Disabling iCloud Music Library on MacBook Pro with Sequoia 15.0.1 / iPhone 12 ProMax with iOS 17.6.1

Let’s start here.

podbay wrote:

Some months ago, I enabled the feature that lets one use the "Cloud Music Library" to sync music to all devices.

iCloud Music Library is only relevant if you subscribe to Apple Music and/or iTunes Match. You said you don’t subscribe to Apple Music. Perhaps you subscribe to iTunes Match.

You mentioned toward the beginning of your post you have a Mac, iPhone and iPad. Then you discussed the Mac and iPhone, but we never heard more about the iPad.

Anyway, this likely applies. For iPhone and iPad, where directed to open Settings then Music, iOS and iPadOS 18 changed this to Settings > Apps > Music. Turn “Sync Library” off there.

Use Sync Library with your Apple Music subscription - Apple Support

This explains iTunes Match.

Subscribe to iTunes Match - Apple Support

Personally, I have subscribed to iTunes Match since it was introduced in 2011.

This is from Wikipedia:

“iTunes Match debuted on November 14, 2011. It was initially available to US users only.For an annual fee, customers can scan and match tracks in their iTunes music library, including tracks copied from CDs or other sources, with tracks in the iTunes Store, so customers do not have to repurchase said tracks. Customers may download up to 100,000 tracks in 256 kbit/s DRM-free AAC file format that matches tracks in any supported audio file formats in customers' iTunes libraries, including ALAC and MP3. Customers also have the choice to keep their original copies stored on their computers or have them replaced by copies from the iTunes Store. Any music not available in the iTunes Store is uploaded for download onto customers' other supported devices and computers; doing this will not take storage from the customers' iCloud's storage allowance. Any such tracks stored in the higher quality lossless audio ALAC, or original uncompressed PCM formats, WAV and AIFF, are transcoded to 256 kbit/s DRM-free AAC format before uploading to the customers' iCloud storage account, leaving the original higher quality local files in their original format.”

For me, a great advantage of iTunes Match in the early days was the improvement in audio quality when transitioning from CD music to tracks offered in the iTunes Store. Today’s main benefit is the use of iCloud to house the music so it’s available on all Apple devices.

Enjoy your Apple gear.

Glad that helped. Thanks for your comments.