Why can't I listen to purchased albums offline?

Hello SwedishFish11789,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

So, as I understand what you are saying, you can listen to music when you are connected to the internet, but must have saved them to the device, or make available offline, to listen when not connected? This is how Apple Music is designed to work, your purchased music is made available to all your devices when connected to the internet and an option is available to select what music you want available when not connected. See the following article for additional information:

Add music from the Apple Music catalog to your library - Apple Support

Regards

I get where you're coming from Swedishfish.....and this is really crapping me off. It means, I think that music I've transferred from my library to my iPhone I have to pay by way of data usage to listen to what I've already paid for! It's looking cheaper to go back to buying cd's and dumping iTunes ?

Sonny (not happy chappy)

ps Apple responded quickly didn't they

Yeah, I'm extremely annoyed by this. I teach group fitness and so I HAVE to turn my phone onto airplane mode when I teach. Imagine my shock and surprise when the songs that are typically on one of my class playlists disappeared. Songs that I BOUGHT. I shouldn't have to go in and manually make them all available offline. And it doesnt even work half the time either (marking them as available offline) b/c in a panic before class I was trying to figure it all out and THOUGHT I had it all set but NOPE when it came to a certain part in my class, the song was greyed out and skipped past. Talk about embarrassing and frustrating. Thanks Apple for nothing!

I realize that the business with "making available offline" is frustrating at times. But that is the way of Apple Music/iCloud Music Library. All you music "available" on all your devices - the issue is the "available" is meant to be via streaming. If you don't want to waste your data, then you have to "make available offline" to get the actual music on your device. The issues are that (1) the whole downloading for offline is quirky at best - sometimes the music will download and stay on your device properly and sometimes it won't and (2) a bigger issue is that you still need an internet connection, whether it is cellular or wifi for Apple Music to confirm that your subscription is still active. That is why in Airplane Mode, or even if you are in an area where there is no cellular service, eventually the Music app will stop playing even songs you have "downloaded".

The only other option is to turn OFF iCloud Music Library on all your computers and iOS devices. Then you can go back to the old way of just downloading your songs to your computer and/or your iOS devices or doing the manual USB syncing like we all did pre-Apple Music. (Obviously the downside is that you won't be able to access all your music on all your devices and also won't be able to add any music from Apple Music to your library - only what you had previously either burned from CD's or purchased through iTunes or other sources.

alanfromvic wrote:

ps Apple responded quickly didn't they

BTW - "Apple" did not respond rather quickly. No one that works for Apple is allowed to respond to posts in these forums. Everyone is just a user like you and me. Now I know that Apple has plenty of their support people READING these forums, but they are not allowed to "officially respond" here. (And yes, I was told this by a Senior advisor, not just guessing.)

Do you have the setting (Settings/iTunes & App Stores) to automatically download new music purchases turned ON? I have not tried it for a while - always left those settings (aside from updates) turned OFF.