I can’t delete apple music documents and data?

This has been bothering me for a long time; even with no music on my iPad and the app itself offloaded, there was 2.75 GB of storage being used up by the Music app (per Settings > General > iPad Storage). I found a solution, using iMazing as suggested above. Here's what I did:

-- Remove all music from iPad

-- Offload the Music app itself (you cannot delete it)

-- Plug in iPad, let it backup and sync

-- Run iMazing

-- in iMazing, go to iPad > File System

-- Go to Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/Artwork/

-- In there are two folders, Caches/ and Originals/.

   Both of therm have hundreds/thousands of files.

-- Delete contents of both Caches/ and Originals/

(Select all the folders in them, right-click, delete)

Voila. I got my 2.75 GB back. And when I re-loaded the Music app it a) worked correctly, and b) did not use of 2.75 GB of artwork cache. I did this with the free version of iMazing, which is pretty...amazing. Kudos to the developers.

I reported this bug to Apple through official channels in fall 2021 and never heard of a fix or resolution. This is my fix. YMMV of course.

What apple did to apple music in ipados 15 is unacceptable. No music downloaded and 2GB of data. What is apple secretly downloading? I installed imazing to find out. Apple is downloading a whole lot of crap without my consent. I have purchased music from itunes and download it to my computer but not on my ipad. Used imazing to delete data in three folders on the ipad. I open imazing, click on ipad, file system, media, itunes control, itunes, artwork. Delete the data in cache and orginals. Then back up to itunes control folder and click on music folder. Delete everthing in that folder. Then disconnect ipad. Apple music app is now showing data in KB and app is about 30MB. This is fine until wifi is turned back on. Then apple music starts downloading data again and is now about 500MB. Not as bad as before but still annoying as I have not downloaded any music. I turn off wifi and connect ipad to computer and open imazing to delete this data again. Disconnect ipad and leave wifi off. Open itunes on computer and go to store purchased section. I hide all purchased music. Yes, I downloaded all music and copy to a NAS. I don't need to listen to the music from Apple music. I go back to the ipad and delete the apple music application. This should stop apple download crap to my ipad. So far it has, it is not using any space on ipad.

SOLUTION that worked for me…

1. Open the Apple Music app
2. Click on the Listen Now tab
3. Tap on your profile picture to open Account Settings
4. Scroll to Apps With Access, make a note of these and delete all associated entries (they can be reconfigured later)
5. Delete the actual apps that had access to Apple Music (such as Shazam, SongShift, etc)
6. With Apple Music > Account Settings, find and turn off Home Sharing
7. Delete the Apple Music app (subscription can be left on, especially if used on other devices)

This removed over 13 GB of Documents & Data for me. Apple Music can then be reinstalled making sure downloads are managed via Settings > Music

I found a solution which works on my IPad.

I clicked onto the Apple music App in storage, to get to the page photographed in the screenshot, in the original post to this conversation. I waited 2 minutes for the specific data and documents within Apple Music to appear. You are then given the option underneath the 2 options already given, (Offload App or Delete App), to delete the actual data and documents themselves. Once you click this. It gets rid of the data and frees up your storage, for myself this was an extra 3GB. Then you can delete the App.

hope this helps.

I redid the step with imazing and it didn't completely work. It did delete the phantom data and it was reflected in the usage of total storage. But individually it did not update the actual app reporting the data usage. I tried it twice and though the directories were empty the music app info was still reporting it was using approx 445 mb of space. I rebooted the phone, no change. Complete shut down and start up,still nothing. Only after synching and backing up to itunes did it finally report the proper size in the individual listing from 445mb to 1.5 mb. So I guess with the new iOS will have to sync and backup to itunes to fix all reporting numbers. What a pain.

The 2GB data in your Music app could be the cache, old files or yet-to-be deleted files. There is no direct way to clear cache unless your system is completely full in storage.

If you are short in storage and these cached files are causing storage issues, the best way is to run a backup and restore.

Try the method explained earlier in this thread. Using a 3rd party utility. imazing being one navigate to the folder on your iPhone and delete the folders. You might need to reboot the phone. But back up your phone before you do this.

Soooo…

I hade some success deleting this :)

Realized just now that I have this problem too, because i moved down to 128GB .

I remembered some app I used way back to manage some things off the iOS device.

iMazing is the tool I used to bascially browse the "file system" and delete some iTunes related directories.

You may want to check the actual contents first, just to be safe ;)

Did this and also restartet the device (because things froze up when checking the storage in the settings).

Et voila 30GB of non-accessible music gone.

Hiya folks,

Deleting and then reinstalling and again deleting did the trick for me, worth a try maybe. Freed up 40 gigs for me as I had downloaded Lossless.

Happy New Year in advance!

iOS 16.2 iPhone 12 mini 64GB

You need to turn off Apple Music iCloud syncing in the AM settings. This will free some space already and then if you delete the app - it goes almost to zero.

I had the same issue - after “deleting” my downloaded music, I still had nearly 20GB of “documents and data” that I couldn’t removed.

I signed out of iCloud then signed back in… now my music “documents and data” is down to a more manageable 1.16GB. Wish I’d taken a before pic!

I think it has something to do with the cached files. What I did was...

1. Download iMazing
2. Connect my iPhone to my Mac
3. On the iMazing app, go to File System, select the iTunes_Control folder, then iTunes > Artwork
4. Delete everything inside the Caches and Originals folders

Yeet! Good luck. c:

B&A SS:

I found a way to reinstall Apple Music with the app taking up so much space.

I deleted all the playlists, songs, and albums from the Music app on my laptop, then synced the Ipad.

Unless Apple returns the switch to turn off/on iCloud music library like in previous iOS releases, you can only delete this and all that system Other data by doing an erase and restore.

hi, try signing into your account with your apple id. i've had the issue and that's how i solved it. simply signing back into my account and waiting a few minutes for it to update.