunes Library to other machines when you upgrade or buy an extra computer, it makes managing your digital music collection a breeze right from where you sit.