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January 28, 2016 4:53 PM   Subscribe

I updated my iPhone 4S to the newest version of the music player. Now it's displaying all the music I've ever bought on iTunes, even stuff I unchecked and deleted from the computer years ago. I've told it to stop, but it doesn't acknowledge my selection. How do I make it stop?

Both phone and iTunes are fully updated. I have switched on "Only Downloaded Music (Show only music available offline"). I've also gone into iTunes "show all music" view to make sure all the old crap is unchecked, in case that makes a difference. I've even deleted everything from the phone and re-synched it. No matter what I do, it's all still there, coming up on random, clogging up my list of artists, and driving me crazy. What am I missing?
posted by thesmallmachine to Technology (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Yeah, the setting to hide all purchased music on the Music app on the iPhone is pretty unreliable these days. Mine comes and goes randomly, no matter what I do. Usually a trick of force-quitting the app (double-tap home button, swipe up) or turning the phone off and on again will make it work for a while. Other than that, you might need to do a complete restore and set up the phone like new. But no guarantees even then.

It seems like now that there is Apple Music, all of the development energies at Apple are going to supporting that. They just don't give a crap about music playing function on iOS besides Apple Music.
posted by sleeping bear at 5:06 PM on January 28, 2016


I also have a 4S* and can't help but think they're making iTunes (even!!!) worse on purpose to drive customers over to Apple Music. I have had constant problems with it over the past few years, and subsequent online searches have always revealed ten zillion other people with the same problem, for which the fix is often obscure and/or unreliable. My solution has been to stop using it and resolve to buy a non-Apple phone next time. Which sucks because I really only use my smartphone for two things; playing music and surfing the internet and Apple has made a mess of the first.

* a 4S that I actually cannot add music to at this point because I foolishly updated iTunes and now it's not compatible with the version of iTunes on my (old, by computer standards) laptop, which cannot be updated.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:15 PM on January 28, 2016


Response by poster: Force-quitting the app did band-aid the problem successfully! It sounds like it's not a very sticky band-aid, but then I have an infinite supply.
posted by thesmallmachine at 5:17 PM on January 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: (Card Cheat, I almost added "more's the pity" to my note about iTunes being updated. Over the years it's been visibly disintegrating into a sparkly cloud of overcomplication and bugs.)
posted by thesmallmachine at 5:19 PM on January 28, 2016


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