hey zeitgeisten,

If you're just starting out it's definitely close enough - I don't think you need to worry about picking up a mainland accent , although if you're planning to use Chinese professionally going forward it's advantageous to speak with a mainland accent these days. And if you do speak with a native mainland accent you've just solved that job problem for good.

There are a couple of subtle differences. The two big ones are that mainlanders tend to use the neutral tone in places where the Taiwanese don't. And standard mandarin has something called 儿化音, which adds an R-type sound to the end of some words. There are some podcasts where we get into this, so you'll actually pick this stuff up as you go through the archives.

Anyway, good luck getting started and let us know if you run into any trouble.