Apple Music Delete All Songs From Library

[Hadi Sapre]

Justto double down on this: This is happening to me for years now and I'm about to ditch Apple Music altogether. I'm planning to go "analogue" again, storing my music locally (on my computer, iPhone and iPad separately).

For the know-it-alls: This refers to (like some stated before) music that was transferred from CDs that I own. This can also be a country-specific problem, I guess. In my library many German titles have been deleted (meaning they're still there, but greyed out).

At least once a year ITunes removes all the music I've had from old CD's. It just looks like a scam and they want me to buy it from them. I've kept an old IPod they can't access. It allows me to get my music back, but annoying.

I have an iTunes/Music collection I have built up over many years and many Mac products, from my original G4 MacPro, through Mac minis and now my M1MAx Mac Studio. I also own an iPad and an iPhone 13Pro. My music files have always existed on dedicated external drive directly connected to my Mac Desktop system, that ONLY contains my music, and I ripped the files to lossless ALAC files from my large collection of CDs. But it seems if I don't play the files very often, the Apple software drops the links and I am unable to play the songs over WiFi using the Apple Remote software. I have to go to my office and log into my mac Studio and click through all the files that have gotten "dropped" or they cannot be played. I have an exclusive Apple system - there is no windows gear in our home. I don't want to have to dump all of this to get a system that can store my music library reliably - I don't want to play every song tonight, but if I decide to play something a few months from now, I should not have to reload it all over again for it to work. My phone is NOT set to Optimize storage - I have a 2TB music drive connected to my desktop and I would expect once loaded that the files would remain there and not be removed by some rule that I know nothing about. How can I get this to work reliably?

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you're experiencing with Apple Music. It can be frustrating when your music library gets disrupted like this. Here are some steps you can take to try and resolve the problem:

1. **Check iCloud Music Library Sync**: Since you mentioned that you turned off and then back on the "sync library" function, it's possible that this action caused some synchronization issues. Make sure that your iCloud Music Library is enabled on both your Mac and iPhone. To do this, go to Settings on your iPhone, then Music, and ensure that "Sync Library" is turned on. On your Mac, open Apple Music, go to Preferences, and under the General tab, ensure "Sync Library" is checked.

2. **Check Your Internet Connection**: Sometimes, issues with syncing can occur due to a poor or intermittent internet connection. Ensure that you have a stable internet connection when syncing your library.

4. **Re-add Missing Music**: If your music is still available on your Mac, you can try re-adding the missing songs to your library. Make sure the songs are correctly imported into your iTunes library and then add them to your iCloud Music Library.

5. **Contact Apple Support**: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, it might be a more complex problem. Contact Apple Support for assistance. They can help you diagnose and resolve issues specific to your Apple Music account and devices.

6. **Backup Your Music**: To avoid losing your music in the future, it's a good practice to regularly back up your music library. You can create backups of your music files on your computer or use a third-party service to back up your music library.

Remember to exercise caution when making changes to your music library, especially when importing and syncing. It's always a good idea to have backups to prevent data loss in case of unexpected issues.

I think Amazon music is worse though. I've literally bought loads of digital albums from them over the years and was able to download them onto my computer and then onto my iPhone. Now you can't seem to download them at all - so why did I buy all that music?

If you have any songs in the cloud when you cancel Apple Music Apple deletes them. You can end up with a song in the cloud even if you never meant to by listening to a song from your library on a remote device.

When I realized the music I copied in from CD had been deleted after canceling Apple Music I got them back by signing up for Apple Music again which made all my music magically reappear. Then I downloaded each song from the cloud to my HD. Then when I cancelled Apple Music again all my music stayed.

I already know the answer to this, and the answer is really dispopointing. You can't. You have to remove the song/s from your library, which will remove them from all playlists. You then have to put them back in. I find this to be a massive oversight on apple's part. They obviously saw the value of being able to separate one's library from playlists, but then made the concept somewhat dysfunctional by not giving us the ability to remove songs from our library as we please... I can think of a few (time consuming) work arounds, but they're pretty annoying.

The songs in playlist are simply pointers to the songs in your library (not the actual songs). Removing a song from your library (as you want to do) would simple make the pointer invalid. The pointers in a playlist costume very little additional memory.

Yesterday I needed to remove a couple of albums. I connected my local HD to the laptop, right-click on album and press "Delete for Library". After that, I understood that album deleted only from iTunes library and don't delete from local drive.

Today I called Apple Support and the guy told me that's alright! This is how iTunes works with Apple Music. He told me that I need 1) delete a song from the library in iTunes and 2) find and delete a song from hard drive, and then the song removed from both.

My question to the community. If you need delete song from iTunes and from hard drive, how do you do that? I mean, when I click "delete from library" I'd like to delete the song from library and hard drive in one click.

yeah, but only when you don't use Apple Music... I already recognize that you can delete songs from iCloud library and local hard drive in two steps: 1) Delete song from iCloud 2) Delete song from Finder by hands.

Hey, I recorded a video. If song stored in iCloud, it's not linked with a hard drive. At the end of the video, I deleted song with Cmd+Del, but song deleted only from iTunes Library. So I'll move to iTunes Match.

iTunes will only offer to delete the local copy of a file when you delete the entry from the library if that file is located within the currently designated iTunes Media folder. Could the tracks that need two steps to delete be located outside of it? You can try this DeleteSelectedFiles script.

If you eject the drive then iTunes initially assumes the file is where it is supposed to be. That information is only updated when you attempt to access the track. If you don't repair the broken link but iCloud Music Library is active, then iTunes can switch to the cloud link so you could stream or download the track. Now when you delete it only the cloud link is removed as there is no longer an association with a local file. Even if you reconnected the drive at this point the file would be ignored.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

I understand you are wanting to delete multiple songs from your iCloud Music Library. Although you can't do this on your iPhone, you can use your computer to make multiple selections using the Command key, and those changes would update on your iPhone. This does not apply to music downloaded directly to the device for offline listening.

Take a look at the resources below. I've highlighted some key information here for you. Click on the link for complete details.

Delete songs and videos from your iCloud Music Library

If you're an Apple Music member or subscribe to iTunes Match, your music and video content is stored in iCloud Music Library. When you delete an item from iCloud Music Library, it also deletes from any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that uses iCloud Music Library with the same Apple ID.

I have my library setup so that all the music is added to the music folder and then I add to the library manually in iTunes. I would like to go through and delete some songs from my library but I would also like them to be deleted from hard drive. Typically I will left click the song, click show in finder, cmd-delete in finder, and then cmd-delete in iTunes. Since I need to do this for 100s of songs in my library, it would be nice if I could directly delete from the hard drive and library inside iTunes. If anyone knows of any features, scripts, or what have you that I could do this, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help!

First you need to make sure that the music files you want to delete are in the itunes music folder (you can relocate this in the advanced section of iTunes preferences). If the files are in a different folder, deleting them will only remove them from the itunes library, but not delete the files from the hard drive.

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