ITunes match for a large number of devices, 4 people, and as a backup solution.

Question

I am interested in using iTunes match for two central reasons:
1.  Backing up my music library.  Is iTunes Match an solution for this?  Or not really?  I get the fact that my purchases are protected, but what about the music I uploaded from purchased CD's. 
Question:  Can I consider iTunes Match at $24.99/year the cost of backing up 60GB of music to the cloud?
2.  Sharing my music library across a number of devices.  We are a family of 4 with farily extensive MAC, iPhone, iPad usage, including ...
1 iMac (Music server), 3 Power books (Indivudal work machines), 2 iPads, Apple TV,  and 4 iPhones.  We have 4 Mobile me accounts, moving to ICloud.
The problem I have is that I can never effectively coordinate the music library across the devices.  80GB of iTunes library is too much to load across all the devices and I never seem to have the song I'm looking for at the time I desire it on a particular device, other then the family iMAC server which has the whole library on it.
Question:  Seems like iTunes Match is an ideal solution, but can it handle the diverse spectrum and number of devices I have?  Ideally I want to thnk of iTunes Matchas, 1 central library avaialble on all devices, all the time.
Thank you in advance for any opinions.
MikeK

Answer 1

mek wrote:
Question:  Seems like iTunes Match is an ideal solution, but can it handle the diverse spectrum and number of devices I have?  Ideally I want to thnk of iTunes Matchas, 1 central library avaialble on all devices, all the time.
Think of iTunes Match as a central library from which "satellite" libraries can pull any time they have an Internet connection.
Functionally, if all those devices are in your house, iTunes Match doesn't give you much that Home Sharing doesn't already offer.  With Home Sharing all your Macs can easily "fill in the gaps" from the "master" library.  Of course, that requires that the machine with the "master" library is always online and iTunes is always running on it, which might not be the case.  AppleTVs and iPads sync to that "master" library and so what is on them is configured from the master library computer, not the device itself.
What iTunes Match offers you is:
1.  Your "canonical" library lives "in the cloud" and so you don't have to have a home server up and running iTunes at all times.
2.  Your "canonical" library lives "in the cloud" and so you can update from it any time you have an internet connection, not just when you are at home.
3.  The workflow for updating from the canonical library is much better than the clunky "Home Sharing" interface.
4.  Any "matched" songs (I found that in my library only about 65% were successfully matched; I'm not sure why) will be available at 256kbps AAC, which might be higher quality than what you have in your library currently (especially if you have imperfections like CD skipping, etc, in the tracks).  Of course, anything iTunes can't match to its own library will remain just as imperfect as ever.
The downside (versus Home Sharing) is:
1.  Everything needs to get copied onto a device from the Internet, which is likely to take much longer than just Home Sharing over your home wireless network.
Seems like a pretty good system.  I've signed up for it and am happy with what I've seen so far.