my only concern is if I'm in the middle of nowhere with no reception can I still access my music from the cloud?

i think the idea behind the downloading is that it downloads to all your devices manually or automatically (configurable). so it's kinda like syncing.

itunes match though, takes existing songs in your library (that you ripped, or maybe even pirated???), matches them up with the itunes store and if it finds something in the store, it marks it as "purchased" so that you can sync it with icloud without using storage. ... this is the part that really blows my mind.

yea, that part is awesome, the whole thing is great