WoahXohno

Q: iPhone is showing songs not in my iPhone.

Okay Apple guys,

 

So, I consider myself to be a pretty dang savvy person, especially since I work in tech support for a pretty large wireless company, however one thing that I've noticed on my iPhone lately has stumped me quite a bit.

 

I am an Apple Music subscriber (love the service, if you don't have it, get it!) and ever since I've started using it I've noticed that my iPhone is starting to house "ghost" songs if you will, on my device. However, they aren't in the Music app, at all.

 

If I go into Music and tap on "My Music" and change the category to "Only Downloaded Music" I get the "Going off the grid?" display page, that indicates that I have no music downloaded on my device, and that if I want to listen to music offline, I should download songs from Apple Music to my device for offline play (see below)

 

IMG_0229.PNG

 

But when I go to Settings > General > About and look under "Songs" it indicates that I have 435 songs on my device. (see below)

 

IMG_0230.PNG

I assumed this was like an indication of "cached" songs for quicker playback on the device when the connection is slow, or to prevent higher data usage when streaming, however when I went into Settings > Music to see if there is a way to disable cached playback, there is no option to disable or clear the cache. I also checked in Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Music and there, it did show 2 songs that I guess were cached or stored on my phone, but they were songs that I've actually never listened to on my phone, and one of them was a song that I had never heard of. So I tapped on "Edit" and "Delete All Songs" and they went away. Went back and checked my "About" section to see if the song amount cleared, and it was completely unchanged.

 

When I connect my iPhone to iTunes, in the section that shows what is synced with the device, it doesn't so any audio files at all. I have never synced any music to my phone via iTunes. I'm unclear as to whether or not these 435 songs that my phone shows I have is taking up any of my storage on my device. I'm honestly not sure what else to try or do.

 

I also did a DFU via iTunes and set up as a new iPhone without signing into Apple Music, and went in and checked my "About" section after that, and it didn't so any songs at all, as soon as I signed back into Apple Music, the song count returned.

 

This issue occurred not only with my current phone, iPhone 6s Plus but it also happened on my iPhone 6 Plus and my first iPhone 6 when Apple Music got released. (yes, I know I go through phones pretty quickly.) So it seems the issue isn't related to the phone itself, but more so related to Apple Music.

 

I'm at a complete loss at this point.

 

Honestly, the song cont doesn't bother me at all, I don't care if it said I had 10 million songs on my phone, as long as this invalid indication of a song count isn't taking up any of my device storage space.

 

If any one could shed some light on the subject, it would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 9.2, 64GB

Posted on Feb 15, 2016 9:46 PM

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Q: iPhone is showing songs not in my iPhone.

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  • Helpful answers

  • by marcos8,

    marcos8 marcos8 May 6, 2016 3:55 PM in response to WoahXohno
    Level 1 (12 points)
    iPad
    May 6, 2016 3:55 PM in response to WoahXohno

    Were you ever able to get this figured out? On my new 9.7 iPad Pro it is showing 29 songs on the device if I go to General>About  but I only have 2 songs that I have actually downloaded to the device. Not sure where the 29 songs are coming from and if they are taking up space on my iPad.

  • by michaelc,

    michaelc michaelc Sep 13, 2016 9:26 AM in response to WoahXohno
    Level 2 (159 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 13, 2016 9:26 AM in response to WoahXohno

    (Pasting the same response I typed up in a different thread)

     

    I've had the same problem for over a year. Even if I turn off Apple Music on my iPhone 6, there are still ## songs listed in General/About/Songs.

     

    I've used this procedure many times (I don't remember the source) to delete them, but they show back up after awhile — and build over time. I just followed these steps again and 1GB of space freed up. I wish there was a permanent fix.

     

    ===

     

    Delete Ghost Songs

     

    Connect your iPhone to mac, open PhoneView (http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/), go to Settings>Show entire disk. Here I would recommend you back up all the contents of your phone.

     

    I deleted the contents of the following folders:

    Purchases,

    Downloads,

    iTunes Control>Sync>Media,

    iTunes Control>Music

     

    Then I deleted the following files from iTunes Control>iTunes:

    MediaLibrary.sqlitedb

    MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm

    MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal

    (and maybe a couple of others but these are the ones I remember).

     

    I then reset the iPhone (Hold the Home and Power buttons for 5 secs), synced with iTunes and they are gone.