Entire music library deleted from iPhone due to iTunes Match?

iTunes match deletes any locally stored music from the device when it is enabled. It tells you this when you go into settings and enable it. iTunes will not allow you to sync music to the device as well when match is enabled.

this happened to me as well. When I used to do this in iOS 5, all it would do is add on to the library rather than delete everything and replace it. I ended up having to manually download all the songs and albums again directly from the iPhone since it wouldn't be able to sync. I think it might be a bug since this never happened before.

Same issue here, op. In 5.1.1 it let me sync music and then enable iTunes match without losing the previously synced music (though it did show the warning when I enabled it). This is an area that apple needs to improve. I store thousands of songs in my device and would rather sync a bunch at one time, then manage via iTunes match.

Interesting. On ios 5 both my iPad and iPhone would delete everything when enabling match.

CRIIM44 said:

Interesting. On ios 5 both my iPad and iPhone would delete everything when enabling match.

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This is totally confusing me. Why on earth would it delete all your music off your device? Data charges would be astronomical to constantly RE download all your music, all the time.

Surely, this isn't how it's supposed to work?

If you have Itunes Match on your Mac/pc it lets you stream you music straight from Itunes match. It did me like that then I noticed i was able to stream the music. I just think you have to sign up for the Itunes match service. Which I remember paying 25 bucks it comes in handy if you have a 8 or 16 gb iphone
It does it the same way the apple tv does it but over a cellular connection

Sedrick said:

This is totally confusing me. Why on earth would it delete all your music off your device? Data charges would be astronomical to constantly RE download all your music, all the time.

Surely, this isn't how it's supposed to work?

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Why would you turn off iTunes match constantly? Once enabled you download all the music you want and you are ready to go.

Sedrick said:

This is totally confusing me. Why on earth would it delete all your music off your device? Data charges would be astronomical to constantly RE download all your music, all the time.

Surely, this isn't how it's supposed to work?

Click to expand...

No, it caches it. When you play music via iTunes match. It downloads it and stores locally. It's all indicated very clearly in the app which music is local or in the cloud.

So you want a playlist on your phone...? from wifi, click the download all button for whatever playlist/album/etc. You can do this from anywhere, starbucks, friend's network, the office, or even on the road if you have plenty of spare 3G bandwidth for the month, it's very convenient.

mrblack927 said:

Well this is a big problem because I use iTunes Match for all of my music except explicit albums because iTunes Match replaces them with clean ones. How am I supposed to listen to the unedited versions of songs now?

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Grow up and ditch the trashy "music".

I don't really see the point in using iTunes Match. Unless you have more than 50 GB, that is almost 26 days (!!!), of music at 192kbps, you can easily fit it on any iPhone/iPad/iPod touch 64 GB - without the need to pay $24.99 a year plus the most expensive data plan. I would rather spend $9.99 per month for Spotify Premium and get 16 million songs streamed on my device, than paying over and over again for my own music.

*Calypso* said:

I don't really see the point in using iTunes Match. Unless you have more than 50 GB, that is almost 26 days (!!!), of music at 192kbps, you can easily fit it on any iPhone/iPad/iPod touch 64 GB - without the need to pay $24.99 a year plus the most expensive data plan. I would rather spend $9.99 per month for Spotify Premium and get 16 million songs streamed on my device, than paying over and over again for my own music.

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I do have over 50gb of music, and I think it's pretty cheap. My data plan is 3gb, which is plenty, and I'm not paying a fortune for it, and it's considerably cheaper than Spotify.

CRIIM44 said:

Why would you turn off iTunes match constantly? Once enabled you download all the music you want and you are ready to go.

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What I'm saying is, who's paying the data charges to down load all the music to my phone every time I want to listen to a new 10 gig play list? (Right now I have a 30 gig phone will all my music on it)

Even if I only had a 16 gig phone, why would I pay data charges to constantly re-download my own stuff? I'd be a fool not to just do that from my PC when I get home.

I don't mean to be thick headed, but I think everyone assumes we all have unlimited data plans with great 100% coverage every where we go. Nothing could be further from reality.

..and if 'Match' is going to wipe my phone so that I have to incur these extra expenses, then no thanks. I'm asking because this seems a rather foolish feature and something that the carriers are behind more than anything else.

mrblack927 said:

Well this is a big problem because I use iTunes Match for all of my music except explicit albums because iTunes Match replaces them with clean ones. How am I supposed to listen to the unedited versions of songs now?

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You should not have "upgraded" to IOS6 beta .... It's test software, not production code ...

Menel said:

Grow up and ditch the trashy "music".

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Can't tell if serious or just idiotic comment.

Apple TarHeel said:

You should not have "upgraded" to IOS6 beta .... It's test software, not production code ...

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I wonder how much space would be saved on this forum if all these stupid posts could be removed.

Furthermore I wonder how many of these posts would never be made if people were taught the difference between a bug and a poor design decision.


Is there any way around this, like tagging the songs so that they don't match to songs in the database and get uploaded separately?

WordMasterRice said:

Can't tell if serious or just idiotic comment.



I wonder how much space would be saved on this forum if all these stupid posts could be removed.

Furthermore I wonder how many of these posts would never be made if people were taught the difference between a bug and a poor design decision.


Is there any way around this, like tagging the songs so that they don't match to songs in the database and get uploaded separately?

Click to expand...

I wonder how much space could be saved on these forums if people would use production code on their idevices instead of BETA code? It would be amazing because so many functions would work correctly like they are supposed to and people wouldn't write post about itunes match not working and we would all be free from reading these posts ... what a concept!

mrblack927 said:

It seems like it's using iTunes match exclusively. Is this expected behavior (did it happen with iOS5 or below?) or is this a bug?

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I don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but with iOS 5, when you enable iTunes Match, it warns you that it's going to replace your local music. Sort of sounds like what happened to you is expected behavior, other than not being warned about it.

aristobrat said:

I don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but with iOS 5, when you enable iTunes Match, it warns you that it's going to replace your local music. Sort of sounds like what happened to you is expected behavior, other than not being warned about it.

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in 5.1.1, I received that warning, but it never actually deleted anything and I was completely fine with that. I hope this isn't considered a "feature" or "fix" in iOS 6. Hopefully it's just a glitch or the way they had to set it up for the beta.

Another issue I've had is that when I sync music from my computer (with iTunes match off) a lot of the artists display as "Unknown".

Apple TarHeel said:

I wonder how much space could be saved on these forums if people would use production code on their idevices instead of BETA code? It would be amazing because so many functions would work correctly like they are supposed to and people wouldn't write post about itunes match not working and we would all be free from reading these posts ... what a concept!

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Do you realize that this is also present in iOS5? Using "Production code" (whatever that means) would have resulted in the same problem. Nice try though.

morphineseason said:

in 5.1.1, I received that warning, but it never actually deleted anything and I was completely fine with that. I hope this isn't considered a "feature" or "fix" in iOS 6. Hopefully it's just a glitch or the way they had to set it up for the beta.

Another issue I've had is that when I sync music from my computer (with iTunes match off) a lot of the artists display as "Unknown".

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While it didnt delete anything on my device either, i ran into some problems because of that. Suddenly i couldnt see an album anymore, that i had in itunes match and also already locally on the phone. Or it wouldnt let me download Songs.
Had to delete the local Music manually and turn on itunes match again for everything to work as it should.

aristobrat said:

I don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but with iOS 5, when you enable iTunes Match, it warns you that it's going to replace your local music. Sort of sounds like what happened to you is expected behavior, other than not being warned about it.

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It replaces the library, but not any music locally stored, assuming that the music stored locally is also on your Match library.

imacken said:

It replaces the library, but not any music locally stored, assuming that the music stored locally is also on your Match library.

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That is not my experience. Actually, I've had both experiences. The first time I ever turned Itunes Match on my iphone and Ipad, it left all of the local songs on my iPhone.

A second time, it deleted everything forcing me to either re-download through the cloud or to turn Itunes Match off and re-sync. It was very sporadic.

mrblack927 said:

Well this is a big problem because I use iTunes Match for all of my music except explicit albums because iTunes Match replaces them with clean ones. How am I supposed to listen to the unedited versions of songs now?

Click to expand...

That's simple and obvious....you turn off iTunes Match and you sync your own "explicit" versions through iTunes to you device. Problem solved!

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Sedrick said:

What I'm saying is, who's paying the data charges to down load all the music to my phone every time I want to listen to a new 10 gig play list? (Right now I have a 30 gig phone will all my music on it)

Even if I only had a 16 gig phone, why would I pay data charges to constantly re-download my own stuff? I'd be a fool not to just do that from my PC when I get home.

I don't mean to be thick headed, but I think everyone assumes we all have unlimited data plans with great 100% coverage every where we go. Nothing could be further from reality.

..and if 'Match' is going to wipe my phone so that I have to incur these extra expenses, then no thanks. I'm asking because this seems a rather foolish feature and something that the carriers are behind more than anything else.

Click to expand...

So don't use Match! With that amount of free space on your phone, you really don't need it if you only have 10GB of music on a playlist. Plus, haven't you ever heard of Wifi to download music before you leave home, thus saving your data allowance? Blaming a crappy data package for iTunes Match being a bad service is just plain wrong.

Having to download my 22.5GB library directly to my phone instead of simply syncing it over from my Mac sounds bad enough but it's actually worse in practise. I created a playlist with everything in it and hit Download All. The downloads were incredibly slow and with a 1000 or so songs left to download it started glitching out the download count went to from 1000, 999, 998 to 1, 2, 3, 4... and it didn't seem to actually be doing anything. I tried persevering but all I ended up with was a Music app that wouldn't launch no matter what setting I changed. I connected the phone to my Mac and went in with Phoneview only to discover an incredible amount of folders in 'downloads' in 'iTunes Control'. I deleted all of those manually and the app finally launched.

If I can't manually sync the music to begin with then I'm not going to use Match again. I started to like it on iOS5 so it's a shame.