How do I delete music from my library without it deleting from my playlists?

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Level 1

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How do I delete music from my library without it deleting from my playlists?

Every year, I would backup my playlist just in case I wanted to listen to some throwbacks but recently, I noticed that a lot of songs were missing and most importantly, the add to library options wasn’t there anymore. Back then, when I deleted my music from my library, it would still stay in my playlist but not anymore. I tried to test out my theory by deleting a song I know was in one of my playlist from my library, and when I went to go check the playlist, it was gone! How do I go about stopping this or getting my old songs back?

Posted on Aug 21, 2020 12:21 AM

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Answer 1

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Siabh

Level 5

7,292 points

Aug 21, 2020 1:45 AM in response to richie_yin

Dear richie_yin,

I am assuming, that you are working in iTunes on a computer to manage your music playlists.

So the thing to understand is that your music Library is your personal database (personal source) of all the music you have, from which you can create playlists.

So, deleting a music file from your Library (database/source) will cause it to consequentially disappear from the playlist, that it belongs to, if any.

Conversely, removing a song from a playlist will not cause it to be deleted from the Library.

What is occurring now as per the test you carried out is what is supposed to be happening.

As to what happened previously, either there was an error or a misunderstanding involving perhaps multiple copies of music files in your Library.

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How do I delete music from my library without it deleting from my playlists?

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