How can I control what music is stored on my iPhone?

Question

Apple has decided that all the music I purchase from them is going to be constantly changing disorganized mess of deleted songs and placeholder albums and is controlled by it's own zombie scheduling. I makes me very, VERY angry. I see two options, rip all my iTunes purchases as MP3s, or buy and Android (really not serious about that, but this has been an issue since IOS7). Any other last ditch strategies I should consider???

Answer 1

Sounds like somethings very wrong ...
If capacity is a constraint, and things don't add up for you, you might be carrying a large photo collection in your Camera Roll -- more so than you may think.  There seems to be an issue with some users where the photo usage does not add up between what is displayed vs. the true amount of storage being taken by photos.  Some users resolved this by:
(a) Temporarily turn off automatic date/time:  Settings/ General/ Date&Time/ Set Automatically/ OFF.
(b) Manually set your iPhone's date and time to somewhere in or before August 2014.
(c) Go to your Photos app and look in your "Recently Deleted" folder.  You may find a LOT of photos there that weren't before.
(d) Re-delete all the recently deleted photos from this folder.
(e) Go back to (a) and set your date&time automatically.
That may be your first problem.
You may also have "All Songs" turned on, which shows you all songs you've purchased even if they're not actually on your iPhone.  Go to:
Settings/ iTunes & App Store and then turn the "Show All" option OFF for both Music and Video.
Now, if you had the "Show All" enabled and selected one of these iCloud songs, they will download to your iPhone and you may have a heck of a time removing them.  If you've done this, the best method I've found is:
(a) Set the iPhone for Manually Manage Music & Video (sounds like you already do this).
(b) While connected to iTunes, open the contents of the iPhone and select all songs and delete them.
(c) Manually initiate a local (not iCloud) backup of your iPhone to your computer.
(d) Restore the iPhone, then select the backup.  Let your phone re-populate all the apps (should be no music)
(e) Disconnect and check the Music app, verify that there truly is no music.  If there is, go to:
Settings/ General/ Usage/ Manage Storage/ Music, then swipe across "All Songs" (from right to left) and select Delete.
(f) Reset your iPhone, or do another backup and restore.
That should clear out all music ... now re-populate your music, either manually or auto-sync all songs or partial (i.e. sync to selected playlists, artists, etc.)  If you want to autosync just part of your library, you can.  My library exceeds 100GB yet I autosync about 42GB of that to my 64GB iPhone. This is done by defining what I want synced via a series of playlists, some of which auto-populate based on my ratings and what I play (i.e. some songs drop out for awhile once I listen to them) as well as static playlist where I can manually place complete albums I want to remain.  The first auto-sync takes an hour or two, but subsequent auto-syncs only take a matter of minutes -- the whole thing doesn't re-sync each time, just what changed.