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Level 1

9 points

iTunes Match - download all songs?

This might be a stupid question - but I was hoping for some help. Yesterday, I enabled iTunes Match and it was able to match a large portion of my library. that worked well. However, I was on a train home from work last night and put my headphones on my iPhone so I could listen to some music. Uh oh! Somehow during the iTunes Match process, it physically removed all of my songs from my iPhone and replaced them with a reference to each song in iCloud (where I can conveniently tap the button to download should I want to listen). So now I have my entire library intact on my phone, but the songs aren't actually there. This is an issue because I am frequently on trains/subways with no connection.

Is this expected behavior (to remove the physical songs)? Is there a setting to tell it to leave the physical songs on certain devices? Is there an easy way to "download all" songs to get them back?

Thanks in advance...

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Nov 17, 2011 12:09 PM

Best reply

Joseph Delaney

Level 4

1,048 points

Posted on Nov 17, 2011 1:08 PM

Using a cloud-based service might not be the best situation for you, if you're frequently without a connection (and thus no access to the cloud). You may be happier sticking to the traditional music sync.

But that aside, iTunes Match will download automatically as you play music (when you do have a connection) so those songs will then be available when you don't have a connection. You can also tap the cloud icons (the ones with download arrows) to get specific songs, and if you go into the album listing and view the album tracks, you'll find a button to download the entire album (after the last track).

But no, you can't download everything at once - or more precisely, the way to do that is by turning iTunes Match off and using the traditional sync - that's always been the "download all" method, and nothing about that has changed.

View in context

110 replies

Jun 12, 2016 7:59 PM in response to cjm56

Here is the more intuitive way:

Select iTunes > Preferences, and go to the "Stores" tab.
Be sure the following are checked: "Music", and "Always check for available downloads"

mdejojo

Level 1

4 points

Aug 11, 2016 9:45 PM in response to pperret

Just wanted to tell you that you are a genius. That was the simplest fix ever to a problem that's been annoying me for like 2 years! Thank youuuu!

Oct 31, 2016 9:21 AM in response to cjm56

I agree. I find this very annoying. I have multiple devices so if I add my library to another device, I need to go through this download one at a time process. I also think I should be able to have different settings on each device since like you mentioned, each device is used for different purposes.

Nov 21, 2016 10:43 PM in response to cjm56

Go into Apple Music then into your library, then into playlists then to purchased and download.

Dec 10, 2016 5:58 AM in response to cjm56

So I am using the latest version of iTunes think it is like 12.5.3.17 and what I did to download all my music at once was go to the songs list clicked on one song than hit Command key plus A to select all the songs, than I used control key while clicking the cloud icon which pops up the menu and clicked download. All songs downloaded at once. Hope this works for others.

iTunes Match - download all songs?