iTunes 12.7 and music

Mac
#1

Hi I just updated to iTunes 12.7 and a new iPhone 8.

On the plane last night i realised I only had a handful of songs on the device. i have been playing most through iCloud iTunes library.

So I went to push some music across from my iMac to the phone this morning using iTunes 12.7.

But there is no “manually manage music” option and I cannot select music to sync across.

Any ideas how to move music from the iMac to the iPhone without downloading the content from the cloud which will use up a chunk of data ( i wanted to put 60G of music on it)

Any ideas appreciated
Ta

Len

#2

So if you’re using iCloud Music Library - can you see playlists you create in iTunes on your iPhone 8? The way I do this is::

  1. Create the playlist of music I want in iTunes
  2. Select all items and right click and add them to iCloud if they’re not already.
  3. On your iPhone, go to the playlist, top on the 3 dots button and choose Download to make sure the content is downloaded to your iPhone locally.

You are right that you can’t manually add music to an iOS device from iTunes if you use the iCloud Music Library.

#3

Many Thanks!

I thought that must be the case but I wanted to be sure. They really have put the final nail in the PC as Hub concept.

Do you think I could turn iCloud music library off on the phone, load it up, then turn it back on? Would that work do you think?

#4

This is the current workaround that I’ve discovered.

Bear in mind that if you do this, when you turn iCloud Music Library back on, you’ll be prompted to merge or delete existing playlists. If you select merge, you’ll end up with duplicated playlists, but if you select delete, when you turn off iCloud Music Library, you’ll still have music on your device (the stuff you synced on there from iTunes), but no playlists.

#5

Ok I just want to be clear before I do this.

Say I have a bunch of music and out of that music there are some playlists that contain some of that music.

When I move this across after turning it off, I will have this music and the playlists on my phone.

Then when I turn iCloud library back on, If I select merge I will get duplicate playlists. Q - will i also get duplicate tracks?

If I select delete - the only things to disappear will be the playlists, not the tracks. Q - is that right? But in my updated iCloud library the playlist will come across again so it should reappear right?

Having spent the last 12 months restoring and repairing an unbacked up iTunes library from the cloud and old externals, I don’t want to screw it up. Maybe its just easier to download the music again from the cloud :frowning:

#6

No, only playlists will be duplicated.

Yes, only the playlists will be removed. But this only becomes an issue when you turn off iCloud Music Library again and want to listen to music. Once iCloud Music Library has been turned on, your playlists will update from your Mac like you’d expect.

#7

Excellent thank you!

I don’t think I could have coped with thousands of duplicated tracks. BTW is there any plugins or apps that can be used to remove duplicates or is it a feature of iTunes these days? Ive honestly had the most awful time getting this library back to the way it was before the external crashed that held the library. Im so nervous to do anything to it these days.

#8

To find duplicates you can still use In iTunes File-> Library → Show duplicate items.

I cant remember the name but the app I once tried to remove duplicates also removed songs that were not exact duplicates. e.g songs with the same name but different versions such as live recording versus the studio version

#9

Thanks for the tip because whatever I did today i have ended up duplicating every purchase from the music store. Only the music though. Weird and painful. I remember when apple’s mottos was I just works or something like that. Getting further and further away from that with every upgrade.

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#10

Yeah duplicates can be painful. I have used Drugs Scripts for various iTunes tasks like managing multiple playlists at once (iTunes doesn’t let you select more than one playlist at a time), exporting song info, etc, they are free and good quality. He has a couple for managing duplicates and they look good. Might be worth taking a look.

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#11

God i hate Apple music. Never have i encountered a more annoying or convoluted setup. It’s so unclear how it works and what happens to your local music etc etc.

Essentially I use music for my local library (which i’m using less and less). For streaming music I use either Google which iI’m currently paying for, or Spotify at home where the free offer is fantastic with only a few ads every now and again.

If there were some option to have Apple Music and your own music completely separate, and in separate apps, it would make much more sense. Ironically the Apple Music app is separate on Android which makes for a much better experience.

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#12

I agree 100%.

Yesterday i spent well over 12 hours working on an incloud library, a local imac library, my phone and then watch.

All to get a playlist on the watch happening locally.

Throw in a 4.1 upgrade to get icloud happening on the watch it was a freaking painful day. I got the downloading order all wrong which explained the phantom playlists and lack of local music.

All looks like ts working now. But theres a day of yelling at various screens and the cloud i will not get back.

And a nice little duplicated purchases issue that ill leave for another day!

The joy eh!

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