Why Does Apple Music Keep Deleting My Downloads?

Introduction

Apple Music is a great service, but there are some things about it that are hard to understand. One of those things is why Apple Music deletes your downloaded music. A lot of people have complained about this issue and wanted an explanation from Apple themselves. So what’s going on here? Why does Apple delete your downloaded songs from its servers? And how can you stop it from happening again? Here’s everything you need to know:

It may be something to do with your account settings.

If you’re using the Apple Music app on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > [your Apple ID].
Click iCloud Music Library.
Check the box next to Keep downloaded songs. If this option isn’t available, it’s already turned on for all of your devices and you can move on to step 4 below.*

It could be a bug.

Unfortunately, it’s possible that the bug is to blame. If you’re using Apple Music on your iPhone or iPad, you can contact Apple support and ask them what they think. They may be able to help you figure out what’s going on and how to fix it.

Suppose the issue happens on both your Mac and iOS devices (iPod Touch). In that case, there might be something wrong with the software itself–that is, the actual code behind Apple Music itself may have an error in it that causes this problem when certain conditions are met by your device hardware or operating system version number (OS X 10.10).

You do not have enough storage on your device

The first thing to check is whether you have enough storage on your device. If not, Apple Music will delete songs from your library in order to free up space for new downloads. You can also delete other files in order to free up more storage–for example, by deleting photos or videos if they’re not important to you anymore.

To check how much storage is available on your iPhone or iPad:

Open Settings and tap General > Storage & iCloud Usage (this may be listed as just “Storage” depending on which version of iOS you’re using).
Scroll down until you see Music under Available Space; it should say either “[Name] has xx GB of music” or “[Name] has no music.”

You’ve signed out of your Apple ID

If you’re having trouble with Apple Music deleting your downloads, the first thing to do is sign out of your Apple ID. Signing out will stop the music from being deleted, but it won’t affect other devices that are associated with that account (like your iPhone or iPad). You can sign back in anytime, so there’s no need to worry about losing everything synced over.

Sync Library is turned off

If you’re seeing “Waiting” in the status column of your music library, it’s likely that iCloud Music Library is turned off. To fix this problem, go to Settings > Music and turn Sync Library back on. You can also turn it off by going to Settings > General > iTunes & App Stores and selecting Use Cellular Data for Music Downloads (or Use Wi-Fi Only).

If you want to keep using iCloud Music Library but want all your downloads saved locally on your device instead of being deleted when you unplug from power, follow these steps:

Go back into Settings > General > iTunes & App Stores; then scroll down until you see “Downloaded Music”
Turn Off “Automatically Add…”

The song is no longer listed on the Apple Music catalog

It’s possible that the song is no longer listed on the Apple Music catalog. If you’ve purchased a song from iTunes or another source, it may not be available for streaming on Apple Music. To check if a song is available for streaming, go to Apple Music and search for it. If it’s not there, you must purchase the song from iTunes or another source before you can listen to it on Apple Music.

In this case, you’ll need to download your music again from iCloud Music Library or iTunes if you want access to it on multiple devices (useful if someone else wants to listen).

How to stop Apple Music from deleting downloaded songs

If you want to keep your downloaded songs, there are two things you can do.

Turn off the option to automatically delete songs after 99 days. This setting is found in your Apple Music settings page, under “Automatically Downloaded Music.”
Turn off iCloud Music Library. Suppose you’re using this feature and have turned it on for all of your devices. In that case, it could be causing some problems with the deletion process–but if you turn off iCloud Music Library entirely (and thus lose access to any songs that aren’t stored locally), then everything should work properly again!

Apple Music is a rental service, after all

Apple Music is a rental service, not a permanent download. You can’t keep downloaded songs forever and you have to redownload them every 99 days. But if you want to keep your music permanently, there are some ways around this. You can turn off iCloud Music Library (which will mean that you can’t access the songs you’ve downloaded), but this is a bad idea for two reasons: firstly, because it makes using Apple Music a bit more difficult and secondly because Apple Music’s offline mode relies on iCloud Music Library.

You might have accidentally hidden them.

If you press and hold on a song, album, artist or playlist in your library, it will give you the option to hide that item from view. This can happen by accident if you’re not paying attention while scrolling through your library or if there are too many items on-screen at once–so keep an eye out! And if you still can’t find those missing albums, try restarting your device and trying again. If you’re still having trouble, reach out to Apple Support or try using a different browser.

There is an option that automatically removes downloaded music after 99 days.

If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, there’s a good chance that you’ve had this experience: You download a bunch of songs to listen to offline, then come back to them later and find out they’re gone.

You can’t blame Apple for this–the company has made it clear that downloaded music will be deleted after 99 days (or 100GB). But what if you want to keep your downloads forever? It turns out there’s an option that automatically removes downloaded music after 99 days. To find it and turn off automatic deletion:

Open up the Settings app on your phone or computer and go into “Music.” Scroll down until you see “Downloaded Music,” then click on “Show All” under “Automatic Downloads.” You’ll see two options here: one called “Delete after listening” which will delete your music after listening through once; another called “Never delete when space needed,” which won’t delete anything until space is needed (and then deletes in order from oldest track).

If you’ve deleted your downloaded music, try these things to get it back.

If you’re having trouble downloading music, try these things first:

Sign out of your Apple ID. Signing out will clear any cache or cookies that might be slowing down the process.
Turn off Sync Library on your device and then sign back in again under the same account you were using before (that is, if you have more than one).
Check storage space on your device–if there’s not enough room for all of your downloads, it won’t work! Make sure there’s at least 10GB free space available before trying again.
Search for the song in question using Spotlight search (this only works with devices running iOS 10 or later). If it doesn’t appear here, try checking iCloud Music Library instead; sometimes these things get stuck in limbo until they’re refreshed by another action such as syncing via USB cable or restoring from backup (see below).

Conclusion

After all, it’s your music and you should have control over it. If the songs are still available on Apple Music, they will be automatically added back into your library. If they’re not available anymore, you can re-download them at any time by going to the music section of iTunes on your computer and clicking “Download” next to each missing song. If you want more help with this process, or if you’ve got other issues related to music in iOS 11, check out our guide for fixing common problems with Apple Music.