Automatically Sync and Download Songs - How???

[NightFox]

OK, after a few false starts where I chickened out when iCloud Music screwed up my library, I finally decided to bite the bullet and enable it (after backing up my entire iTunes library so I can restore it when Apple finally stops iCloud music screwing it up).

But now I'm lost. Maybe it's because I'm very tired today, or maybe it's because Apple Music is a confusing mess; but either way I could do with some help here.

When I find a track on Apple Music using iTunes on my Mac, I want to download (not stream) it to my Mac and have it automatically sync to my iPhone so it's on the device (i.e. accessible offline)

So on iTunes I search Apple Music and find my track (which for some reason takes me to the "New" tab in iTunes to show the results). I then click the 3 dots by the track name and choose "Add to my library". That seems to make the song available in the cloud for me, so I then have to go and find the track in my iTunes library and click on the cloud icon to download it onto my Mac. So, question 1: is there a way to set iTunes so it automatically downloads the tracks when I add them to my library, rather than just making them available to me in the cloud? Or is there a "download all purchased tracks to this computer" button hidden away somewhere? (Even though that would give my back all those hideous 12 days of Christmas tracks that I've tried to forget)

And then how the heck do I get this new track on my iPhone? I'd just assumed it would kind of appear automatically in my Library on my phone, but there's no sign of it so I must be doing something wrong or have some setting wrong. But I guess even if it did show it would just show as being available in the cloud - so my next question would be how can I get tracks to sync to my phone so they're available for offline playing?

I go on holiday next week and I wanted to grab loads of new music from Apple Music to listen to on my iPhone (I won't have any mobile signal or WiFi, so they need to be downloaded), but it seems like I'm in severe danger of getting there and finding most of my tracks are either not there at all, or are only available in the cloud.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm sure things used to be so much simpler with Apple in the past.

 

[whsbuss]

OK, after a few false starts where I chickened out when iCloud Music screwed up my library, I finally decided to bite the bullet and enable it (after backing up my entire iTunes library so I can restore it when Apple finally stops iCloud music screwing it up).

But now I'm lost. Maybe it's because I'm very tired today, or maybe it's because Apple Music is a confusing mess; but either way I could do with some help here.

When I find a track on Apple Music using iTunes on my Mac, I want to download (not stream) it to my Mac and have it automatically sync to my iPhone so it's on the device (i.e. accessible offline)

So on iTunes I search Apple Music and find my track (which for some reason takes me to the "New" tab in iTunes to show the results). I then click the 3 dots by the track name and choose "Add to my library". That seems to make the song available in the cloud for me, so I then have to go and find the track in my iTunes library and click on the cloud icon to download it onto my Mac. So, question 1: is there a way to set iTunes so it automatically downloads the tracks when I add them to my library, rather than just making them available to me in the cloud? Or is there a "download all purchased tracks to this computer" button hidden away somewhere? (Even though that would give my back all those hideous 12 days of Christmas tracks that I've tried to forget)

And then how the heck do I get this new track on my iPhone? I'd just assumed it would kind of appear automatically in my Library on my phone, but there's no sign of it so I must be doing something wrong or have some setting wrong. But I guess even if it did show it would just show as being available in the cloud - so my next question would be how can I get tracks to sync to my phone so they're available for offline playing?

I go on holiday next week and I wanted to grab loads of new music from Apple Music to listen to on my iPhone (I won't have any mobile signal or WiFi, so they need to be downloaded), but it seems like I'm in severe danger of getting there and finding most of my tracks are either not there at all, or are only available in the cloud.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm sure things used to be so much simpler with Apple in the past.

#1 no way to auto download to the local library by just adding to library.
#2 same applies for all other devices - have to be manually made available offline

 

[mistame]

And then how the heck do I get this new track on my iPhone? I'd just assumed it would kind of appear automatically in my Library on my phone, but there's no sign of it so I must be doing something wrong or have some setting wrong.

Are you sure you have iCloud Music Library enabled on the phone?

 

[NightFox]

#1 no way to auto download to the local library by just adding to library.
#2 same applies for all other devices - have to be manually made available offline

Thanks for the reply - that's a PITA. So is there some way of telling either iTunes or the Music app on my iPhone to download all songs on iCloud music, or do I have to remember which songs I've added and go through my library downloading them one by one?

 

[NightFox]

Are you sure you have iCloud Music Library enabled on the phone?

Yep, maybe it's an iOS 9 beta issue as I think I've got everything set right. I've just rolled back my Mac to before I enabled iCloud to install the new iTunes update, so maybe once I've installed that and re-enabled iCloud music on my Mac and iPhone it'll work properly.

 

[mistame]

Thanks for the reply - that's a PITA. So is there some way of telling either iTunes or the Music app on my iPhone to download all songs on iCloud music, or do I have to remember which songs I've added and go through my library downloading them one by one?

There might be a roundabout way to do this, and i'm not sure how well it will work but it's worth a shot:
Create a new smart playlist in iTunes. For the rule, make it something that will be true for all songs, like "Time is greater than 00:00", and make sure "Live updating" is checked. Once the playlist shows up on your phone, make it available offline. In theory this should automatically add any music you add to your library to that playlist and make it available offline.

 

[NightFox]

There might be a roundabout way to do this, and i'm not sure how well it will work but it's worth a shot:
Create a new smart playlist in iTunes. For the rule, make it something that will be true for all songs, like "Time is greater than 00:00", and make sure "Live updating" is checked. Once the playlist shows up on your phone, make it available offline. In theory this should automatically add any music you add to your library to that playlist and make it available offline.

Hmmm...that sounds worth a try, just got to wait for Time Machine to finish restoring my old Library and I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

 

[whsbuss]

I can tell you that if you have a playlist available for offline, and you add songs to it, it will automatically download it to the device where you added it.

 

[NightFox]

On second thoughts, having just tried re-enabling iCloud Music and finding more than half my library still looks like this

(wrong cover art, wrong album/artist) then forget it, someone please wake me when Apple finally sorts this cluster**** out.

 

[NightFox]

There might be a roundabout way to do this, and i'm not sure how well it will work but it's worth a shot:
Create a new smart playlist in iTunes. For the rule, make it something that will be true for all songs, like "Time is greater than 00:00", and make sure "Live updating" is checked. Once the playlist shows up on your phone, make it available offline. In theory this should automatically add any music you add to your library to that playlist and make it available offline.

I'm still not ready to have iCloud Music destroy my library, so I'm now going to try something along these lines on my daughter's iPhone (it's great to have kids to experiment on). I've discovered that one of the Smart Playlist options is "Location is" == "On this computer" or "iCloud", so I reckon if I create an Smart Playlist with "Location is" == "iCloud" and set it to always be available offline, the playlist should always be empty as any iCloud song will automatically get added to it, then should be automatically downloaded and will therefore disappear from the playlist as it won't then meet the Smart Playlist condition.

That's the theory anyway - just waiting for her Mac to sync her library with iCloud.