How to Stop Purchased Music from Syncing to iPhone

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Level 1

33 points

How to Stop Purchased Music from Syncing to iPhone

I am not an Apple Music user, and do not sync via the cloud. I have a master library of music on my laptop, and I want to sync selected music that I choose to my iPhone. I want to be able to change that selection from time to time.

This all seems to work fairly well, except for purchased music. It appears that all purchased music (I assume via the iTunes store) *always* syncs to my iPhone now no matter what I've selected in iTunes under "manually manage music".

The main problem with this is that I have purchased several Christmas albums. So when I am about town or working and play my iPhone on shuffle... happy freaking holidays.

How do I stop the function of syncing all purchased music? Please make it stop.

iPhone 6s, iOS 11.4

Posted on Jun 17, 2018 4:10 PM

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Answer 1

sterling r

Community Specialist

Jun 19, 2018 2:15 PM in response to ThirdPyramid

Hello ThirdPyramid,

Thanks for that info and choosing the Apple Support Communities. If I understand correctly, you are sync music from iTunes on your computer to your iPhone, but some albums that you purchased from the iTunes Store show up in the Music app. To help with this issue, please go to Settings > Music and Settings > iTunes & App Stores and turn off Automatic Download, then go to the Music app and delete these albums from your library.

Turn on Automatic Downloads for iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store purchases

Cheers!

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Answer 2

ThirdPyramid Author

Level 1

33 points

Jul 6, 2018 4:46 PM in response to sterling r

Thank you for replying to this!

If I understand correctly, "automatic download" is not "automatic download once", but "automatic download and sync for perpetuity"? Unfortunately that was unclear.

Regardless, I turned off automatic download for music, synced, and then unchecked all of the albums that keep syncing under "manually manage my music" in iTunes.

I synced, and the albums re-checked themselves and synced anyway.

I then went into my phone, found one of the albums, went into each song (there appears to be one instance with a cloud and one without for each, which was weird), and pressed it. If it had "remove" as an option, I removed it from the phone, but not the library. Some had it, some didn't, and the pattern was unclear.

I then went back into iTunes, unchecked that one album, and synced. The box stayed unchecked when the sync complete, though the music still shows up on my phone with a little cloud next to it.

Two questions:

1) I assume the little cloud means if I want to I can download it, but if I don't and I "shuffle", that music won't play. Is that correct?

2) Before I go into each and every song on each and every album that is perma-checked in iTunes, look to see if it has a "remove" option, and then remove it, is that truly the only way? Surely Apple has a way to just sync unwanted music of my phone via iTunes...

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How to Stop Purchased Music from Syncing to iPhone

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