Apple Music removes songs from playlists when source library is deleted & some users want it fixed (potential workarounds inside)

In the last few years, Apple Music has witnessed tremendous growth and is now competing with the likes of Spotify.

Apart from its music library, another reason why so many people are using Apple Music is because of the superior quality it offers in the form of lossless audio and Spatial Audio.

But like every other service in the market, the app has its fair share of bugs and issues that sometimes annoy users to a point where they don’t want to use it anymore.

And now, Apple Music users are reporting that the app removes songs from their playlists whenever they delete them from the source library.

This is a really annoying behavior with subscribers saying that they create playlists for various occasions but don’t necessarily want those songs in their library.

2021 and still cannot delete songs from library without playlist removal
I really don’t understand what’s so hard about implementing this feature. I really want to use Apple Music so bad, and this is the one thing thats still keeping me from using it. I don’t get it, they know people would like it, every other platform doesn’t do this, yet no implementation after countless updates to Apple Music. I can’t be the only one who likes to add music to library and then reorganize later by adding to specific playlists, without it forever staying in the library. Come on already Apple.
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Let’s say I have an album in my library, for convenience let’s say it’s the beatles white album. Then I add two of the songs to a road trip playlist. I add one of the songs to a birthday playlist. I add another song or two to another playlist that I make for a friend. Now I’m cleaning up my library six months later and I realize that I really never listen to the white album so I delete the album from my library. THOSE SONGS ARE NOW DELETED FROM THOSE PLAYLISTS! That drives me nuts! Spotify does not do that, and I hate it that AM does. If I ever want to delete an album from my library, I then have to search through all of my playlists (dozens and dozens) to see which songs are now missing, and re-add them manually. Is there any way around this that I’m not aware of?
(Source)

It means that if users want to add a song to their playlist, they are forced to add it to their library collection, which results in the library becoming cluttered with unwanted songs.

Users are wondering if there is any way to change this behavior so Apple Music does not delete songs from their playlists if they delete them from the library.

Fortunately, some users have shared a bunch of workarounds that might help you do so. The first one involves making use of Marvis Pro to check which playlists the album or track you are looking for is in.

Yep, on top of albums splitting, this is one of my big annoyances with AM. It’s not a fix, more of a workaround, but with Marvis Pro you can select an album or track and view the details, where it then tells you which playlists that album or track is in. So before I remove an album from my library, I’ll check if any of the tracks are in a playlist that I’ll need to add back afterwards.
(Source)

Since Marvis Pro is limited to iOS and not available on Mac, you can simply right-click on a track and click the ‘Show in playlists’ option to see what playlists the song is in.

We hope the aforementioned workarounds help you with the issue where Apple Music removes songs from playlists when removed from the library.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Apple Section so be sure to follow them as well.

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