Music Player?

[Droidophobe]

I recently moved from a BB Z10 to an iPhone 8, and one of my biggest disappointments was finding that iTunes and the native music player would not allow me to transfer my music from my PC to my new phone if the songs hadn't been purchased through iTunes originally. I have to have my music on my phone so I can listen to it offline because a cell signal is almost non-existent where I live so any streaming service is worthless, and I object to paying Apple for Apple Music or Match.

I purchased the AirMore app and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a snap to transfer my entire music library to the phone. One immediate downside was that its UI on the phone is pretty bad, but I could live with that. However, its shuffle function is pitiful and will only shuffle <10% of my songs, so I hear the same stuff over and over. (I know the song files are OK because I can select and play them manually within AirMore.) AirMore's tech support has not been responsive.

Does anyone have any suggestions that will allow me to play all my songs offline on the phone? A way to defeat Apple's prohibition of non-iTunes-purchased music? A better third-party app? I hate the thought of buying a separate MP3 player and carrying that around with the phone.

 

[Tartarus]

I recently moved from a BB Z10 to an iPhone 8, and one of my biggest disappointments was finding that iTunes and the native music player would not allow me to transfer my music from my PC to my new phone if the songs hadn't been purchased through iTunes originally. I have to have my music on my phone so I can listen to it offline because a cell signal is almost non-existent where I live so any streaming service is worthless, and I object to paying Apple for Apple Music or Match.

I purchased the AirMore app and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a snap to transfer my entire music library to the phone. One immediate downside was that its UI on the phone is pretty bad, but I could live with that. However, its shuffle function is pitiful and will only shuffle <10% of my songs, so I hear the same stuff over and over. (I know the song files are OK because I can select and play them manually within AirMore.) AirMore's tech support has not been responsive.

Does anyone have any suggestions that will allow me to play all my songs offline on the phone? A way to defeat Apple's prohibition of non-iTunes-purchased music? A better third-party app? I hate the thought of buying a separate MP3 player and carrying that around with the phone.

I have never heard of such a prohibition. Almost all my music comes from a source other than iTunes and all of them were perfectly transferable to my iPhone via iTunes.

You simply have to import your current songs to iTunes and then transfer them to your iPhone.

Here is an how to guide: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19458?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[Droidophobe]

I have never heard of such a prohibition. Almost all my music comes from a source other than iTunes and all of them were perfectly transferable to my iPhone via iTunes.

You simply have to import your current songs to iTunes and then transfer them to your iPhone.

Here is an how to guide: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19458?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Been there, tried that. That function does not work because iTunes will not recognize those songs. Spent many hours on the phone with Apple tech support and was finally told that this prohibition was a new thing and that if I wanted to play my "non-iTunes-purchased" MP3's on my phone, I needed to subscribe to Apple Match, and I'd be able to stream my songs for which Match had a match.

 

[doogald]

Been there, tried that. That function does not work because iTunes will not recognize those songs. Spent many hours on the phone with Apple tech support and was finally told that this prohibition was a new thing and that if I wanted to play my "non-iTunes-purchased" MP3's on my phone, I needed to subscribe to Apple Match, and I'd be able to stream my songs for which Match had a match.

Good lord, what terrible support.

If the files are truly MP3 files that have no DRM from another source, you can import them into iTunes. And then you can plug the phone into the computer and set the phone to sync music within the iTunes app, and all such music will sync to the phone and play just fine there.

You can play music on the iPhone without syncing with a computer using iTunes Match (so the songs either stream, or you can download them directly from the phone rather than by syncing with the computer), but that is a completely different thing.

iMore has a page that describes how to install iTunes on Windows, and then how to import files from your computer into your iTunes library. See https://www.imore.com/how-install-itunes-12-windows-10 (ignore the stuff about purchasing and iTunes Match if you're not interested.)

And this page: https://www.imore.com/how-sync-your-iphone-or-ipad-itunes describes how to sync media from iTunes to your iPhone.

If this is still not helpful, there must be other resources online that I can point you to. Such as here: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph20507?locale=en_US and here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201253

 

[scruffypig]

Been there, tried that. That function does not work because iTunes will not recognize those songs. Spent many hours on the phone with Apple tech support and was finally told that this prohibition was a new thing and that if I wanted to play my "non-iTunes-purchased" MP3's on my phone, I needed to subscribe to Apple Match, and I'd be able to stream my songs for which Match had a match.

My iPhone 8 works and iTunes just fine with all my legacy MP3s and even Windows Wave files. I too have a huge collection of mp3 files that I purchased from all kinds of online stores, Beatport, Bleep.com, Amazon, etc. They all play fine. Don’t give up.

 

[Droidophobe]

Thanks. I've spent about 100 hours researching this problem online and talking with Apple tech support, and no solution is forthcoming. From reading online, I see I'm not the only person with this problem. I think Apple is just trying to generate subscription revenue from Apple Music.

 

[Tartarus]

Thanks. I've spent about 100 hours researching this problem online and talking with Apple tech support, and no solution is forthcoming. From reading online, I see I'm not the only person with this problem. I think Apple is just trying to generate subscription revenue from Apple Music.

I can simply not agree with the last statement you made. Apple has started out with the iPods as a music listening device. Then and now it’s always been easy to put your own purchased, or even through less kosher ways obtained, copied or ripped music on Apple devices. The iPhone is no different.

All you have to do is import your own music to iTunes and sync it to your device.