Help with importing MP3's on a MacBook to iTunes

Oil I've worked out that they are now in my library, yay! But, some of them have a circle next to them and the first one I've come across and clicked on the little blue dots to add to a playlist, has now come up with a prompt saying 'adding iTunes purchases to playlists will download a copy to your computer' - what exactly does that mean please, and why have some of them got this circle and others haven't? I'm referring to all these songs which were not already in my library on the computer but which I have just downloaded?

Aah, I can see the arrow in the top right corner which is pointing downward and it looks like it's 'whirring' and the one song I just mentioned doesn't have that circle anymore so I guess as I've just clicked to download 160 songs, it needs a bit of time to do that so I'll wait until I start adding to the playlist. Thank you again, you're really helping me understand iTunes a bit more which is brilliant! 🙂 I really hope my next message to you will be just a quick thank you, but don't hold your breath in case I come across another gremlin I don't understand!! lol

Hi again, ok I thought I was making headway but I actually want to cry right now 😟 I've arranged my new playlists via iTunes on the computer ready to sync to my phone but when I try to sync it says there's not enough storage. I've checked that my photos have been uploaded to the iCloud which they have so I have now deleted my photos off my phone, I've deleted a couple of apps and now I don't know what to do 😟 what is the point of iTunes even existing for you to be able to download songs and yet you can't even put them on your phone?! I really don't get this and I'm on the verge of tears 😟 any additional advice, or am I stuck now? Sorry 😟

Morning! Just to say that after my tantrum yesterday and following your guidance, I did some 'app offloading' which seemed to help the storage issue I had and I have now sorted my playlists, all the songs I wanted are in both of them and I think this has helped me to understand iTunes a bit better so I will use it more often. Thank you very much for all of your help. Hopefully you won't hear from me again for a while at least! 😀

Ha ha!! Didn't think I'd harass you quite so soon, but now I've got the knack of creating/editing my playlists via iTunes own the computer and syncing my phone, I've now created a new playlist but I don't have enough storage for this on my phone so I now want to remove a playlist from my phone but still keep it as it is on iTunes. For example, I have spent the last few days trying to get a Christmas playlist and a general music playlist sorted, but now I have created a Halloween playlist (can't you tell I have children??!!) but as there's no space for a third playlist I'd rather that go on my phone for now and then I can remove it on 1st November to then re-add the Xmas one. I'm not sure how to do that and I'm scared of losing all the work I've done (with your help of course!), or if I do delete the Xmas playlist off my phone and add the Halloween one on, how will I be able to sync my phone to add the Halloween playlist without the Xmas one trying to be added too? Hope that makes sense?

In shorter terms, what I need to do is put the Xmas playlist somewhere on iTunes to hide it while I sync my phone to add the Halloween playlist and then I can add the Xmas playlist once I'm finished with Halloween.

Ok I think what I stupidly did was delete the Christmas playlist from my library on my actual phone (not via iTunes on the computer) and it gave me 2 options: 1 to delete fro library 2 to remove downloads from phone, I selected remove from library as I thought it would just take it off my phone, not from iTunes altogether, thinking it would still be on the computer but it's got rid of it completely so all my effort in creating it has gone to waste 😟 I selected the Halloween playlist and synced my phone so this is now on it but is there anywhere the Christmas playlist has gone or have I somehow deleted the whole thing out of iTunes altogether? I think this is what I'm struggling to grasp. I seem to have mastered creating/editing a playlist and getting it on my phone (although sometimes it appears there might be 87 songs but in actual fact only 83 end up on my phone which is odd). I also had to reselect my general music playlist as this somehow got deleted off my phone as well although I didn't do anything for this, or is this what you mean by if I don't select a particular playlist to sync, iTunes will automatically take it off my phone? I'm clearly not getting something as I'm finding that if I make a change, it makes loads of changes I didn't ask it to. Where might I be going wrong?

Hi again! Missed me? LOL!! How have you been? (May I ask your name by the way, is that allowed? I understand if not)

Sorry I've been busy so haven't been on here but now we've got Halloween out of the way, I can concentrate on getting this Xmas playlist back. So, I don't understand all your instructions from your last message so can you please break it down for me into non-tech language? I've logged onto iTunes and yep, I definitely managed to delete my Xmas playlist off completely which is utterly annoying as I now have to create the playlist all over again, that's not ideal but it's fine. So, as I established that I don't have enough space on my phone for my general 'October 18' playlist, the 'Halloween' playlist AND the 'Christmas' playlist, how exactly do I go about removing the Halloween one from my phone so I can make space to synch the newly created Christmas list onto my phone but without deleting the entire actual Halloween playlist from iTunes? I understand that there are tick boxes you can select in order to ADD a playlist/songs onto your phone, but it's almost as if iTunes could really do with another tick box which allows you to 'unsync' a playlist off the device but still keeping it in your iTunes library. Does that make sense? Is there such a thing and I just haven't seen it or is this the thing that's impossible to do and you have to end up deleting/removing a playlist from iTunes altogether anyway?

Many thanks as always, for all your help (and patience!) with this, I'll get it one day, I'm sure!

I didn't understand what you meant by 'smart playlist' so I had a go at ticking/unticking boxes and although it took me a couple of attempts (after I'd recreated the Christmas playlist!), I think I've done it. I ticked the October 18 & Christmas playlist boxes and synced my phone and it appeared to work as I now have both on my phone and no Halloween playlist but all 3 playlists are still listed in the 'Music Playlists' section on iTunes, yay! 😀 I had to remove a couple of my apps and I chose to 'offload data' for Facebook, Messenger and something else, so it gave my phone enough storage to have both playlists. I don't have a lot on my phone so I'm a bit cross that I had to do that but I've just clicked on the icons to re-download them from icloud so hopefully they'll go back on my phone ok. This whole thing is still very complicated to me as I don't have a techs-mind at all but I think I've managed to do what I needed to with regards to the playlists, so thank you. I'll try to keep on top of connecting to iTunes more often so I don't forget anything I've learnt from you!

Thanks again 🙂 I hope you don't mind if I come back to you should I have an issue with something 'apple' related in the future, as you've been really helpful?