Coming several weeks late, Apple has just now officially launched iTunes Match to customers in the United States.



From MacRumors:

The iTunes Match launch is facilitated by the release of iTunes 10.5.1, which now allows users to subscribe to the 25/year service offering cloud-based matching and upload of users' complete iTunes libraries. iTunes 10.5.1 is available via the iTunes download page and should be rolling out to Software Update shortly.

Apple had apparently initially intended iTunes Match to launch by mid-October as part of iTunes 10.5 as seen in a number of developer betas, but the company removed the feature from iTunes 10.5 for the public release, giving it a few more weeks to complete work on the service. Even so, Apple missed its stated launch target of "end of October" and did not provide an updated timeframe for the iTunes Match debut once the target was missed, although the company continued testing with a new developer beta of iTunes 10.5.1 just this past weekend.

  Apple Launches iTunes Match with Release of iTunes 10.5.1