I searched, and couldn't find the answer. After my songs are available in the cloud, can I delete them out of my music library locally to free up space on my 128GB Air?
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iTunes Match / delete songs locally?
- Thread starter Backtothemac
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Yes, but then you will be relying on the cloud.
Imagine a situation where you have a MBP and an iPhone. All your music started on your MBP and then you started iTunes Match. Then everything is in the cloud and it will show up on your iPhone and on iTunes. Once you delete it locally from your MBP, it will still show up in your iTunes and your iPhone with the little 'download from the cloud' button. Then you try to download it back onto your MBP to listen to some of your favorite songs but it won't download. It's lost somewhere in the cloud! WHAT? That's what's happening to me, but luckily I did it with only about 20 songs as opposed to my whole library...
Be wary...
Imagine a situation where you have a MBP and an iPhone. All your music started on your MBP and then you started iTunes Match. Then everything is in the cloud and it will show up on your iPhone and on iTunes. Once you delete it locally from your MBP, it will still show up in your iTunes and your iPhone with the little 'download from the cloud' button. Then you try to download it back onto your MBP to listen to some of your favorite songs but it won't download. It's lost somewhere in the cloud! WHAT? That's what's happening to me, but luckily I did it with only about 20 songs as opposed to my whole library...
Be wary...
I'm hoping I'm just missing something easy, but I'm having trouble deleting songs from my local computer after I've uploaded (or matched) them in the cloud.
When I select a song that's identified as either "uploaded" or "matched" and press "delete", it asks if I want to remove the song from my library. I confirm the deletion, and I see the little icon appear next to the song showing that it's in the cloud. So far, so good - I can play the song from the cloud if I wish, or re-download it.
The problem is, even though the song was removed from my iTunes library, it hasn't actually been deleted from my hard drive - I can still locate it in Finder. This is frustrating, since my original goal was to get everything that I could up into the cloud and then delete the local copy to free up some hard drive space.
Is there something I can do so that when I select a song and delete it, it will actually delete my local copy when removing the song from my library?
When I select a song that's identified as either "uploaded" or "matched" and press "delete", it asks if I want to remove the song from my library. I confirm the deletion, and I see the little icon appear next to the song showing that it's in the cloud. So far, so good - I can play the song from the cloud if I wish, or re-download it.
The problem is, even though the song was removed from my iTunes library, it hasn't actually been deleted from my hard drive - I can still locate it in Finder. This is frustrating, since my original goal was to get everything that I could up into the cloud and then delete the local copy to free up some hard drive space.
Is there something I can do so that when I select a song and delete it, it will actually delete my local copy when removing the song from my library?
When you delete your file in iTunes, it asks you whether you want to keep the file ot move to trash. You need to choose "move to trash". Also, make sure you do NOT check the box that says "delete from iCloud". Once you exit the dialog box, then empty your trash and the file should be removed from your hard drive.
Tony
Tony,
Thanks for the quick reply - I should have been clearer in my original post. When I try to delete the song (either by just pressing "delete" or by pressing Option-Delete, I get the confirmation dialog asking if I want to remove the song from my library, along with the checkbox for also deleting it from the cloud, which I'm leaving unchecked.
However, I do NOT get the option to either keep the file or move it to the trash (and by default, it's keeping the files, since I can still locate them in Finder afterwards.)
This is the only window I can get when trying to delete a song:
![foo-1.jpg]()
Thanks for the quick reply - I should have been clearer in my original post. When I try to delete the song (either by just pressing "delete" or by pressing Option-Delete, I get the confirmation dialog asking if I want to remove the song from my library, along with the checkbox for also deleting it from the cloud, which I'm leaving unchecked.
However, I do NOT get the option to either keep the file or move it to the trash (and by default, it's keeping the files, since I can still locate them in Finder afterwards.)
This is the only window I can get when trying to delete a song:
You must have answered "no" to that prompt at some point and checked the "do not ask me again" option. You can probably re-enable the prompt somewhere in the preferences window.
Closest I could find in Preferences was "Reset all Dialog Warnings", but that didn't have an effect. I'm still not getting the "keep or trash" choice when I delete or option-delete a song. I'll keep looking through the rest of the iTunes menu items, though - thanks for the idea!
You can always just delete the song from the original folder.
Tony
Yeah, it's looking like it may come to that. Problem is, I don't know of a good way to select just the audio files on the hard drive that *aren't* in the iTunes library.
This may all be for naught, anyway. I realized that even though our computers, iPhones and iPad can access songs in the cloud, the old 60 GB iPod Videos that we use as jukeboxes in our cars can't, so I may have to keep all of my music on at least one of our computers anyway for the purpose of syncing the old iPods.
That should have worked. Did you try recycling iTunes after making that change?
Always have a physical backup. What if the datacenter was attacked by Emperor Palpatine?
Wasn't he the one who was reactor "shafted"?
Edit: Damn ... didn't realize how old this was. I hate it when that happens.
I think it would be quite safe to delete any songs purchased and downloaded from iTunes. They should always be available without any glitches. But for all your other music that was not purchased through iTunes, even if it is available for purchase, I would definitely keep those files locally on your library and backed up as well.
As iTunes Match gets more improved in the future, we can revisit this question later, but for the time being, I personally wouldn't feel safe at all deleting locally stored, unpurchased iTunes music from my library.
Oops, I got caught in the old thread trap too! Doh!
As iTunes Match gets more improved in the future, we can revisit this question later, but for the time being, I personally wouldn't feel safe at all deleting locally stored, unpurchased iTunes music from my library.
Oops, I got caught in the old thread trap too! Doh!