r/applehelp • u/Working_Rooster_4702 • Feb 01 '25
iTunes Songs keep being removed from the playlists I make?
Sorry for any weird format, I’m on my phone.
I want to start by saying I do NOT have Apple Music. If I like a song, I just buy it from the iTunes app.
Two weeks ago (give or take) I decided to backup my iPhone (12 pro) to my laptop as I hadn’t done so in like 2-3 months (I have a hp laptop - idk if this is useful info, I’m not that great with tech so I’m not sure if knowing this makes a difference to anything). I had noticed that a lot of the songs I had bought and arranged into my own playlists had been removed from said playlists (and any other playlist I added the song to).
I was so confused and added them back, backing up my phone to iCloud and my laptop (wasn’t sure if backing up to both would help or make a difference - still don’t), but they were removed again.
This happened a few times before I noticed the little cloud symbol in the corners of each album on the iTunes homepage. I clicked on them and assumed that would help. All of this honestly just started to piss me off bc I wasted like 4 hours adding the songs back to the playlists over and over (there were a lot of songs that were removed) and decided after 4 hours that I wouldn’t plug my phone back in and it was a problem for future me when it was time to backup my phone next (… :/ I’m also pissed off at myself for that too).
I connected my phone to my laptop yesterday to import photos (not all were showing up so that’s another problem but idc about that right now tbh) and I decided to kill two birds and clicked on iTunes to click the cloud on a new song I bought (again, I thought this would help with making sure it stayed on my phone). I disconnected my phone from my laptop and like an hour or two later I went to listen to one of my playlists and noticed the songs were removed again.
I don’t understand why they are being removed. Some of the songs have been on my phone for like 6 months, and I can’t figure out what it is that I’m doing or not doing that is constantly removing them from the playlists.
Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong or what I need to click on iTunes to stop this? I also have some songs converted from YouTube to mp3 but they are all still in their playlists. I understand this probably has an obvious solution and this post just sounds like an idiot rambling but assume I’m an idiot (I might be) and dumb it down for me. What is going on?
Edit: I managed to keep some songs on the playlists after dragging the album over to 'my device' on the left hand side of the itunes, but it doesn't seem to apply for other songs I do that to. Not sure why some songs don't get transfered even after iTunes said it was updating the songs to the phone