dotted circle next to song won't go away

Question

dotted circle next to song won't go away

I have a song on my phone that shows up with a dotted circle next to it in iTunes and it's greyed out no matter if I have iTunes set to sync songs or if I have iTunes in Manually Manage Music. If I delete it while in Manually Manage music I get a warning (are you sure you want to delete a song that you downloaded from the iTunes store to this iPhone) or something like that. It comes back anyway.

This song was in a Playlist at one point that I synced to my iPhone.

When I delete this song in Music on the iPhone it comes right back and then reappears in iTunes after a sync just as it shows in the screenshot (above the same song with the dotted circle next to it),

This all happened after a restore of my iPhone.

Thanks for any help.

iPhone 6s, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4), null

Posted on Jun 19, 2018 6:28 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

johnnyjackhammer Author

Level 1

56 points

Jun 19, 2018 8:39 PM in response to turingtest2

UPDATE

Looking at the iPhone using iFunBox I see the song that won't delete listed in the Purchases Folder:

1 plist for the song

1 jpeg of the album cover

In Media>iTunes_Control Music all folders are now empty.

In Media>iTunes_Control>iTunes there is lots of stuff remaining (scared to touch it)

UPDATE

Amazingly, the solution was to delete the plist for the song and it's jpeg album cover from the Media>Purchases folder. I did not need to delete StorePurchasesInfo.plist or com.apple.ToneLibrary.lock (although that last one looks like a fun one to play with - wonder if that's what's preventing tones from staying put in iTunes)

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Answer 2

Jun 19, 2018 7:48 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you.

I signed out of iTunes store on my device. I deleted everything in Music from my device including all playlists. In iTunes the song still shows as being on my iPhone with the dotted circle next to it. Is iTunes reading this from the local catalog on my Mac or is really reading it from the catalog of music on my iPhone?

Just to be sure I signed out of iTunes on my Mac as well and deleted the song. After syncing the iPhone again, it pops up again.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

Jun 20, 2018 3:56 AM in response to johnnyjackhammer

See the Remove hidden tones section of Create and manage ringtones in iTunes for tips on fixing that issue.

tt2

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

Jun 19, 2018 11:32 AM in response to johnnyjackhammer

Try signing out of the iTunes Store on your device. If you have a local copy of that track try syncing again to copy it to your device. Then sign back into the store on the device.

tt2

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dotted circle next to song won't go away

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