Can’t transfer music from iTunes to iPhone

[Chew Toy McCoy]

What gives? Now that I have this massive drive on my iPhone 7 I want to do a onetime bulk transfer of all my music from iTunes on my computer to my iPhone and then all cloud based after that. In the iPhone music settings I turned off Apple Music and the cloud syncing. I plug the iPhone into my Mac and in the iPhone prefs in iTunes I set music to sync entire library. This instantly shows how much more space will be taken up on the drive usage bar at the bottom but when I hit done/apply it instantly goes back to the old drive space graph and doesn’t transfer anything.

I read about some workaround creating a smart playlist that includes all your music and then downloading it all from the cloud. Screw that. The author said it took about 3 days to do their 4,500 tracks. I have 15,000 I want to transfer.

The process worked without a hitch a while back with my iPad Pro on iOS 9. What’s the issue now?

 

[Scythe]

What gives? Now that I have this massive drive on my iPhone 7 I want to do a onetime bulk transfer of all my music from iTunes on my computer to my iPhone and then all cloud based after that. In the iPhone music settings I turned off Apple Music and the cloud syncing. I plug the iPhone into my Mac and in the iPhone prefs in iTunes I set music to sync entire library. This instantly shows how much more space will be taken up on the drive usage bar at the bottom but when I hit done/apply it instantly goes back to the old drive space graph and doesn’t transfer anything.

I read about some workaround creating a smart playlist that includes all your music and then downloading it all from the cloud. Screw that. The author said it took about 3 days to do their 4,500 tracks. I have 15,000 I want to transfer.

The process worked without a hitch a while back with my iPad Pro on iOS 9. What’s the issue now?

Go into the settings and switch off 'iCloud music library' on your phone.
Sync as normal with iTunes.
Once complete, switch 'iCloud music library' back on, on your phone.
Click 'merge' to merge the two libraries together.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Go into the settings and switch off 'iCloud music library' on your phone.
Sync as normal with iTunes.
Once complete, switch 'iCloud music library' back on, on your phone.
Click 'merge' to merge the two libraries together.

That's what I did before and just tried again. Doesn't work.

 

[Mrbobb]

I hit done/apply it instantly goes back to the old drive

Uh... this only saves the setting, you still have to hit the SYNC button?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Uh... this only saves the setting, you still have to hit the SYNC button?

The sync button isn't available. It's there but it isn't a selectable option as if there wasn't any changes made to the settings and therefor you don't need to resync.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Alright then. I don’t usually get the Apple glitches that a lot of people experience but it seems once a year I get a problem that absolutely nobody else on earth is experiencing and web inquiries are useless.

 

[BigDO]

Alright then. I don’t usually get the Apple glitches that a lot of people experience but it seems once a year I get a problem that absolutely nobody else on earth is experiencing and web inquiries are useless.

I had the same problem. Also tried to uncheck the icloud library and then transfer, didn't work. The only way sync seems to work now is via the cloud. Sorry.

 

[i hate phones]

It's been awhile since i've transferred music through iTunes, but is there still a manually manage music option? then you could just select all music in iTunes and drag and drop to iPhone?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I had the same problem. Also tried to uncheck the icloud library and then transfer, didn't work. The only way sync seems to work now is via the cloud. Sorry.

At least its somewhat comforting to know at least one other person is having this problem. If this was people's photos instead of music there would be rioting in the streets.

It's been awhile since i've transferred music through iTunes, but is there still a manually manage music option? then you could just select all music in iTunes and drag and drop to iPhone?

Doesn't work. I've tried all methods that worked without issue before iOS 10 and the iPhone 7. It's inexcusable that Apple would finally give us massive drives and then kill wired transfer of large libraries. Its like some weird extension of removing the headphone jack in favor of wireless options, except there's a big difference between just ponying up for one of the many Bluetooth headphone options and attempting to wirelessly transfer over a 100GB of files through Apple's completely unreliable and slow network.

 

[burgman]

At least its somewhat comforting to know at least one other person is having this problem. If this was people's photos instead of music there would be rioting in the streets.



Doesn't work. I've tried all methods that worked without issue before iOS 10 and the iPhone 7. It's inexcusable that Apple would finally give us massive drives and then kill wired transfer of large libraries. Its like some weird extension of removing the headphone jack in favor of wireless options, except there's a big difference between just ponying up for one of the many Bluetooth headphone options and attempting to wirelessly transfer over a 100GB of files through Apple's completely unreliable and slow network.

Did you try restarting Itunes? If you turn Icloud Music back on does your phone sync with Itunes? Are you on Windows or Mac? I assume everything has the newest updates.

 

[i hate phones]

just something random to try... have you tried reauthorizing your computer? I think its in the itunes menu under store

and what happened when you tried manually manage music by dragging and dropping?

 

[rugmankc]

i thought i read somewhere once you subscribe to AM you can't manually sync anymore.

 

[i hate phones]

i thought i read somewhere once you subscribe to AM you can't manually sync anymore.

You have to turn off iCloud Library and then you should be able to.

I'm curious if the OP owns the music or if its apple music tracks that they're trying to transfer over... maybe that's an issue with doing it manually?

 

[rugmankc]

You have to turn off iCloud Library and then you should be able to.

I'm curious if the OP owns the music or if its apple music tracks that they're trying to transfer over... maybe that's an issue with doing it manually?

While subscribed I never had that choice anywhere. Cancelled AM and started iTunes Match. It does what I need atm.

 

[Steve686]

I vaguely remember a little issue a while back regarding this.

Be cautious because if I remember correctly, it was even harder getting music OFF of my phone when i maunually synced while using Apple Music. For some reason, my iMac wouldn't recognize the music on the phone, and the slide to delete individual songs option on the phone didn't work, either.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I’m on all the current versions of iOS 10, El Capitan, and iTunes. Don’t remember exactly when the 9.7” iPad Pro came out but I got one on release day and transferred all my music tracks without issue. I own the vast majority of the songs in my library and am both a Match and Apple Music subscriber. That was also the case when I transferred tracks to my iPad Pro.


I’ll probably try things again for the umpteenth time this weekend, and I appreciate all the helpful suggestions and responses, but the fact that nobody has responded that they have successfully transferred recently doesn’t give me high hopes.

 

[i hate phones]

I’m on all the current versions of iOS 10, El Capitan, and iTunes. Don’t remember exactly when the 9.7” iPad Pro came out but I got one on release day and transferred all my music tracks without issue. I own the vast majority of the songs in my library and am both a Match and Apple Music subscriber. That was also the case when I transferred tracks to my iPad Pro.


I’ll probably try things again for the umpteenth time this weekend, and I appreciate all the helpful suggestions and responses, but the fact that nobody has responded that they have successfully transferred recently doesn’t give me high hopes.

I tried just for fun.

Iphone 7, sierra, latest iTunes subscribe to Match and Music... When I plug my phone into iTunes I see a "manually manage videos"... I unplugged phone, turned off iCloud music on phone, plugged phone back in and option changed to "manually manage music and videos"... I could then drag and drop my music to my iPhone successfully. disconnected phone, turned iCloud library back on, chose to keep music that was on my device and everything seems good.

 

[Vin89]

I'm transferring 142GB (19857 tracks) worth of music as I type this. Using Windows 10, latest version of iTunes. Syncing via USB lightning cable. iPhone 7 Plus running on iOS 10.0.2. Definitely possible, have another hour or so to go.

In itunes, I have Sync Music checked, entire library. I backup the phone to my PC, not iCloud.

 

[cc999]

What gives? Now that I have this massive drive on my iPhone 7 I want to do a onetime bulk transfer of all my music from iTunes on my computer to my iPhone and then all cloud based after that. In the iPhone music settings I turned off Apple Music and the cloud syncing. I plug the iPhone into my Mac and in the iPhone prefs in iTunes I set music to sync entire library. This instantly shows how much more space will be taken up on the drive usage bar at the bottom but when I hit done/apply it instantly goes back to the old drive space graph and doesn’t transfer anything.

I read about some workaround creating a smart playlist that includes all your music and then downloading it all from the cloud. Screw that. The author said it took about 3 days to do their 4,500 tracks. I have 15,000 I want to transfer.

The process worked without a hitch a while back with my iPad Pro on iOS 9. What’s the issue now?

This also happened to me. I tried everything. Finally this is what worked. I did a hard reset of the iPhone. Then plugged back into my computer and iTunes worked.

Power plus down volume until you see the apple picture.

Try that and report back.

Cc

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

The iPhone hard reboot method seems have worked. Thanks!

No big deal but I'm getting warnings some tracks can't be transferred because the files can't be found. Um, if the files can't be found then what exactly is it referencing to let it know there is a missing file?