Music Syncing question.

[u/Rusto_Dusto]

I'm a bit confused with syncing music.I want to be able to add music from my iTunes library on my MacBook as well as add songs from Apple Music to my phone. I don't want to have to upload my entire 250gb library to iCloud. It seems like that way, you can't actually have copies of the music on your phone. Is that correct? Seems stupid to have to waste my data plan streaming music I already own. I'm getting the "you can't play this song from your region" BS when I try to play songs I ripped from my cd's.

[u/ThannBanis]

Apple Music is a streaming service and include iCloud Music library.

This way any music added to the Music Library the Mac (as iTunes was discontinued with macOS 10.15) will automagically be added to the music library on the phone.

If you don’t have Apple Music, you can still add music to the Mac Music library and sync them to the iPhone the old fashioned way.

[u/Thin_Job9323 → u/ThannBanis]

I do this all the time —I drop my personal MP3 into the Music app on my MacBook and they show up in the Music app on my iPhone. Keep in mind it doesn’t sync lightning fast. And you’ll have to search explicitly in your “Library” to find those uploaded files. (Versus searching for music via “Apple Music”).

However to answer your main question, I believe there’s no way around it —you’ll have to manually upload all music you wish to sync via iCloud to your phone. For that reason I do this selectively when I encounter albums that are not on Apple Music but I own as offline files.

BTW: iTunes was basically just renamed for a cohesive experience between iPhone + MacOS. In my opinion Apple confused everyone and then the tech blog media ran with “itunes is dead” narrative. Meanwhile, as of iOS 18.x there’s still an app on my iPhone called ”iTunes Store”. So iTunes is still alive and well. Just different.

[u/ThannBanis → u/Thin_Job9323]

They show up within seconds for me, and I have smart playlist (not to mention the recently added section) making them easy to find.

The iTunes Store still exists, but this is separate from the iTunes application (always has been on iDevices) but iTunes the application has been eviscerated, with its music, video and podcast sections being spun out into separate apps, and Finder now managing service sync (which I personally don’t like… I don’t need file management windows turning into iPhone sync settings windows on me)

[u/Rusto_Dusto]

Ok. So if I want both my old songs and Apple Music, then I have to upload to iCloud the songs I want, then download them to my phone? Seems kinda dumb and inefficient. Guess I’ll just add this to my Festivus complaints for next year.

[u/Rusto_Dusto]

Will that take care of the “you can’t play songs from this region” error or is that another mountain to conquer?