can i delete music from my computer once it's in itunes match cloud?

I thought I would update this for iTunes 12 since the thread is a bit old, but was one of the first when I googled this. In v12, you select the files in your library and go to "song" in the toolbar and click "remove download."

I wasn't able to find anything but "delete from library in the alt-click menu of the song.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for updating this. To confirm then, if I subscribe to iTunes Match and there is no cloud icon next to a song, this means I have a local copy and and iCloud Library copy. I should then be able to delete my local copy and only access the iCloud Library copy. To do this (in iTunes 12), I "remove download" and this should delete my local copy.

Is this correct?

(I have just uploaded all my old cd's but don't want to take up all this space on my hard drive!)

Thanks!

Hi fasking,

If you take a look at the following article, there should be an option when deleting the local file for whether or not you want to delete the copy on iCloud:

iTunes Store: How to delete songs from iCloud

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4915

To delete an item from iCloud in iTunes

1. From a computer with iTunes Match enabled, open iTunes 10.5.1 or later on your computer. You can download the latest version of iTunes here.
2. Click Music on the left side of iTunes.
3. Select the item you would like to delete. Right-click the item and then choose Delete.
4. You will be asked to confirm this action.
5. If the item you want to delete exists in iTunes on your computer as well as in iCloud, click the checkbox to also delete the item from iCloud.

It's also always a good idea to have a local backup of any files you are concerned about keeping:

Mac OS X v10.5, v10.6: How to back up and restore your files

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553

OS X Mountain Lion: Alternatives for backing up your Mac

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11467

Cheers,

- Brenden

This seems silly but I've been search and searching on this. I do NOT have a checkbox like you show in your screenshots. I am out of hard drive space and want to delete songs from my computer that are in icloud, but not delete them from iCloud. (I have them on another computer and in backups).

I don't want to manually delete music from the file structure as it's too confusing. I just want to delete everything that's in iTunes match. Yes, I am signed up for iTunes match. I don't seem to have any options except to delete from icloud or cancel.

I am using 10.6.8 and iTunes 11.0.3. I am desperately out of hard drive space and all the itunes match content can go!

Derek,

It's been a few weeks since your post, so you probably have figured this out. When you have iTunes Match turned on for your Mac, you have indicators of what's in the cloud and what's not. In iTunes:

1. Click on Music under the "Library" heading in the left navigation bar
2. Click on Songs in the window header to list your Library by songs.
3. In the View pane (where all of your songs are listed) header, you should see as one of the column headers, an icon of iCloud. That is the column indicating the status of your music.
   1. No icon in that column indicates you have a local copy of your music AND iCloud copy.
   2. a "Cloud" icon indicates you only have an iCloud copy.
   3. A "Cloud w/ slash" (think "no smoking" signs") icon indicates you have a local copy, and iTunes Match was NOT able to match that file, so you do NOT have a copy in iCloud.

iTunes Match is supposed to upload anything it doesn't match to iCloud from your library. So far, I don't understand why some of my music has not uploaded to iCloud. If anyone has insights on that, please enlighten.

Hello,

I've been doing this for ages on my MacBook air to save storage space, and sync music over to my desktop computer at home.

I'll add tracks to iTunes on my MBA, then sync them up to Match, then delete the local copy on the MBA, then when I get home dowload them to my desktop.

With the new iTunes upgrade this week, when I delete a track that has synced up to Match from my MBA, I get a prompt to "delete from library" but there's no checkbox to unselect to delete them from the cloud. If I delete the tracks from my library, they are gone - rather than keeping the iCloud version.

Is there something that I'm missing here, or did the feature to delete local copies but keep cloud copies get removed with this latest iTunes update?

Running iTunes 11.1 (126) on OSX 10.8.5 on a 2011 MacBook Air.

Hmm, they possibly removed it then. It was obviously giving us more convenience that they intended. I was exactly looking to confirm this before signing up for Match. I'd really like to get rid of all those music from my hard drive. But guess thats not going to happen. No Match for me.

It's back, they fixed it with the last iTunes update; works just like it used to.

If you were considering Match, I'd say go for it. I've been using it for a long time now and really dig it.

Oh thanks, good to know! Now the question is if they disable this again, will they delete iCloud songs that are not in my iTune library? I mean, the purpose of disabling this seems to be that they don't want us to access matched songs in iCloud if its deleted from local library. What did they do last time? Did people lose matched (not iTunes bought) songs when this checkbox was disabled? Anybody remember?

It looks like you have to hold down Option and then right click and the Delete command will appear in the menu. Continue to hold down Option as you left click Delete.