Can't delete one remaining song

[DaveM]

I have an iPhone 5s using iOS 8.1.2, not jailbroken. I don't store a lot of music on my phone, but today I wanted to delete the albums that I had added, and am going to put some new music on. I sync with iTunes, so I uncheckmarked everything that I didn't want and performed the sync. It worked perfectly, except for one remaining song from one album. It doesn't show up in iTunes, and I can't swipe-delete it from my phone - the swipe doesn't work. I'm not doing any syncing to iCloud. I did try a hard reset. Any ideas?

 

[scifan57]

I have an iPhone 5s using iOS 8.1.2, not jailbroken. I don't store a lot of music on my phone, but today I wanted to delete the albums that I had added, and am going to put some new music on. I sync with iTunes, so I uncheckmarked everything that I didn't want and performed the sync. It worked perfectly, except for one remaining song from one album. It doesn't show up in iTunes, and I can't swipe-delete it from my phone - the swipe doesn't work. I'm not doing any syncing to iCloud. I did try a hard reset. Any ideas?

Have you tried going to Settings>General>Usage>Manage Storage>Music and tried deleting the song from there?

 

[DaveM]

Well that's interesting. It doesn't even show up there.

 

[J. A.]

Go to Settings - Music - Show All Music. If it's enabled, turn it off. Is the song still visible on your iPhone?

 

[DaveM]

It wasn't enabled.

 

[J. A.]

Do you use iTunes Match?

 

[DaveM]

No, have never used it.

 

[scifan57]

If all else fails, you may have to consider restoring your iPhone and setting it up as a new iPhone, if any backups you have contain that song that won't delete. This may not be practical if you have a lot of content on your iPhone that can't be re-downloaded from an iTunes or App Store purchased list.

 

[DaveM]

If all else fails, you may have to consider restoring your iPhone and setting it up as a new iPhone, if any backups you have contain that song that won't delete. This may not be practical if you have a lot of content on your iPhone that can't be re-downloaded from an iTunes or App Store purchased list.

It wouldn't be worth the trouble to me just to get rid of one song. I figured this would be pretty straightforward to resolve, but maybe not.

 

[Silverado8405]

It wouldn't be worth the trouble to me just to get rid of one song. I figured this would be pretty straightforward to resolve, but maybe not.

I love my iPhone but in all honesty the ringtone and music management by iTunes leaves a foul taste in my mouth. You'd think that getting rid of one song would be simple but as stated above 80% of the time it comes down to restoring the phone to clear up the problem. Why it can't be a simple drag and drop like an (shudder) android phone or a normal computer for that matter is beyond me.

 

[DaveM]

Yeah, I agree. Love the iPhone but I've never been a fan of iTunes. As software goes it's really poor, IMHO. They've begun to make some changes but I'm not sure it will be enough.

 

[DaveM]

I decided to try an experiment. I went back and added the album with all of its songs back onto the phone, then I deleted the entire album again. There was no change - the one song remained. That was a couple of days ago. This morning I looked on the phone and the song is gone! Very strange. I have the feeling that there's something I'm missing here, but at least for the moment the issue seems to be resolved.

 

[scifan57]

That's good news. I hope it doesn't pop back when you least expect it.