Apple Music offline is useless

[0000757]

I thought I had downloaded all my music FINALLY for local storage, as I won't have enough data to keep streaming.

Turns out I was wrong. When I went on Airplane to test my suspicions, music that it SAID had downloaded suddenly disappeared, and the music it said was downloaded wouldn't play.

What's more disappointing is that this isn't even an iOS 9 thing, it's an issue that plagued me on iOS 8.4 too.

Is anyone else having issues downloading their music for offline playing?

inb4hurrdurritsabeta

EDIT: Here's a picture illustrating the "not everything downloaded" issue:

 

[iphonehype]

Nope mine is fine, maybe a rest of all settings?

 

[0000757]

Nope mine is fine, maybe a rest of all settings?

I'll try that. Hopefully it'll work.

 

[0000757]

Nope mine is fine, maybe a rest of all settings?

Well it seemed that erased anything that already was downloaded. I'm trying again. Hopefully it'll work.

Nope, doesn't look like it did. I'm going to go back to 8.4 and hope things work out better there.

 

[philfry]

Yeah I'm not seeing this problem. I had this problem on beta 2. Have you tried to do a restore ? Do you see this on 8.4 as well?

Have you tried looking at only what was downloaded locally by only showing offline music?

 

[kmj2318]

I haven't had this issue on any device with either iOS 9 or 8.4, yet I keep hearing about it. When you choose Make Available Offline, do you see the "Downloading # songs" at the top? It should start immediately after choosing something to download. And you can tap it to see the status of everything that's downloading.

And in the pictures, I'm seeing that Welcome Back album isn't saved, but I'm not seeing what the images below that relate to. Just for clarification.

 

[0000757]

Yeah I'm not seeing this problem. I had this problem on beta 2. Have you tried to do a restore ? Do you see this on 8.4 as well?

Have you tried looking at only what was downloaded locally by only showing offline music?

I have, and when I pick one of those songs, they simply don't play.

I haven't had this issue on any device with either iOS 9 or 8.4, yet I keep hearing about it. When you choose Make Available Offline, do you see the "Downloading # songs" at the top? It should start immediately after choosing something to download. And you can tap it to see the status of everything that's downloading.

And in the pictures, I'm seeing that Welcome Back album isn't saved, but I'm not seeing what the images below that relate to. Just for clarification.

I specifically selected to save that entire artist's music. You can see that the most recent album added is by the same artist (it was downloaded when i chose to download all of the artist's music), but when I disconnect, the other album disappears (indicating it did NOT download like it was supposed to).

I do get the Downloading # songs when I choose to make something available offline. However, none of my songs, artists, or albums ever get the device icon to indicate they are available offline (9b3 OR 8.4), and often times it'll say it can't download one song (or one and one other), giving me the option to retry, and then it won't come back after that.

 

[motulist]

Downloads have worked perfectly for me.

 

[0000757]

Well I'm back on 8.4 and I did a reset (again) after it continued to NOT cancel the download of songs that I didn't even HAVE in my library.

Now so far, everything seems to be going OK. I'm having to individually download each album I want, but so far they show up and play when I switch to offline and the album gets the "offline" sticker, so hopefully smooth sailing as I finish the rest of my library.

I'm going to just stay on 8.4 and not upgrade to the b3 only because there's a likelihood I might be switching carriers and getting a different phone, so I'd want to be able to restore to my most recent backup and not have a week outdated backup before taking that device to 9 (if I even do get a new one).

 

[imagineadam]

Well I'm back on 8.4 and I did a reset (again) after it continued to NOT cancel the download of songs that I didn't even HAVE in my library.

Now so far, everything seems to be going OK. I'm having to individually download each album I want, but so far they show up and play when I switch to offline and the album gets the "offline" sticker, so hopefully smooth sailing as I finish the rest of my library.

I'm going to just stay on 8.4 and not upgrade to the b3 only because there's a likelihood I might be switching carriers and getting a different phone, so I'd want to be able to restore to my most recent backup and not have a week outdated backup before taking that device to 9 (if I even do get a new one).

Hey thanks for pointing out the offline sticker on the albums!!! I've never noticed that before. The only way to get the little sticker on each song is to individually make them offline even though they are already offline! I did this to about 600 songs.... Quite maddening!

Yes you are right you need to download each album individually because when you select the make songs available from the whole artist it currently does nothing! It should add the little offline sticker to each song you would think too after you download them. But it doesn't! Hopefully they fix these bugs eventually.

 

[atwater]

I have a similar problem on iOS 9 B3, I had no problems downloading the playlists yesterday. But on the train to work today, when I skipped to the next song, suddenly all my music that I have offline, was not offline anymore..

Does anyone have the same problem?

 

[kmj2318]

So I tried making offline an entire artist like the OP and it doesn't work well. At first it was ok but then I noticed some things were missing completely. It makes me wonder about how the offline icons work. When you save an album or playlist, only the album or playlist gets the icon. But with adding an entire artist, where's that icon go? I had no problems at all with adding albums individually. I also tried adding entire genres and that has the same problems.

Also about those offline icons. They are only added to what you select. If you select an album it gets the icon but not the songs, even though those songs get saved. When you choose a song it'll get the icon. I find it useful but it is confusing. The lack of an icon means that if I take away whatever that song is in so goes the song. The icon doesn't mean this is saved to the phone, it means keep this unless I specifically choose otherwise. The icon acts as a *do not mess with* sign for when changing things further up the hierarchy. So if you have a few favorite songs you want to make sure to have and you can remove that album but it won't take the tagged songs with it.

 

[Kaskel2000]

I had this problem with B2. I'd press to make available offline and it would say it's downloading. If I used a third party music app I could play those songs but if I tried to play them through the main app they would be deleted straight away and start streaming. I'm having a similar problem with B3. I haven't tried downloading an inidividual song yet just albums and artists so I'll give that a go later. Really don't mind streaming. It's only on the hour train ride to work it becomes a little annoying as reception is rubbish.

 

[joethemobile]

Also make sure you are not switching apple id on the appstore as all downloaded songs are erased even if you did not logout from apple music

 

[Kaskel2000]

Only ever had one Apple ID since the days of the iPod mini...

 

[Michael CM1]

Just tested it on my iPhone with iOS 9 beta. Turned on airplane mode and tried out an album I made available offline, not one I owned before. It's working fine.

Could be a glitch in your beta installation. That's why Apple sends red flags about using it and needing everything to work. I know I had a few issues with the Yosemite beta in the fall, notably connecting to my school's WiFi network.

 

[Kaskel2000]

The interesting thing is that if I download each song individually they do download . It wouldn't be a beta if there weren't glitches.

 

[Paco II]

Forget the little phone icon for identifying offline tracks. To really know, check Settings, General, Usage, Manage Storage, Music.

 

[whsbuss]

Forget the little phone icon for identifying offline tracks. To really know, check Settings, General, Usage, Manage Storage, Music.

I agree but we shouldn't have to exit the app to get the info...... Apple should provide a button/link to list all the offline music.

 

[imagineadam]

So I tried making offline an entire artist like the OP and it doesn't work well. At first it was ok but then I noticed some things were missing completely. It makes me wonder about how the offline icons work. When you save an album or playlist, only the album or playlist gets the icon. But with adding an entire artist, where's that icon go? I had no problems at all with adding albums individually. I also tried adding entire genres and that has the same problems.

Also about those offline icons. They are only added to what you select. If you select an album it gets the icon but not the songs, even though those songs get saved. When you choose a song it'll get the icon. I find it useful but it is confusing. The lack of an icon means that if I take away whatever that song is in so goes the song. The icon doesn't mean this is saved to the phone, it means keep this unless I specifically choose otherwise. The icon acts as a *do not mess with* sign for when changing things further up the hierarchy. So if you have a few favorite songs you want to make sure to have and you can remove that album but it won't take the tagged songs with it.

I was just thinking/remembering that when I updated to iOS 8.4 that all of my songs that were already saved to my device did in fact have an icon next to each individual song. I only noticed the bug after I downloaded some more music that I didn't have saved offline already. So I'm pretty sure that each song in fact should have the little icon next to each song that you mark for offline when you download an entire album! That makes sense to me! Great analysis/speculation but I think it's just a bug that will eventually get fixed!

 

[Paco II]

Not convinced. Apple probably thinks that this is how it is supposed to work. But hope I'm wrong In your case all probably had icons since when first enabling AM and IML, it probably just sees songs, not albums, so each song got the icon.

I was just thinking/remembering that when I updated to iOS 8.4 that all of my songs that were already saved to my device did in fact have an icon next to each individual song. I only noticed the bug after I downloaded some more music that I didn't have saved offline already. So I'm pretty sure that each song in fact should have the little icon next to each song that you mark for offline when you download an entire album! That makes sense to me! Great analysis/speculation but I think it's just a bug that will eventually get fixed!

 

[imagineadam]

Not convinced. Apple probably thinks that this is how it is supposed to work. But hope I'm wrong In your case all probably had icons since when first enabling AM and IML, it probably just sees songs, not albums, so each song got the icon.

Not convinced that this is how it was originally intended to work?

It just seems like ok you download a song or album so you let the user know it's on their device with a little icon next to the album and songs that have been downloaded to the device. Period. Seems easy to understand to me.

And it worked how it should have when it noticed all of my downloaded tracks and albums and marked them accordingly when I upgraded like it should have.

The problem is that when you download new music or music you have in the cloud for offline it only shows the icon next to each track if you individually mark them all and that isn't right if mine were already tagged to begin with.

That's why people are confused as to what is or isn't on their device. Seems like a simple bug or oversight to me.

 

[Paco II]

I think you misunderstood. I agree with you in how it should work. I'm not convinced Apple thinks it is a bug

Not convinced that this is how it was originally intended to work?

It just seems like ok you download a song or album so you let the user know it's on their device with a little icon next to the album and songs that have been downloaded to the device. Period. Seems easy to understand to me.

 

[blasto2236]

This wasn't working for me on 8.4 and it's even worse on the public beta of 9. It is infuriating. I am convinced this is an issue with them using iTunes Match on the backend. A subscription just basically allows you to add anything from Apple Music's library to your iCloud Music Library (nee iTunes Match) which has been a hot mess for years now. Beats never had these issues but their infrastructure for offline listening seems to be about the only thing Apple didn't carry over from Beats. I don't have any hopes of this issue being resolved. Called support yesterday and the poor girl on the phone was clueless.

Unfortunately I have no service at work, and company WiFi blocks iTunes. And work is where I do 99% of my music listening. So if I can't trust my offline library to stay there,  Music is a non starter for me. Shame, too, because I love everything else about it.

 

[mistame]

Doesn't work for mo on 8.4 either. I get the "Downloading XXX songs" at the top, but once it's done and I go offline all but a few of the track go away. Before going offline I checked the space usage for the music app and it was around 15GB. After going offline it went down to ~100MB. Going through the playlist and individually selecting songs for offline seems to keep them that way.