I’ve downloaded iTunes music on my PC. From there I move it to my IPhone. Question: If I delete a song on my PC will it be deleted from my phone? Will it be deleted from the cloud?
Thx.
I presume you downloaded the iTunes app to your PC, and that you are syncing it to the iPhone.
If that’s the case, if you delete a song on the PC and then sync your iPhone again, it is normally deleted from the iPhone. You can heavily customize what is and isn’t subject to sync however, especially if you have a lot of media on the iPhone that max start to challenge your local storage.
If song you delete on PC is an iTunes purchase, it is gone from the PC, but absent licensing issues (this HAS happened to me, but very rarely) you should be able to re-download it whenever you wish, again assuming you’re within the normal number of authorized devices and have all your account information.
If the song you delete on PC is “imported” (from an old drive, file, or ripped from CD) and you delete it, it’s gone from your computer unless you have a backup elsewhere, minus certain choices you can make about backups to the cloud. Better to assume it gone though.
Historically, you could also backup your iPhone to your PC, although Apple very heavily pushes iCloud backups these days, as it generates revenue.
IMHO now though - iTunes for Windows is a barely-held together lash-up that runs very poorly, and is prone to many issues. Long gone are the days where Apple encouraged it’s use, and (again IMHO) they’ve all but abandoned it, because they want you do do it all through their online store to encourage purchases (they don’t want your ripping your old media!) and sell you a monthly fee for streaming music from Apple and/or another monthly fee for more iCloud storage.
So be at least somewhat wary of iTunes for PC - it’s glitchy, poorly supported, and could be entirely depreciated anytime.
Thanks.
Turn off “Sync Library” in Settings if you don’t want your PC and iPhone music libraries to stay synced.
iTunes for PC was already replaced by the Music app earlier this year.
So now there is a brand new glitchy, poorly supported app.
I don’t think it’s a question of Apple not “wanting” you to rip your CDs anymore, it’s more like the world has just moved on from that. People have had 20 years to rip their CDs. There probably aren’t that many left who haven’t already done so. Even by the time Apple stopped selling Macs with a built-in CD/DVD drives ten years ago, streaming/digital downloads were already well on their way to overtaking physical purchases.
Your corrections are fine and fair. I’m probably an outlier, because I switch between Android and Apple phones frequently (alternating each phone for the last 4 as an example), and I’m part of the early adopters for iTunes. I had a Mac, a 1st gen iPod, and a huge collection of CD’s that I have imported and libraries I’ve maintained for decades including a few hundred single purchases.
And each year it got more glitchy, less cooperative, and more likely to drop early adopter purchases and freebies due to lack of good foresight in licensing I presume. Still, I do buy CDs and rip them, because I prefer to be able to more easily move the files between my NAS, my tablets, my smartphone, and other interrelated devices, not to mention have it on my Plex server for streaming.
But for those who have grown up with smartphones and streaming, yeah, my concerns and expectations are probably hopelessly out of date!
When you say “drop early adopter purchases,” do you mean you lost access to songs that you purchased because Apple no longer held the licensing rights? I’d love to know what songs those were because I’ve never really heard of that happening. Less rare, but still pretty rare, is that Apple would remove the songs from the iTunes Store if they lost the distribution rights. But anyone who purchased those songs before Apple lost the distribution rights would still be able to keep and play the songs. They might not be able to redownload the songs from iTunes, though, while Apple didn’t have the rights.
Or am I misunderstanding you?
My wife and I have specific playlists in iTunes, and sync our personal playlists to our phones. We have way too many different songs and tastes, and a lot of stuff we don’t need on the phone (like comedy albums). My wife also can load the Christmas playlist for a limited time… So when I add or delete a song from that playlist on my PC, it does not delete the actual song file. And when I sync, any changes do result in the song being added or deleted from the phone.
Fortunately I’m from a generation that had real music [insert grumpy old man grunting and wheezing here] so I don’t have to worry about most of these newfangled “songs”, but I still run across a song and say “did I ever download that?” and so add it to my phone playlist.
Back when, I’ve had MP3 players before my iPhone, so I’ve mostly avoided online buying and the associated rights hassles. I still have my collection of over 800 CD’s and ripped what I want from them.
Most of the freebies I lost were not audio (I -think- a grand total of one song) but I did lose several videos from when iTunes began expanding into rental / purchase agreements for TV shows and movies. Though, to be fair, all but one were “freebies”. For example, the popular SciFi (later Syfy) series Eureka’s pilot was offered as a free “purchase” (differing from a rental, where you only kept it a few days) that I enjoyed and was one of my mindless easy watches. It was never deleted from the devices it was on (prior to being traded in) but isn’t available for download on any of my current accounts.
A few other similar issues, which, again, I’m pretty sure were distribution or licensing issues, yes.
Overall, if I had to guess I’ve lost maybe 1-2 songs, and 3-4 videos, out of several hundred purchases. And no, I wouldn’t be worried about newer purchases, again, I specified losses from two slightly different eras where iTunes and Apple were figuring things out. 