How to view, but not download, all music on iphone

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Level 1

28 points

How to view, but not download, all music on iphone

I have 116gb in my iTunes folder on a hard disk attached to my MacBook. Obviously I cannot sync my Library to my 64gb iPhone.

Until now I thought things were working OK: I could see all my music on the cloud and download selected items to my phone as required. But suddenly I realise I cannot see a whole host of items, and I cannot work out what they have in common.

One possible issue is their source. My collection is almost exclusively classical music, initially my CD collection, but increasingly pieces I purchase online (not from Apple Music as often as I would wish because it is totally inadequate for classical music). For example I have just purchased a CD of cello concertos online from a music publisher, downloading it to my Mac and adding it to the Music app there. I cannot see them on my iPhone although weirdly they appear on the Recently Added list.

Could some kind person explain how I should configure my Mac and iPhone in order that everything on my Mac is on the cloud and can be seen by the iPhone (and iPad) and downloaded if desired.

Posted on Dec 4, 2019 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,678 points

Dec 4, 2019 10:57 AM in response to FRA_ALLEN

You cannot see the music that you manually downloaded to your library from CD in iCloud, unless you were to use the old iTunes Match. You would need to see your Music Library on the Mac and sync that way. If you are using a newer Mac, with Catalina, you no longer have iTunes in the classic way, you use Finder to deal with your music library.

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Answer 2

FRA_ALLEN Author

Level 1

28 points

Dec 5, 2019 4:24 AM in response to ChrisJ4203

Thank you Chris. This has helped me begin to understand how music gets from my Mac to other devices. I see now that iTunes Match is crucial if you buy from non Apple sources.

You say "old", but as I understand it, iTunes Match still functions and is curiously under promoted by Apple. For the modest annual charge this is surely preferable to using Finder to sync to the iPhone?

At any rate it seems that suddenly iTunes Match is working again! I am seeing CDs I downloaded a week ago now visible in my iPhone library.

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How to view, but not download, all music on iphone

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