How do I get MY iTunes back from the cloud

Solution:

1. Select all the music

- click on first song

- scroll to bottom

- Hold <Shift> key down & click on last song

2. Right click

3. Select Download

Be prepared to wait several hours. I have about 50 gigs of songs and it has taken more than 12 hours.

HTH - Barry

I tried this and there is no "show music on iCloud" under View. I tried selecting all the music and downloading it but there is no "download" after I right click. I am using a iMac desktop and really want the music I paid for and put on my iPhone accessible. Is there anyone out there who can PLEASE help me?

Michael

This has now affected my iPhone. I like music, and like to listen. I go to "My Music" and all the songs are there, they are greyed out, won't play, and each has a little cloud with a red arrow coming out of it.

The "Cloud" is really a waste of time for me. I don't get on a treadmill or go for walks with my computer or my wife's phone.

To those who claim they don't understand the issue, you are right, you don't understand.

Totally helped!

http://www.wikihow.com/Download-Music-With-iCloud

Folks, the cloud is not "eating" or "deleting" your music from your local drive. It's simply just not referencing the music from the local drive. It's trying to pull the song from the cloud. This used to happen to me time to time, and iTunes would ask where the song was you were trying to play, and I could clarify the reference path with a few clicks to fix the problem. But Apple has made it difficult to do that now. When I select a grayed out song to play with the cloud beside it, it doesn't ask me where the song is anymore. It doesn't respond at all. Soooooo, here is the way I "fixed" it: Open the folder your music is in on your local drive, then drag the music over into iTunes as if you are putting it into iTunes for the first time. After the song is imported into iTunes, it will play from your local drive. Then for the song you imported, you now have to delete its clone that has the cloud beside it. This is annoying, but it works. It also take a little time, especially since I have 12,000 songs. Then, I deleted the cloud from my computer all together. It's not necessary to have it for the way I use iTunes. All the cloud has ever done for me is create problems. NOTE: there is a selection in your preferences that ask if you want to "copy" songs to your local drive as you drag them into iTunes. You may have to play with this selection in order to make sure you aren't saving duplicate song files on your local drive. You may want to try this with 1 song to be sure it works before dragging your entire library over. I'm just as frustrated with Apple as anyone. Seems like every update they release, I have to make changes to iTunes to get it back working correctly.

I'm not even going to get into how the songs I purchase on my phone, make it to iTunes on my computer after purchase, but when I create a playlist on iTunes with those same songs, then try to sync that playlist back over to my iphone, it won't sync back. The songs are grayed out in the playlist on my computer. SO FRUSTRATING. I have tried to figure this out forever.

No, Apple is not deleting the music from our local drives but they are: (1) getting in the way; (2) making it harder for customers; (3) ignoring continued requests to please stop acting like Microsoft, and (4) ******* off a huge number of long time Apple supporters who are now tired of the ********. Until someone at Apple with enough interest in the customer experience (that was, after all, what Apple used to be all about) starts really listening to us and making significant changes in they way they behave toward their customers, this crap will continue, and we will all keep longing for the days before Jobs died. Does anyone, anywhere know how to get the people at Apple to listen to us? If so, please let us know so we can do something.

All these companies that think the "cloud" they create for things is a good idea are going to be in a **** of a fix when someone hacks into their cloud system and makes it rain. Adobe, Apple, etc.: the "cloud" idea ***** and we hate it. You can't even buy Adobe products from Adobe anymore...it is now all in their "cloud" and they want you to pay a monthly fee for the rest of your natural life to access all their wonderful software way up there in their cloud. Apple has, sadly, gotten their heads in the "cloud" too much, too. This **** has to stop.

Dear Apple,

Please stop -- just stop! -- with the tweaking. I know you're a corporation like the big boys, but you're acting WAAYYYYY too much like big brother. Here's the low down of what all these people on this forum want: 1) to purchase or upload purchased music to their hard drive; 2) to access and play this music using iTunes; 3) to not have music seemingly disappear or be removed from playlists or their hard drive without their explicit approval ; 4) to not be afraid to update iTunes; 5) to not be afraid to sync their iPhone.

Is this so much to ask?

I recently got a used iphone to replace a broken windows phone. Upon syncing the iphone to my computer, I noticed in the days that followed that music from my playlists began not playing, but appearing with this little exclamation point next to it Some was music I purchased or uploaded years ago, some was music I'd just purchased on iTunes DAYS prior. Seemed to be totally random. I panicked, and spent HOURS trying to find the music in my - ahem -- very well organized iTunes music folder. Then I noticed I could download the songs I'd previously purchased by going on the iTunes site, under my username, under "purchased" and the songs were listed there. I'd have to download the music -- music I've already purchased and already downloaded -= BACK to my computer. ***? It is continuing to happen every single day... more songs, seemingly random in terms of artist, album, dates purchased, etc. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME??? HOW CAN I FORCE IT TO STOP???

This cloud thing is a nightmare. To be clear: I have NOT subscribed to the iTunes "Match" service...ever. So why does the "cloud" just snap music up off my computer and force me to download it? By the way, when I cannot locate it on my hard drive (prior to re-downloading it), the song is DELETED from the playlist!! Argh!! SOOOO much time spent creating awesome playlists, and poof! Messed up, just like that.

In sum: thousands of my dollars have been spent on iTunes since 2007. TONS of work has gone into creating playlists with songs that are now disappearing from those playilsts when I cannot locate the file on my hard drive. And because I cannot figure out why, how, nor can I make it stop, all I can do is re-download songs one-by-one from the "cloud" as it happens, then hope to remember which ones go into which playlists, I'm totally at the mercy of chance here. It has scared the bajesus out of me and frustrated me.

The frustration has been building for while with each new "update" from iTunes. But now I have totally lost trust in iTunes. My money and time are too valuable to be abused this way.

Same problem-- I bought iTunes Match because I thought it would give me better sound quality for the 15,000 songs I meticulously downloaded from CDs I BOUGHT, and created playlists for over a 6 month period. What it did, was hijack my tens of thousands of dollars worth of music, put them in the cloud and remove them from iTunes on ALL of my devices synched to my computer, so now I can only listen to music if I am connected to wifi (unlikely in many instances, such as hiking, at the beach, etc.). This is theft of private property!

I have not found a solution anywhere in the replies to this question. Has anyone cancelled iTunes Match and tried to replace the "greyed-out" music library with an original saved to a hard drive? Do the playlists stay in tact?

REALLY upset by this...

On mac, having done what rsb7 says, press Carl while cursor is on the blue highlighted stuff, then click on touch pad or left click, and a drop down box/list will appear with the download option. Worked for me.

This may be a police matter as Apple have converted your property into something else which is theft. Apple may argue it in their terms and conditions but I can't find it and there is an inequality about how they(Apple) have produced the ToC and imposed them on the users. Apple do not own the machines, software or data(music) after these have been sold to the user.

British user

first of all you dont really need i cloud and secondly log your self out of i cloud and log into your i tunes account and then go to each song you had indivisualy and download each one indivisually

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Once everyone is done complaining, just do this fix and enjoy your music.

Having just clicked the same box without reading it, I cancelled the upload after a few songs. Those that had the grey cloud symbol next to it would still play. To remove, hit 'cmd ,' to go to Preferences, General, and un-tick "iCloud Music Library". This leaves you with your library despite what might have been uploaded.

This may have already been addressed somewhere in the chain, but I just discovered what solved the problem for me:

1) Open iTunes on your computer

2) Go to iTunes Store

3) Go to Music

4) On the right hand side of the page, there is a list of items - Click on Purchased

5) At the top, click on "Not in My Library". This will bring up a list of all your music in the cloud.

6) In the lowermost right hand corner, click on Download All.

All of my music downloaded to my computer.

Well, I own just over 150,000 songs - yes 150,000. I have a good amount of money tied up in music. They are on my external hard drive and an external hard drive back up. I'm failing to understand why apple has setup iTunes to no longer access my external hard drive - where iTunes has indexed my music for years - and now points to the cloud. Absolutely the most frustrating move I could have imagined. You solution will work, but I don't see why I should have to re-download my music or reassociate the library to iTunes. For me, this is extremely time consuming. I guess I'll just have to take my future purchases to another source and use a program other than iTunes to manage my music.

any thoughts?