I managed to lose all my songs in my iTunes Library and cannot recover them, meaning that my iTunes Library is completely empty. I still have the songs on my iPhone however. I know I will have to upload songs into iTunes eventually. For the time being, I would simply like to add a few new songs to my empty iTunes and then upload them to my iPhone, but without doing anything that will cause me to erase the songs that are already on the iPhone. Is there a way to ADD songs without erasing the songs on my iPhone? I just cannot figure out how to sync without erasing existing playlists and songs on the iPhone.
Synching without erasing songs on the iPhone
itunes
Related Solutions
In iTunes > Preferences > Advanced
Uncheck Keep iTunes Media folder organised and Copy Files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library
Screen shot provided by @Wheat Williams:
You say you have iTunes Match? What I understand from your question is that you want to edit your playlists adding/deleting or you just want to pick specific playlists to have on your iPhone, I'll explain both.
If you deleted a song from your playlist simply scroll up or down till you see edit/clear/delete. Hit edit then the + icon to add songs, or readd them if you deleted them. Clear will delete all the songs in that playlist without deleting the playlist itself. Delete will delete all the songs and the playlist itself.
If you're hoping to be able to add a couple of playlists for example a" work out" playlist and a "commute" playlist on your phone but leave the "dance" playlist on your computer, you can't. The whole idea of iTunes Match is that you have ALL of your music, playlist and whatnot. The idea is that when you make any change even if it's just moving a song from the bottom to the top of your playlist, it will show up on all your devices.
I hope that helps let me know if it doesn't and I'll try and help out if I can!
Danny
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Best Answer
I suspected that there was no way to get around it ... I guess I'll just have to start the laborious business of reconstructing my iTunes database by restoring all 3,000 songs ...
Thanks for the responses.