iTunes Cloud Storage Confusion - I HATE THIS!!

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Level 1

6 points

iTunes Cloud Storage Confusion - I HATE THIS!!

Excuse my frustration with the new cloud storage of songs from iTunes.

My wife and daughter share the same itunes ID/account as mine because I want to manage purchases. We each have an iphone and are all running iOS7.0.2 (which has it's own issues, such as the sudden lack of bluetooth support to control iTunes from the lock screen on the iPhone 5 only). anyway...

Here's what's going on - I noticed in the latest version of iTunes for the iPhone that I see all kinds of music on my phone that I never put there. Songs my daughter would have on hers. My wife has songs on her phone that I normally would have on mine. It's really confusing. It seems that these songs are not really on our phones, but in the cloud somehow. Some of these songs were purchases, but some were just in my iTunes library from my mac. How did those get in the cloud? I never put them there.

I also clicked on one of the songs on my phone that are one of my daughters songs, and now iCloud has donwloaded that song into my phone. I want to delete it, but can't. I connected the phone to iTunes on my mac, let it sync, and that song does not show up in my iphone music library(on the phone or the mac) - I was going to try to look for it here so I can delete it, but no luck.

I guess my question is, how does this iCloud storage service work as it pertains to storing music to and from the iPhone and syncing to the Mac? I logged into my iCloud account on a browser, but there's nothing there about music that I have stored. I didn't know I had any music stored - there really should be a way to manage this from the web interface.

I also looked in the phone preferences for iCloud, and there's no option to sync music from iTunes. The only option I could find was in the iTunes preferences where you could view either all your music, which includes music from the cloud AND music that's really on your phone, or just whats really on your phone.

I should be able to have multiple devices on one iTunes ID and not have this issue.

How did iTunes get so complicated? I just want to play music. I can't even do that in my car anymore.

iPhone 5, iOS 7.0.2

Posted on Sep 29, 2013 8:06 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 29, 2013 8:22 PM in response to BrianMBM

Music and video purchased from iTunes is not stored in iCloud.

Documents, data are stored in iCloud.

All music and video is backed up in iTunes under your purchase history.

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Answer 2

markwmsn

Level 6

14,999 points

Sep 29, 2013 9:40 PM in response to BrianMBM

Do you have "Show All Music" active (green) on Settings > Music?

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Answer 3

BrianMBM Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 30, 2013 5:48 AM in response to markwmsn

This is what I mentioned in my post. I turned off 'Show All Music' and just have what's in the phone, but before I did that I clicked on one of the tracks that was in the cloud and it got downloaded to my phone. I can't get rid of it.

I tried to sync the phone to iTunes so maybe it would show up on the laptop so I could delete it there, but it doesn't.

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Answer 4

BrianMBM Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 30, 2013 5:50 AM in response to Johnathan Burger

I don't think this is true. From what everything I'm seeing, this has changed.

There are songs in the cloud in my iTunes ID that I didn't purchase, that I copied to my laptop's iTunes from CDs. Somehow, some of those songs got put into the cloud. I didn't put them there, but there they are.

There should be a way to log into your iCloud account and see what you have in your backup so it can be managed.

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Answer 5

markwmsn

Level 6

14,999 points

Sep 30, 2013 6:25 AM in response to BrianMBM

Is it possible that either your wife or your daughter turned on iTunes Match?

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Answer 6

BrianMBM Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 30, 2013 4:51 PM in response to markwmsn

I checked and all none of the phones have iTunes Match turned on.

It's just frustrating I can't delete these songs from phone.

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Answer 7

markwmsn

Level 6

14,999 points

Sep 30, 2013 4:57 PM in response to BrianMBM

Sorry, that was my only idea. You were describing the behavior I expect and desire on our iPhones and iPads, but we do have iTunes Match active.

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Answer 8

Dartiesdad

Level 4

1,112 points

Sep 30, 2013 5:04 PM in response to markwmsn

Agreed.. sounds like iTunes match to me also. If your song screen looks like this the iTunes match is on.

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Answer 9

Sep 30, 2013 5:14 PM in response to Dartiesdad

Dartiesdad wrote:

If your song screen looks like this the iTunes match is on.

Not necessarily. The new "Show All Music" setting in iOS 7 will give you the same view even if iTunes Match is off (and even if you don't have a Match account).

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Answer 10

BrianMBM Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 30, 2013 5:15 PM in response to Dartiesdad

The screen does look like that but iTunes Match is for sure off. I got rid of viewing all those songs by disabling Show All Songs preference but for some reason a few of the songs got copied to my phones library and now I can't delete them. Even if I sync my phone to my laptop, there's no way to delete these songs.

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Answer 11

Sep 30, 2013 5:21 PM in response to BrianMBM

BrianMBM wrote:

This is what I mentioned in my post. I turned off 'Show All Music' and just have what's in the phone, but before I did that I clicked on one of the tracks that was in the cloud and it got downloaded to my phone. I can't get rid of it.

I tried to sync the phone to iTunes so maybe it would show up on the laptop so I could delete it there, but it doesn't.

If you let one or more songs download from the cloud, they may have ended up in the "Manually added items" category. While connected to iTunes, look at the Music tab where you set your sync settings. Way at the bottom you may see a "Manually added items" category -- if you ever buy music directly to your device, this is where they go if you auto-sync your device. To get rid of these just select them within this window and click "Remove". Oh, and even if you auto-sync you can manually drag and drop music to your iPhone, and this category is where you'll find them.

Alternatively, you can try swiping (right to left now) across the song(s) to see if you can delete them that way.

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Answer 12

markwmsn

Level 6

14,999 points

Sep 30, 2013 8:04 PM in response to BrianMBM

BrianMBM wrote:

The screen does look like that but iTunes Match is for sure off. I got rid of viewing all those songs by disabling Show All Songs preference but for some reason a few of the songs got copied to my phones library and now I can't delete them. Even if I sync my phone to my laptop, there's no way to delete these songs.

If you drag one of the somgs to the left in the Music app, don't you get the red "Delete" tab?

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Answer 13

BrianMBM Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 1, 2013 5:46 AM in response to markwmsn

No. Ironically, the songs I want to delete will not let you drag them to the left.

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Answer 14

Renee6

Level 1

0 points

Oct 8, 2013 10:53 AM in response to BrianMBM

I am having the same problems, have songs on here that i did NOT download etc.. itunes match is off show all songs is off, can't swipe left all that does is play the darn song. not showing up in itunes. I am to the point of making playlists just so i don't have to hear the songs come thru

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Answer 15

didi116

Level 1

8 points

Dec 22, 2013 1:59 AM in response to BrianMBM

I have the same problem too. I have songs from icloud that I did not download to my phone. On the phone it's shown that I have 306 songs but when I looked on itunes, I only have 302. The 4 extra songs came from icloud. I tried to delete it but I can't seemed to find where the songs are on the phone.

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