Yeah, wanting to manage what is or isn't on my phone at any given moment is a ridiculous desire. I see your point now.
ok, here's the argument that I don't understand. Apple gives you quit a bit of management. So I still don't think you understand how it's working (not that is all your fault. Apple hasn't documented the options it gives customers very well for itunes match)
with the pure streaming service, you aren't managing storage and there's a cache that stores some of the most recently listened to songs.
I think I read you can "pin" tracks to always be on the device with google streaming? is that correct? i don;t remember reading about a lot of management options here
anyway, with the apple service, you tap a song and it plays. it gets saved to the storage but it may be deleted automatically if you download a lot of music or apps afterward , as if it were in a cache. if you tap the first song in an album, all the other songs download when they start playing. very simple
but the apple service also gives you the ability to manage the storage more than a streaming service by allowing you to manually download and manually delete individual songs, playlists albums, artists etc on a very granular level. so it's sort of giving you the control that you are asking for. more control than a streaming service.
but, it remains headache free because when you start putting more media and apps on the device and the storage fills up, it will remove songs automatically that you aren't listening to - so you don't need to manage storage to make room for other things. the management is all optional.