HT201323: iTunes Store: How to delete songs from iCloud

Learn about iTunes Store: How to delete songs from iCloud
mdny
Level 1 (9 points)
iTunes

Q: Can you delete your local iTunes music after you sync iTunes Match?

I have a NAS for storing my iTunes library and with my music collection hitting 160GB and growing I prefer not to keep my music on my NAS any longer.  I chose to go with iTunes Match and so far it only needed to copy about 5300 songs out of 17500.  So once that was done I deleted the local iTunes library after I made backups and archived it on BluRay discs for safe keeping.

 

I have no issue playing music from the cloud since that is why I chose Music Match, but all of my tracks have the exclamation mark ! with a circle indicating the file is missing.  Shouldn't these just reflect the files being only available from the cloud instead?  The last decent article I could find http://www.imore.com/how-i-saved-140-gb-hard-disk-space-using-itunes-match is a bit outdated on the iTunes version and the dialogue box they show no longer appears that way.

 

So any thoughts on this?

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Jul 4, 2016 11:05 AM

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mdny

Q: Can you delete your local iTunes music after you sync iTunes Match?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Esquared,

    Esquared Esquared Jul 4, 2016 11:17 AM in response to mdny
    Level 6 (8,410 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 4, 2016 11:17 AM in response to mdny

    It would have been better if you hadn't deleted the local iTunes library, but deleted the 'downloaded' tracks from within iTunes itself. I'm not sure if there's an easy solution after the fact.

  • by mdny,

    mdny mdny Jul 4, 2016 11:20 AM in response to Esquared
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iTunes
    Jul 4, 2016 11:20 AM in response to Esquared

    Thanks.  At the moment I am restoring my iTunes Music back onto my NAS to fix the missing file issue.  So if I then delete the files and chose to delete the downloaded copies that will remove them from my NAS?  I thought the whole point of match was so I didn't have to waste space on storage of music.

  • by Esquared,

    Esquared Esquared Jul 4, 2016 11:22 AM in response to mdny
    Level 6 (8,410 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 4, 2016 11:22 AM in response to mdny

    Yes, that way the downloaded copies should be removed, while leaving the library data themselves intact: those will stay, but they don't take much room.

  • by mdny,

    mdny mdny Jul 4, 2016 11:25 AM in response to Esquared
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iTunes
    Jul 4, 2016 11:25 AM in response to Esquared

    Thank you, that is exactly the info I needed and the Apple information is lacking.  Its a matter of the metadata missing from iTunes so its looking for the downloaded copy instead of looking to the cloud as it normally does for movies and tv shows I have downloaded.  Once I get the 190GB of music back on my NAS I can sync it up and remove the downloaded copies.  Much better and helpful.  Too back it takes hours to move that much data around.  Perhaps when I add a second 16TB NAS for redundancy I can move the local files back.