How do I get MY iTunes back from the cloud

I have had this same problem. iTunes without my permission has deleted some of my music, has moved a good deal of it to the cloud and generally screwed up my Library. Music CD's that I pieced together from a number of other CD's that I purchased from local music stores and then burned this assortment of selections to a homemade CD of my music have all been deleted from my Playlist. And CD's that I didn't purchase from iTunes but purchased locally and then downloaded to my iTunes library on my hard drive have all been moved to the Cloud. I HATE the cloud since it takes my music out of my control and puts it into Apple's control.

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I have also experienced troubling performance from upgrading to iTunes 12. I do not have an iTunes Match subscription but I do have some iCloud storage. I am not sure if the issues started when upgrading to 12 or the 12.0.1 update. However, at some point after switching to 12 several of my albums that were downloaded for free or purchased and downloaded outside of iTunes cannot be found on my iPhone or HD. My theory is that apple took our free/non-iTunes purchased content and replaced it with the forced U2 album.

In all seriousness, I believe that the update has limited iTunes ability to play particular formatted files that were already in existence and usable in users iTunes Music file prior to the update. Even worse, it is my belief that in many cases iTunes actually deletes the files. I would like to think that this is a software bug that will get fleshed out with time but it is hard not to suspect that it is intentional. Many of the albums that have been lost were not available on iTunes at the time I downloaded them for free or purchased them. Coincidentally, many of them are now available for purchase on iTunes...

I would like to maintain faith in Apple products (going on 12 yrs) but this issue, according to this thread has, continued since the release of iTunes 12 and is very pervasive. Additionally, the Apple support team members seem to be dodging this issue on the feed and have even stopped trouble shooting and communicating with the feed. FISHY... I can speak for my self and I would assume many other's that if by accepting the new terms of iTunes users released their rights to private property I will no longer use the media player or purchase content thereof.

FIXED.

Ok so I reset my phone and wiped it clean. The reinstalled via Itunes backup everything. Set every cloud setting to off except find my phone (these are the settings in which during last updates were turned on). Answered "this time only replace everything on my iPhone". And wallah....no more clouds over the music I own.

It still erodes my trust in Apple as I see them doing things that are not straight forward with their customers.

Time will tell, I just hope there is not more of this new type of behavior from Apple. Would be sad to see something built so different and so well become so "the same". Imagine those ad's ...; "Think The Same".

I had a similar problem when I purchased an iPhone 6 this year. If anyone is trying to download all their music to a new iPhone / iPad in one shot (it is absolutely ridiculous that you cannot do this in a straightforward way, at least none that I can find), I found a solution that works for now.

You cannot "download all" from your "songs" list, but you can from a playlist. I created a temporary new playlist on my device, tapped "add all songs" from my full library, then went to the new playlist - it included all of my 3,000 songs and I was able to download them without going through one-by-one.

Hope this helps someone. Apple, please give us the option (which I believe once existed in iOS 7) to download our full library from iTunes Match. It's crazy to expect us to download them one at a time. Extremely poor and frustrating customer experience.

I have 7,993 songs and about 100 playlists so that is no good for me.

Apple needs to fix it.

Not sure why it wouldn't work with 8,000 if it works with 3,000 - still the same steps and number of taps, and I just deleted the "full list" playlist when it was done downloading all the songs - but I couldn't agree more that we shouldn't need a workaround for this.

For those looking to do this on a Mac, I believe you can just go to your music library in iTunes, "select all" using Command+A, right click, and select download to get them all on your local machine.

Exactly my experience. "Hijacked" is the write word. I have over 7,000 songs in the Cloud. One-by one?

I'm stuck in the same position with over 7,000 songs stolen by the Cloud. I have figured out how to download one-by-one by clicking on the cloud with the down arrow. I need to do a batch download just like Apple did a batch upload when I was suckered into trying out the Match product. Help!

My iphone is now useless to me. When i am out I cant listen to my music or podcasts. Its greyed out. How do I get it back on my phone?

I am lucky that I am early enough in my switch to Apple that I am alarmed and seriously considering another, less invasive brand. It is creepy behavior at best, and definitely unethical...if I buy something and put it somewhere on something I own, they have no right to then take that and move it without my explicit consent, that is unethical. I can only guess how they are using my contacts and pictures that surely they have helped themselves to.

Just in the last week with Apple's "products":

1). Music library totally screwed up. Everything in this post has happened on my iPhone. Music I purchased and was on my iphone, moved to cloud. Music I had on original CD and had downloaded onto iTunes, is now completely removed or the "Artist" designation has been manipulated so you can't easily find the content when previously there were no issues. Audiobooks bought externally that I was literally in the middle of, have been removed and can't be put back on the iphone at all.

2). I woke up to my Macbook's Safari wiping out all of my favorites and having them replaced with Apple content. Also, all of my settings in System Preferences had been manipulated.

I switched to Apple because of everyone telling me how "easy" the experience is. So far, I have been cleaning up messes, spending valuable time on forums like this. Yes, my PC experience was bad enough to move me to Apple, but now trying to figure which the "least worst" option is vs "the best."

Here's how I solved it.

I was missing about 6000 of 28000 songs that were in the cloud but not on the computer that uploaded them. How this ended up like this is a mystery. I went to ITunes, make sure I had "show music on ICloud" checked under View then sorted my music by song. Then clicked the column to sort by "ICloud download" (displays the little cloud and arrow - an option under view options). I could then see everything I have grouped by what is on my hard drive and what is only in the cloud. I highlighted all songs missing from hard drive, control clicked and hit download. Several hours later everything is fine and back to where it started.

rsb7 - I used your fix and it worked perfectly. Really disappointed in the support techs"skating" around the issue and trying to put the fault back on the user. Great to be able to listen to my music anytime I want (like when traveling in airplane mode) again.

Thanks for sharing!

I'm following this all the way up to "hit download"...I can't find a download button...!

I'm on a MacBook Pro (new) and had all of the above problems. I was able to "hit download" individually song-by-son by clicking on the little cloud icon and the songs do download to a local file.

As I was buying this top-of-the-line $3,500 Mac I asked about synching my iTunes library knowing it was going to be a mess. I got a lot of evasive shuck and jive about the cloud and sharing and what not, (YOU can do this and YOU can do that) but in the store they refused to bring over my iTunes library from my iPad (I would have gladly paid them). They said they will only migrate songs purchase from Apple. I was left on my own.

Worse, they told me the only way I can change the synch of my iPad iTunes library to the new MacBook was to WIPE IT COMPLETELY CLEAN and start over. I have done this several times already through two iPads. No thanks.

Is anyone at Apple reading this stuff? Love to hear an employee give some clear direction.

Well... I am glad at least that other people are as clueless, mystified, and frustrated as I am. This all started when I "upgraded" my iPhone. Before that everything was fine, and then, suddenly all my music was on the cloud... so then i could only play things as they were streaming and had to pay for "Match" just to get access to music that was already mine, and then nothing was compatible with Sonos anymore ... and why isn't any of my music stored on my computer anymore???? so if i was someplace without internet access, I could not access music... maybe somehow I agreed to something without my knowledge (i.e., was tricked by apple to "agree" to having my music put on the cloud) but to me it's just stealing.

I returned my phone and took back my old one, but by then it was too late. I managed to get music back onto my phone by using an old back-up, but now I'm afraid to sync it in case the music gets taken off again so I've gone un-synced for over a year and so can no longer update my photo albums and do all the great things that made me buy all these Apple products in the first place. I still can't figure out how to play music on my computer unless it is connected to the internet. I get this picture of a could next to each song and have to stream just to list to music that used to all be on my Mac book Pro. And worse to all, A LOT of music will not play at all because I either bought it from someone other than Apple or because I LEGALLY downloaded it for free. My favorite DJ posts long mixes online for free, and between Match, iCloud, etc, I just can't play any of it any more no matter what I do.

I was always happy to pay up for Apple products because I thought they were so great. Apple used to be where people went to escape the "evil empire" (Microsoft, etc) but now Apple has become the evil empire. It is pretty clear Apple wants to separate me from my music, force me to buy music only from them, and control my ability to access what is legally mine. I will try a bit longer to get my music back under my own control but in the end I think I will just ditch all my Apple products and move back to PCs, get an Android, etc, and start my music collection over again rather than be held hostage to them.

The stupid petty stuff, like changing the iPhone chargers, making cheap headsets and chargers that break so that we have to buy new ones, and all that other nonsense Apple does to make a few extra dollars at their customers' expense is tedious and annoying but something I can live with. Messing with my music is not. I will gladly pay 5 times as much for inferior products elsewhere just to once again have possession of my own music.