How to clear out iCloud Music Library?

[skiltrip]

In order to add albums in Apple Music, you need iCloud Music Library turned on. I find have ALL my music sync'd like this creates a messy interface. How do I go about leaving iCloud Music Library on but essentially have my library empty? All my owned music is obviously in iTunes on my Mac.

I wish I could pick and choose what I want sync'd because I feel it's redundant to have my copy AND the copy in the AM catalog. I know this is impossible, so I wish I could just clear out the sync so it acts like I don't own any music.

 

[Julien]

If you want music you own synced to any iDevice it MUST be in iCML/AM.

You could move your owned Library to an external HD (odor unlink from iTunes) and 'start over' with no music in iCML. You would then need to ad all the music you own and want to listen to.

 

[skiltrip]

If you want music you own synced to any iDevice it MUST be in iCML/AM.

You could move your owned Library to an external HD (odor unlink from iTunes) and 'start over' with no music in iCML. You would then need to ad all the music you own and want to listen to.

I had thought about doing that. That could definitely work but would obviously disrupt my iTunes music library organization.

I'll just deal with it as is, which is pretty much the Apple way. Not saying it's good or bad but it is what it is with Apple software and services.

 

[skiltrip]

I figured out the simplest way to do this and it's working great. Before doing any of this, just make sure you have a backup copy of your iTunes library. It's not as if this is risky, but you should have one anyway.

* Turn off iCloud Music Library on your current and default iTunes library. Then close iTunes.
* Create a new iTunes library by starting iTunes with the Option key held down. Just give it a new name of your choice.
* Go to Preferences, turn on iCloud Music Library, and wait for it to finish loading/syncing.
* Go to My Music, select Song view. Select All, and hit the Delete button, and confirm.
* Now you've got a new iCloud Music Library that's empty. A nice clean slate!

One thing I wasn't sure of is whether my For Your section would change at all, and it hasn't. Apple originally built it's For You section for me based on my iTunes library, and even though I now removed all of it, the recommendations haven't changed or anything. So I guess it retained all that data it already got about my music collection.

The reason I wanted to do this is I hate redundancy. Couple that with Apple Music's tendency to botch song matching and album art, and things become messy really quick. I hate having my library uploaded with botched artwork and mismatched songs (live versions) when there's perfectly intact versions of most of it already on Apple Music that I can add to my Apple Music Library.

Now I can just drag in any particular albums that I own that are NOT on Apple Music in order to fill those gaps. Then if there is any mismatched songs or artwork, I'll know immediately and can fix it easily as I go, instead of scrolling through a huge library of wildly wrong artwork and not really knowing which songs are matched wrong until playing them.

 

[Tech198]

or u could delete all music, Then create new iTunes library But since icloud is a one-way affair, your way is probably better.