Apple Music Remove All Songs From Library

[Smacka Shock]

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.

On iPhone 12, IOS 14.6, got Apple Music subscription last month and since then have not been able to remove songs from my playlists without deleting them from my library and having to re-add and re-download them. There is no option I can find to simply remove from the playlist.

Such a garbage problem. Have no idea how to get these songs back now or which ones I even deleted. Do these people even use their own app? Seriously, things like "play last" instead of an add to queue, now this crap? What a joke, I might just to switch back to spotify at this point

Thank you for posting in Apple Support Communities. From our understanding, when you attempt to remove a song from a specific playlist it remove the song from your library completely, is that correct? How are you deleting it? Are you selecting the 3 dots at the top right, selecting "Edit" and then selecting the minus sign next to the song instead of selecting the song and selecting "Delete From Library"?

To re-download them, I had to search for the songs individually in the ITunes Store app on my phone. Once they showed up in search , I clicked the little price and authorized payment. Then I got a "you already bought this, click here to download again" message and downloaded from there!

I have the same understanding. Apple removed functionality on mobile to remove specific songs from playlists without removing them from the library. This was previously possible mobile. Now it's not and what looks like the same feature achieves what it is I'm trying to avoid: remove song from library.

She was do frustrated she showed me on my phone. One of my playlist had the same song seven times. Deleted one instance of the seven in play list, all seven instances disappeared as well as from my library.

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities. If I understand correctly, you'd like to download songs from Apple Music so you can listen to them while you're without internet service for a few days. Once you return, you'd like to remove the songs from your iPhone and the Apple Music library.

If this is correct, you can download the songs you want to listen to, and remove them from the Library when you return. Since I have an Apple Music subscription also, I tested this out on my iPhone XS Max which is running iOS 13.4.1. When I removed the test song from the library and remove the download from my iPhone, the song remained in the playlist.

4 - If the issue persists, go to Settings > General > Software Update and see if there are any available. As of today the latest iOS version is iOS 13.4.1. If you find you need to install the update, first backup your iPhone with these steps: How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

I followed all the steps you mentioned but nothing happened different. The songs just disappear after remove it from the library, no matter if I restart the device or first remove the download an then remove from the library

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.

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