iTunes match is automatically downloading songs to phone

ITunes match never really worked very well, it filled up the storage off my phone since the beginning,even though it did not show all the songs stored on the phone I had to deactivate iTunes Match once a while to free up storage. I think they tried to eliminate this issue with the recent updates, unfortunately they made it worse. Apple music does not work for me at all, more than half of my music stored in iTunes match is not even available on iTunes I think, I digitalized and edited more than a thousand of my old vinyl records. I hope they will fix all the issues, and make us all happy campers again.

I too don't see how Apple Music could work for those of us with less than mainstream music collections. Also, there are no alternative services that I know of for use on Apple devices and even if we did move to another service like Google Music, you have to use mp3 only. I've looked into using Plex at times, but only find the movie streaming service to be of much use. Although, if Apple continues to neglect iMatch the way they have, I may have to start tagging my collection in iTunes and then make a copy of that for Plex to stream. I've wanted to use iMatch though since it is claimed that artists get some royalties paid to them when we use this service, although I'm sure it's not much. Someone could start a genuinely good cloud music management and streaming service and take away half of Apple's and Spotify's business.

Same problem here. in the last 48 hours I've noticed that new songs i added to iTunes Match in the last week are automatically downloading to my iPhone 5S and IPad 3. Both are running the latest version iOS. I've tried disabling iCloud library on both devices and wiping the music app data from Storage. I also tried killing all the downloads and removing the files from the music app. No luck.

I've been using iTunes Match for several years and this definitely looks to be a new issue. I agree with others that it seems to coincide with the latest iOS updates or a recent update server side.

Is there an official bug on this issue?

I'm having the same problem. I just purchased itunes match yesterday, woke up with my phone super hot and trying to download my entire music library (30,000 tracks)! Turned off wifi to stop download, but could not remove all 15,000 something tracks from download queue, the phone kept locking up. Also, would try going to settings, manage storage, music to delete all the tracks, but would also lock up the phone. The only way to fix this was to restore my iphone from a backup and NOT enable icloud music library.

This service would be amazing if it just worked...

I'm having the exact same problem. Made Apple Support aware of this and hopefully I will get a reply with a fix. Will post here ofc

Same thing here. Tried to ( in order) cancel downloads, terminate the Music app, turn off iTunes Match, log out of my apple ID on my iPhone, Remove the device from known devices in my account settings and then do a hard reset. ... Still trying to download my entire library of 10,000+. I'm about to throw my phone through the window ;-).

I did actually add an album which was not added to download queue on my devices. In iTunes i used only "Add to iCloud library" on the album and did not use "Update iCloud library" from menu. Have not yet been able to test it more thou.

temp fix to keep from downloading settings/music/i cloud music toggle to off seems to kill downloads till the bugs fixed

i also have genius off under this tab along with use cellar data

hope this helps some folks not burn there data

Same is happening with my iPhone 6, iOS 9.2.

I don't know if this will just create more confusion, but I had started experiencing this problem over the last couple of days after uploading a lot of songs to my shared Apple Music account (not iTunes Match, but similar). A random selection of those uploaded songs filled up my iPhone and drained my battery overnight. They were immediately re-downloaded after I deleted them as others have reported, even when I had turned off iCloud Music Library. I called Apple Support, who talked me through a number of things. By the end of the call, my downloads had stopped but we don't know why. The two things that I did during the call that might have made a difference were:

1) In the Store tab of my iTunes preferences on my laptop, which was signed into my Apple Music account, I unchecked "Always check for available downloads". The Apple support thought that should only be relevant for my Mac, not my iPhone, but I thought I would mention it.

2) In the Music app on my iPhone, a bar at the top said "Downloading a song" - it had previously said "Downloading 33 songs" or some other number. I hadn't realized that pressing that bar opens a dialog where you can cancel a download - someone earlier in the thread mentioned this, but I had missed it.. When I cancelled one song, another immediately replaced it. However, after clicking the "cancel" button a few times, the downloads seemed to stop. I suppose that it's possible that the iPhone had a cached list of songs it wanted to download, whatever the other settings, and clicking "cancel" multiple times cleared the cache.

I had done so many other things during the call, that I can't guarantee either of these were what fixed my problem, but they could be worth trying.

I've written this problem up on my website, hoping to get more information from others seeing the same issue. I have to say, though, I don't think there's any way to fix it. It does seem like a bug, and I'll be reporting it to Apple.

iCloud Music Library Automatically Downloading New Music to iOS Devices

As an update to yesterday's post, the problem recurred overnight because I had uploaded more songs using my laptop's iTunes. It looks as my iPhone tried to download all those extra songs, i.e., those that were not matched as Apple Music, draining my battery and storage overnight. However, the "cancel downloads" trick seems to have worked again once I was recharged. I deleted the songs on my iPhone in the Manage Storage section of my iPhone settings, went back to the Music app and clicked on the "Downloading ... songs" bar and clicked "Cancel Downloads". The first couple of times, the download list was replenished as soon as I cancelled them but after a few cancels, they stopped reappearing, and, at least after a half hour, no more songs have been downloaded.

It would be good to get confirmation from others, but my experience suggests that, until Apple have fixed the bug that adds newly uploaded songs to the iPhone's download list, a temporary fix is to monitor the Music app as soon as you upload new songs in iTunes and click "Cancel Downloads" a few times until the iPhone stops trying to download them. I'll post an update if any previously uploaded songs reappear on the download list.

Major bug. Apple - you need to fix ASAP.

Happening for me on ALL devices using same purchase ID.

All devices have Auto Downloads turned OFF and Apple Music OFF (no one ever used Apple Music anyway).

Rebooted all devices and the Music App many times.

I used Settings>General>Storage&iCloud Usage>Manage Storage>Music to delete the files that were already incorrectly downloaded.

Then I left Music app running and clicked on the "Downloading..." bar to Cancel all downloads whenever it popped up for about 20 minutes.

Seems that once it gets through the list of songs it is trying to download... it stops. At least for now.

Ugh. Echoing the earlier comment - It would be a great service if it only worked...

I'm teed off right about now. I have the same exact issue happening. I added a ton of music over the weekend to iTunes on my imac. today i use my iPad lte which I never sync music too and it has every album on it that i just added to the library. it apparently was syncing over wifi. When i turned it on again at work it had already sapped about 1.5gb of data before I realized what was happening.

I canceled the downloads and went to airplane mode. went to Settings>Music> Use Cellular data turned off.

Never had to mess with this before because I never stored music on the tablet (just phone) and hadn't added any music to iTunes in months because I was using a streaming service.

My questions is why is it downloading music that I didn't ask for? I have zero playlists set for 'offline' use. Ironically, I went back to my iphone 6s+ and sure enough the music is there too. the cellular data was off so apparently that come over wifi. but that explains why my battery was draining so quickly yesterday evening. I've never had this happen ever until now. and I've become a master iTunes playlist syncing over the years.. I don't know what is going with Apple right now. I don't even want to get started on how they haven't fixed with complex playlists showing up empty on ios. That's one of the reasons i went away from iTunes to begin with. Whats happening with iTunes right now is just a travesty.

I have reported this glitch to Apple second level who have informed me that it has gone to their engineering department. Since then, I got a response that seems to indicate that either the second level person or engineering do not understand the problem as I was asked to resubmit the issue. It might help if you did the same by submitting a bug report or contacting Apple support to see what they can do for you. Right now I am unable to use iTunes Match for my 95,000+ library as either iTunes, iCloud or iMatch just totally renders my iPad and iPhone a brick by using up every single kilobyte of uncommanded downloaded music. Good luck to all of us in getting this bug resolved!