Resolved Apple Music On: Can't manually manage music on iPhone?

[applesith]

I joined the Apple Music trial. I just tried adding some music from my iTunes to my iPhone and I see the following message in the Music section under the iPhone.

"iTunes Match is On"

I never used iTunes Match; only using Apple Music.

How can I manage playlists and add music like I did before Apple Music? I have lots of music not available in iTunes that I want on my iPhone.

Thanks!

 

[mconk]

The short answer to your question, is that you can't.

With Apple Music, you can turn on iCloud Music Library from iTunes on your Mac, which will then upload all of the songs that you have on your computer in iTunes (the songs that Apple Music or the iTunes store doesn't already have) thus allowing you to stream your entire library form your iPhone.

Essentially, with this feature on, there would be no reason to manually manage music from iTunes, since you can view, stream, and make music available offline on any of your iOS devices, anytime.

Check your settings in iTunes Preferences - under General, theres a box for iCloud Music Library. Also, if you're seeing the message above - I would double check on iTunes Match, and from the menu bar in iTunes, click Account, then iTunes Match. If you are truly unsubscribed to Match, it will prompt you to subscribe, or 'no thanks'.

For those of us not using Match, trying to manually manage music gives a similar message in iTunes, but it mentions that iCloud Music Library is on, rather than iTunes Match being enabled.

 

[flur]

There are some bugs that make iTunes confuse Match and ICloud Music Library - quite a few of us who have never been match subscribers have seen songs marked as "matched". It's possible this is a variation on the same bug. But either way, mconk is correct, you can't sync like you used to.

 

[applesith]

There are some bugs that make iTunes confuse Match and ICloud Music Library - quite a few of us who have never been match subscribers have seen songs marked as "matched". It's possible this is a variation on the same bug. But either way, mconk is correct, you can't sync like you used to.

The short answer to your question, is that you can't.

With Apple Music, you can turn on iCloud Music Library from iTunes on your Mac, which will then upload all of the songs that you have on your computer in iTunes (the songs that Apple Music or the iTunes store doesn't already have) thus allowing you to stream your entire library form your iPhone.

Essentially, with this feature on, there would be no reason to manually manage music from iTunes, since you can view, stream, and make music available offline on any of your iOS devices, anytime.

Check your settings in iTunes Preferences - under General, theres a box for iCloud Music Library. Also, if you're seeing the message above - I would double check on iTunes Match, and from the menu bar in iTunes, click Account, then iTunes Match. If you are truly unsubscribed to Match, it will prompt you to subscribe, or 'no thanks'.

For those of us not using Match, trying to manually manage music gives a similar message in iTunes, but it mentions that iCloud Music Library is on, rather than iTunes Match being enabled.

Thanks for the info. That's a deal breaker for me with Apple Music. I want to make playlists on my computer and drop them on my iPhone like I've done for the past 6+ years. And I've heard stories of Match replacing music in less than favorable ways.

 

[jsmith189]

Thanks for the info. That's a deal breaker for me with Apple Music. I want to make playlists on my computer and drop them on my iPhone like I've done for the past 6+ years. And I've heard stories of Match replacing music in less than favorable ways.

You can still (sort of) do that. Making any playlist will automatically add it to your phone.

 

[Paco II]

You can still (sort of) do that. Making any playlist will automatically add it to your phone.

That is the intent of iTunes match as well as iCloud Music Library. You can quickly create a playlist on your computer and it automaticlly shows on your phone. Sometimes the matches are not correct but that is largely edge cases. The only real time it falls short is if you want a lot of tracks for offline listening.

 

[flur]

Sometimes the matches are not correct but that is largely edge cases.

It depends on what you listen to. People with lots of live stuff, or older, popular stuff where there are lots of versions of the same song, are having a LOT of issues. One person had lossless tracks replaced with MP3s. I had stuff removed from my hard drive when I turned off iCloud Music Library.

It's all bugs, of course, not what Apple intended, but these are the kinds of bugs that should never have been released into the wild.

 

[Paco II]

Sounds like you are referring to bugs. I am just talking about when it works correctly. Sometimes explicit will be matched with clean, or live tracks with non live. But for the most part it works when it works.

The bugs you describe are definitely an issue. One thing to note, lossless will always match to compressed. That's why one needs to always hold on to their original Digital files.

It depends on what you listen to. People with lots of live stuff, or older, popular stuff where there are lots of versions of the same song, are having a LOT of issues. One person had lossless tracks replaced with MP3s. I had stuff removed from my hard drive when I turned off iCloud Music Library.

It's all bugs, of course, not what Apple intended, but these are the kinds of bugs that should never have been released into the wild.

 

[flur]

Sounds like you are referring to bugs. I am just talking about when it works correctly. Sometimes explicit will be matched with clean, or live tracks with non live. But for the most part it works when it works.

The bugs you describe are definitely an issue. One thing to note, lossless will always match to compressed. That's why one needs to always hold on to their original Digital files.

The person was talking about on his hard drive, his original file was deleted and replaced without him doing it.

And yes, these are bugs. Thing is, we don't have a version of the software without them. Making recommendations to folks to use a software that is full of dangerous bugs that could destroy their music collection because it would work well if it didn't have the bugs? Seems a little too rosy-eyed to me, and unfair to the person taking your rec.

 

[applesith]

I found a fix! I turned off iCloud Music Library on my Mac and iPhone.

I still have Apple Music and can add songs/playlists to my iPhone from my Mac. Life is good!

 

[msvadi]

I found a fix! I turned off iCloud Music Library on my Mac and iPhone.

I still have Apple Music and can add songs/playlists to my iPhone from my Mac. Life is good!

But you can't save songs from Apple Music for offline listening or add them to My Music.

 

[applesith]

But you can't save songs from Apple Music for offline listening or add them to My Music.

Yes, I realized that this evening. I don't see why Apple has to disable adding music to my iPhone from my Mac for Apple Music. Unnecessary and stupid. I don't want every playlist on every device and Match is a joke.

I guess I'll let Music expire after the trial.

 

[Paco II]

As far as disabling sync, the thinking is probably why would you need syncing if everything is already accessible on your phone, immediately ready for streaming or offline downloading.

Regarding not wanting every playlist on every device, well, welcome to the world of cloud syncing

Yes, I realized that this evening. I don't see why Apple has to disable adding music to my iPhone from my Mac for Apple Music. Unnecessary and stupid. I don't want every playlist on every device and Match is a joke.

I guess I'll let Music expire after the trial.

 

[manu chao]

Yes, I realized that this evening. I don't see why Apple has to disable adding music to my iPhone from my Mac for Apple Music. Unnecessary and stupid. I don't want every playlist on every device and Match is a joke.

Well, you don't 'need' to manually put music on your phone because with Apple Music, all your music is always available on your phone (even if not all available offline). The only thing missing is an easy way to make a given set of music to be available offline. Initially, all music on the phone when you switch on iCloud Music Library (iCML) will be marked as to be kept available offline.

Since with iCML your total music library is defined by the list of songs stored on Apple servers under your name and the local iTunes library (in regard to what it lists under 'My Music', not necessarily what is stored locally) syncing with that 'online' library, any picking of what part of online library is locally 'cached' on your phone is done from the phone itself, in the same way that what part of that online library in the form of actual song files is stored in your local iTunes library, is set insides iTunes.

While the above make sense conceptually, managing what is stored locally on the phone using the phone itself is fiddlier than doing so from iTunes (though you can summarily add albums or playlists to be available offline). But if you assume an Internet connection, than what is actually stored on the phone becomes less important.

 

[flur]

Well, you don't 'need' to manually put music on your phone because with Apple Music, all your music is always available on your phone (even if not all available offline). The only thing missing is an easy way to make a given set of music to be available offline. Initially, all music on the phone when you switch on iCloud Music Library (iCML) will be marked as to be kept available offline.

Since with iCML your total music library is defined by the list of songs stored on Apple servers under your name and the local iTunes library (in regard to what it lists under 'My Music', not necessarily what is stored locally) syncing with that 'online' library, any picking of what part of online library is locally 'cached' on your phone is done from the phone itself, in the same way that what part of that online library in the form of actual song files is stored in your local iTunes library, is set insides iTunes.

While the above make sense conceptually, managing what is stored locally on the phone using the phone itself is fiddlier than doing so from iTunes (though you can summarily add albums or playlists to be available offline). But if you assume an Internet connection, than what is actually stored on the phone becomes less important.

And that would be fine if iCML worked properly and didn't delete files, change metadata and artwork, and mismatch song versions. But that's not the case.

 

[manu chao]

And that would be fine if iCML worked properly and didn't delete files, change metadata and artwork, and mismatch song versions. But that's not the case.

Yes of course, that is why I disabled all Apple Music stuff in iTunes (and the iCML on the phone), only using Apple Music as a discovery service, not one to build a virtual library. I'll wait a couple of weeks or months and after a few more updates to iTunes and iOS, I will try it again.

 

[msvadi]

As far as disabling sync, the thinking is probably why would you need syncing if everything is already accessible on your phone, immediately ready for streaming or offline downloading.

I have many lossless files in my iTunes library, so I would like to be able to listen to them on my iPhone and use Apple Music for other things. Unfortunately, iCloud is useless for lossless files as they are replaced by 256 kbs AAC files. (Surprisingly, if you check the properties of a lossless file uploaded to iCloud, it shows the same size and bit rate as the lossless original, but when you save it for offline listening, it's saved as 256 kbs AAC.)

It seems that there is no convenient way to be able to sync lossless files to iOS devices and use Apple Music at the same time. What I do now is to disable iCloud Music on my iPhone, upload files from my iTunes library, and then re-enable iCloud Music. Unfortunately, the process of disabling and re-enabling iCloud music will delete all Apple Music previously downloaded for offline listening, so you will have to re-download it again. Also, iCloud Music in iOS is quite buggy: sometimes I can't re-enable iCloud Music (it switches off by itself) without restarting the iPhone.

Once I came across some third-party software that can upload music to iOS devices without iTunes, but I did not like the interface and did not want to pay for it. If somebody knows good software that allows to bypass iTunes, I would like to hear about it.

 

[Paco II]

Lossless listeners are likely in the extreme minority, hence the inability to sync. There are a number of third party music players that allow transfer of files directly into those apps. I'm sure at least some of them support lossless.

I have many lossless files in my iTunes library, so I would like to be able to listen to them on my iPhone and use Apple Music for other things. Unfortunately, iCloud is useless for lossless files as they are replaced by 256 kbs AAC files. (Surprisingly, if you check the properties of a lossless file uploaded to iCloud, it shows the same size and bit rate as the lossless original, but when you save it for offline listening, it's saved as 256 kbs AAC.)

It seems that there is no convenient way to be able to sync lossless files to iOS devices and use Apple Music at the same time. What I do now is to disable iCloud Music on my iPhone, upload files from my iTunes library, and then re-enable iCloud Music. Unfortunately, the process of disabling and re-enabling iCloud music will delete all Apple Music previously downloaded for offline listening, so you will have to re-download it again. Also, iCloud Music in iOS is quite buggy: sometimes I can't re-enable iCloud Music (it switches off by itself) without restarting the iPhone.

Once I came across some third-party software that can upload music to iOS devices without iTunes, but I did not like the interface and did not want to pay for it. If somebody knows good software that allows to bypass iTunes, I would like to hear about it.

 

[msvadi]

There are a number of third party music players that allow transfer of files directly into those apps. I'm sure at least some of them support lossless.

Can you please give some examples? Something like that would be awesome: I could use the stock Music app for Apple Music and a third-party app to listen to files from my iTunes collection

 

[Paco II]

Can you please give some examples?

I do not use ALAC, but I'm sure a search in the App Store will return something.