How to Stop the Music App Streaming Songs from iCloud/iTunes Match & Prevent Data Loss

The Music app lets you play music from your iPhone. It also plays music stored on iCloud or via iTunes Match. When that happens, it is streaming music through your Wi-Fi or cellular network.

Now, if you are on an unlimited plan, it’s obviously not going to matter. In other cases, though, it’s going to eat up all your bandwidth and pretty fast.

The best thing to do is to make sure Music app doesn’t play/stream these songs that are on iCloud or iTunes Match.

Stop iCloud Songs Streaming In the Music App & Prevent Data Loss

Here are a couple of ways to do this:

Turn Off Cellular for Music

One of the coolest new features that iOS 7 brings to the table is the ability to selectively turn off cellular access for apps. You can use this feature to turn off cellular selectively for the Music app alone. Here’s how to do it:

Open the Settings app
Tap on Cellular
Scroll down and you find a list of all apps that use cellular data
Switch off the toggle for Music and for iTunes

Switch off the toggle for Music and for iTunes

This is a very generic workaround which is not much of an useful solution really. The reason is that you will have to head back to Cellular settings and turn ON the toggles whenever you want to browse/download music.

Turn Off Show All Music Toggle

A better solution is to use the “Show All Music” toggle. This switch will show/hide all music – including those from iCloud and iTunes Match. When you turn this toggle OFF, the Music app will show only those tracks that are downloaded on your iPhone (available offline). Here’s what to do:

Open the Settings app
Tap on Music
Scroll down to the toggle that says “Show All Music“
Turn this toggle Off.
Restart the Music app

How to Stop iCloud Songs Streaming In the Music App & Prevent Data Loss

Now, all the songs that are shown in the Music app are only those that have been downloaded to the iPhone. iCloud and iTunes Match songs don’t show up so there’s no way that they will play/stream through cellular.

It’s a simple tweak but it can save you a lot of bandwidth. Make sure you monitor your playlist for those iCloud icons because when you see them, that’s a song streaming over the web.

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