Apple launches iTunes in the Cloud in Japan and will likely do the same for iTunes Match soon

Apple has flipped on the switch for iTunes in the Cloud in Japan, reports Apple blog Macotokara. The cloud music service, part of Apple’s iCloud product, offers users the ability to re-download any songs that they have purchased to any device, as well as enabling automatic downloading of newly purchased songs.

Japanese iTunes users are seeing the cloud download icon appear in their listings of songs. This allows users to download previously purchased songs from the cloud. Note that this is only working for items that have been purchased from iTunes.

As it was with users of Apple’s iOS software in the US, Japanese customers are also seeing the ‘automatic download’ switch appear magically in the Store section of the Settings app.

Last December, Apple pushed their iTunes cloud services out to many Latin American countries, including Brazil. Many of those countries saw iTunes in the Cloud service launch on its own, while Brazil got that as well as the iTunes Match service, which allows users to have their entire library made available in the cloud. Since then, all of the countries that initially got iTunes in the Cloud have also received the iTunes Match service.

There is likely separate licensing involved for iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match, leading to a gap between announcement in some of those countries. That being said, Japan is a large market for Apple so it is likely we’ll see iTunes Match there soon as well.