iPod touch Apple Music and iPod Touch?

[th0masp]

I have an iPod touch 6th Gen here, it has always been managed manually via iTunes and since I didn't like the 'Music' app when I originally got the device due to lack of crossfade, bright interface and just the whole navigation that felt so wrong coming from an iPod Nano, my player of choice has always been Vox. Haven't looked at 'Music' since 2018, basically.

Nevertheless if I open the Music app on the iPod I can play my content and use iTunes playlists just fine.

Now I'm trying to hook it up on a new Mac running Tahoe to manage (again manually). I understand iTunes is no longer an option but I totally don't get Music on the Mac: it shows a list of all the songs on device but otherwise doesn't seem to let me do anything. I don't see any covers, there's no context menu to access file details or manage selected songs, it doesn't see my playlists, etc.
Heck, I can't even play back the songs stored on the iPod. The player interface is greyed out. Firmware is latest.

How's this supposed to replace iTunes for manually adding and editing the songs on device? 😵‍💫 Is it just a storefront and a sync function for content purchased from said store?

 

[th0masp]

Ok, so to add: if an audio file is stored on the local disk and opened in Music then I have all the iTunes options back I'm looking for - but nothing seems to work when the songs are only stored on the iPod. That is definitely different to how iTunes used to operate.

 

[Soondae]

I believe the answer you are looking for is is not to use Music as the APP to manage the iPod, after iTunes went away Apple moved management to the FINDER APP. Open Finder and scroll down to see your connected iPod, you'll then have all the options available to manage your iPod that you were used to with iTunes.

Same is true for managing my audio library on my iPhone and iPad.

 

[th0masp]

I believe the answer you are looking for is is not to use Music as the APP to manage the iPod, after iTunes went away Apple moved management to the FINDER APP. Open Finder and scroll down to see your connected iPod, you'll then have all the options available to manage your iPod that you were used to with iTunes.

Same is true for managing my audio library on my iPhone and iPad.

Oh I see what you mean! But same as with 'Music': in order for this to work it appears I'll have to tick the synchronisation-option which with my current setup would wipe the iPod (since the songs are only stored on there) and replace them with those from my (empty) media library.

The option to manage directly instead of syncing seems to have removed entirely from Apple's tools?

I mean it's perfectly possible to export all the songs back onto the computer and rebuild from there but it's 40 gigs of storage occupied - and probably loss of all my playlists. 😵‍💫

 

[Soondae]

No, I don't use synch, as you state I prefer to manage my library manually. And actually I do it from the Music APP I just realized, sorry for misleading you with my earlier post as I haven't done it in awhile. I use the Finder to back up my devices. In Music I select albums, then scroll to the album or playlist I want to Add and just drag and drop on the iPod or iPhone connected appearing in Devices. Unfortunately my iPod is at my condo in another city so I can't confirm that it works on Tahoe. I did just attach my iPone 17 Pro to my M4 Mac Mini and Music works the proper way (same way) allowing me to add or remove tracks, albums and playlists. I will visit my condo next month but the Mac I have there is stuck on MacOS 18 as it is an Intel Mac but still will use the Music APP. I will revisit this thread and repost..

 

[Soondae]

Oh, I think I understand now what you are complaining about, when you access the Device in Music you are only displayed the contents by title, or you can select by artist or album. No Album art is available. Also I cannot play any of the music on the iPhone from the Music APP on the Mac. The only function I can perform is to delete songs, albums or playlists on the device.

 

[th0masp]

Oh, I think I understand now what you are complaining about, when you access the Device in Music you are only displayed the contents by title, or you can select by artist or album. No Album art is available. Also I cannot play any of the music on the iPhone from the Music APP on the Mac. The only function I can perform is to delete songs, albums or playlists on the device.

Yeah exactly that's what I tripped over: I have no media library in Music (and never had one in iTunes either). iTunes lets you do that: you just drag and drop files/albums from Finder into the iTunes window and straight onto the iPod icon. These songs then never register in any media library if you have set iTunes to manually manage.

So you're saying you actually do have a collection of songs stored on your computer and registered in Music and from there you drag selected songs over to the mobile device - just that it's not full-auto sync-everything but instead you can be selective about it? That's what filed under syncing. 🙂

Yeah I can see how one would go about setting this up but in my case I believe that it would wipe the device and I'd have to repopulate it from scratch while keeping a media library on the computer from now on.

 

[th0masp]

One more thing - are playlists created in 'Music' compatible with the VOX player available on the app store? https://apps.apple.com/de/app/vox-mp3-flac-music-player/id916215494

I'd appreciate if somebody could test that. Basically just load up VOX and see if your playlists appear under 'Collections' and are playable.


While I can convince myself to create a media library and sync it to the iPod Touch from now on like a good boy 🤪 I can absolutely not convince myself to loose compatibility with VOX in the process and instead use the 'Music' app that ships with iOS 12 (last one to support the Touch).

 

[Soondae]

Yes my complete library is saved on my Mac and accessed via the Music APP, I have meticulously edited the tracks, fixed all the album art, made it completely pristine. I was on a remote assignment on the island of Cyprus and had plenty of time to work on the library, ripping 200+ CDA to 256 MP4 in the iTunes APP. Also had to goto places like Amazon to download album art for items that the ripper meta data couldn't find, not to mention edit song titles that were incorrect.

IMO it is worthwhile to do so and then save multiple copies of the library across network and drives. I also have VOX but I usually only use it to play FLAC recordings I have that of course cannot be in my Apple Mac music library though I have found a nice program that will re-encode the FLAC files to MP3 (Audacity?) Have you considered programs designed to extract music files from iPhones and iPods such as iTunes sweeper or Waltr? That is all the advice I can give you, since I am fully invested in the Apple device kingdom I had no issue building a pristine Music library. Oh and my 1 remaining iPod is a Nano 7, wish it had more than 16gb memory.

 

[th0masp]

Sounds familiar. Mine is also largely ripped from CDs. The difference is just that I edited all these songs directly on the iPod. 😉

I even had that same model of Nano until it broke (hardwood floors...) and I use VOX not for FLAC but because the Music app is so incredibly inept compared to the player software on the Nano. It's like the developers of Music never even looked at what the iPods were like to use. Bad enough I was close to just returning the Touch and purchasing some other player instead.

VOX just emerged as the next best thing to use (tried a few others as well): you lose ratings and the ability to set a playback range within a song and possibly some other more esoteric stuff that iTunes lets you store in the audiofile metadata - but the user experience is nice and fluid and quite similar to the Nano and the iTunes playlists carry over.