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Why does my iPhone remove music??

mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
This is one of the most annoying bugs in the iPhone: it randomly removes large chunks of music. For instance I was in a mood to hear Christmas songs on a flight the other day so I loaded one of my Christmas albums. As soon as I clicked the album to start, I can see the UI flying through the songs one by one since none of the songs was present. I have to be back on the ground and re-download these songs, which is incredibly annoying.

I looked in my iPhone Music settings and I don't see anything that would indicate the iPhone is trying to save space or anything. My new 128GB iPhone 6 is on its way to me now, so maybe once I have that I won't have this problem anymore, but it's SOOOOOO frustrating and I can't figure out how to fix it. Does anyone know how to get around this?

The whole iPhone music and syncing with iTunes is just a nightmare and it's shocking that after all of this time, Apple still hasn't "figured this out."

It doesn't "just work" like most Apple products used to claim.
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
scaredpoet said:
Do you by chance have iTunes Match turned on?
Click to expand...

No. I just checked, when I go to iTunes/Store on my Mac, there is an option "Turn On iTunes Match." On my iPhone, when I go to Settings/Music there is an option, "Subscribe to iTunes Match," so I imagine that means it's also not enabled there.

I know I have never enabled it myself either.

I just get the feeling that my iPhone (or iTunes) is trying to minimize the amount of music on my devices.

It's also worth noting that iTunes/iPhone only seems to delete music that I purchased from iTunes; stuff I imported on CD's years ago never gets deleted. (Aladdin soundtrack FTW!)
 
D

dotme

macrumors 65816
Oct 18, 2011
1,198
257
Iowa
I suspect it's an "authorized to play" problem. Was the music purchased with the same iTunes login (Apple ID) that the phone shows under Settings - iTunes and App Store?

If the music on the computer wasn't purchased with that Apple ID, it won't play on the phone. Hope this helps...
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
dotme said:
I suspect it's an "authorized to play" problem. Was the music purchased with the same iTunes login (Apple ID) that the phone shows under Settings - iTunes and App Store?

If the music on the computer wasn't purchased with that Apple ID, it won't play on the phone. Hope this helps...
Click to expand...

I have used the exact same iTunes/App Store ID for all of my purchases ever made by Apple. And again, even though the music disappears, the album is still there and it happily re-downloads from the cloud when the song is not there. It's just that my iPhone seems to want to remove them from the device to save space.

I just can't figure out why this happens and it has been happening for at least my last two iPhones (5S and 4S). I am hoping this is the iPhone trying to be smart about removing songs I don't play often, and that the 128GB phone will happily store all of my songs with room to spare.

I'm also a little surprised nobody else has had this problem as it's been plaguing me for years!
 
aliensporebomb

aliensporebomb

macrumors 68000
Jun 19, 2005
1,908
332
Minneapolis, MN, USA, Urth
Ah....

I ran into this once.

I subscribed to iTunes match thinking it would be "all that" and ended up not liking it since I have so many songs in my iTunes library I often grab subsets of a thousand songs or so and copy them to my phone and then pull another thousand off and it's much easier to deal with that manually.

When I upgraded to 8.1, I found I was missing everything except my purchased songs off itunes.

It somehow turned iTunes match back on. I didn't "return" or ask for a refund on it since I might concievably use it again at some point but I had to shut it off and manually recopy the 2800 songs I wanted on the thing.

I've also noticed a bit of a quirk with iTunes. If you copy say 800 songs to the iPhone and then highlight another 20 or 30 and copy that, sometimes (not every time) it seems to "stop" that first copy of 800 and copies the 20-30 instead. I've not seen that happen very often but it was in previous versions.

The other weird thing i've seen happen only once was when my iPhone decided to play two songs at once - one song in the left channel and another in the right at half the speed - since they were both in the same key somehow it ended up sounding like a really cool remix of both songs together (the ultimate machine generated mashup) and I really wish I had found a way to record it, it only happened once.
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
I don't know if this has anything to do with Match, mostly because I've simply never enabled it!

I'm going to wait until my iPhone 6 gets here (tomorrow!) and see if the problem persists once I double my storage to 128GB. Until then, Apple, if you're listening, please make this somewhat less painful!
 
swordfish5736

swordfish5736

macrumors 68000
Jun 29, 2007
1,898
106
Cesspool
was the 5S restored from the same backup as the 4S? Maybe it's a software issue that has carried over.

it may be a good idea to setup as new when your 6 arrives.
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
swordfish5736 said:
was the 5S restored from the same backup as the 4S? Maybe it's a software issue that has carried over.

it may be a good idea to setup as new when your 6 arrives.
Click to expand...

That's definitely worth a shot. I've always restored from previous backups as I get new phones. I suppose I could start fresh and sync with iTunes, and then re-add the apps I need as I go. (it would be nice to do some spring cleaning of my massive list of apps)

My phone arrives tomorrow and I'll give it a whirl. Cheers.
 
V

venividivigor

macrumors 6502
Jun 11, 2013
316
99
Happened to me today too. I'm thinking it's because of iTunes match, after turning it off and checking my usage, I have corrupted music files and duplicates. I just restored cuz chunks of music kept getting deleted
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
I just hope it's not Match for me since I've never turned it on and it does not appear to be on.

The thing is, none of my non-iTunes music gets "soft deleted" as I call it (the iPhone still knows that the song was purchased and/or the album was at some point available, but it just needs to re-download the song from the cloud). Anything I ripped from a CD or bought from AllOfMp3.com (remember that site years ago??) works just fine still. It's just iTunes store music that is funky, and not all of it at that. I still haven't figured out why some songs or parts of albums fall off the earth.

That's another part that's super weird: sometimes, most of an album is lost, but not all of it. There may be 2 or 3 songs out of 12 that survive.

I still theorized that Apple is removing some songs on my phone to save space, and it is doing this based on its records of how often I play certain songs.

I just wish it would STOP doing that. I'm going to file a report to Apple tomorrow, but somehow I feel those emails just go into the ether.
 
B

BandOfPirates

macrumors newbie
Dec 4, 2012
4
0
OP: I think you have a corrupted media library file on your iPhone. I also had this issue after I upgraded to my 6 Plus. I think my problem arose when I stopped a music sync by pulling off the lighting cable before iTunes finished syncing.

I tried re-syncing many times which did not resolve the issue. I could get around it by deleting all my music manually from the phone and re-download fresh each time. But what a pain to download over 40 gb of music each time you want to add new music. Anyway, I searched the Internet and found this solution on Apple's support forum. Basically you need to use an OSX app to delete your iPhone's media library file. Then sync your music with iTunes again. I have had no more issues since then with my music sync. Good luck!

http://https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940
 
C

ctryhunzelma

macrumors newbie
Oct 23, 2014
3
0
I found I was missing everything except my purchased songs off itunes.
10n.jpg
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
BandOfPirates said:
OP: I think you have a corrupted media library file on your iPhone. I also had this issue after I upgraded to my 6 Plus. I think my problem arose when I stopped a music sync by pulling off the lighting cable before iTunes finished syncing.

I tried re-syncing many times which did not resolve the issue. I could get around it by deleting all my music manually from the phone and re-download fresh each time. But what a pain to download over 40 gb of music each time you want to add new music. Anyway, I searched the Internet and found this solution on Apple's support forum. Basically you need to use an OSX app to delete your iPhone's media library file. Then sync your music with iTunes again. I have had no more issues since then with my music sync. Good luck!

http://https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link, BandOfPirates! I will give this a go immediately!
 
mcs37

mcs37

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 2, 2003
187
7
Washington, DC
I've got the new iPhone and instead of restoring from a backup, I am basically re-installing the apps I need one by one and will restore my music from iTunes. Here's hoping...
 
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