How does one move music from iPhone to Mac?

[icanhazmac]

When I traded my 2017 Dumpster Fire MBP and got my new M1 MBP I forgot to backup my music (from CD) and when I restored my backup it was all gone. Luckily it all still resides on my iPhone but I cannot figure out how to "reverse import". Any ideas? Why doesn't Apple make this easier? What happens when someone has their whole library on their phone and buy a Mac for the first time?

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

iMazing

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Assuming all of the music is acquired legally through perhaps the Music/iTunes Store for that phone owner who hasn't previously purchased a Mac, when they do buy that Mac, they will tie it to the same iTunes Store ID and the music will download to the Mac. If they've recorded some of their own music on the phone, when they sync the phone with that Mac, it should sync over.

And ASAP after you resolve this situation, I encourage you to get your lone source of media synched up with a Mac (or PC) and get a Time Machine disc or two attached to that Mac (or equivalent to PC) so you have backups of what is on the computer and what is on that phone.

As is, you at least have ONE device with your personal media on it. What if you lost that device? Stolen? Destroyed? Your post reads like you would have NO recovery at all. Trusting it all on any one device is begging to lose it all at any random point in time... for all kinds of possible reasons.

 

[icanhazmac]

Assuming all of the music is acquired legally through perhaps the Music/iTunes Store for that phone owner who hasn't previously purchased a Mac, when they do buy that Mac, they will tie it to the same iTunes Store ID and the music will download to the Mac. If they've recorded some of their own music on the phone, when they sync the phone with that Mac, it should sync over.

And ASAP after you resolve this situation, I encourage you to get your lone source of media synched up with a Mac (or PC) and get a Time Machine disc or two attached to that Mac (or equivalent to PC) so you have backups of what is on the computer and what is on that phone.

As is, you at least have ONE device with your personal media on it. What if you lost that device? Stolen? Destroyed? Your post reads like you would have NO recovery at all. Trusting it all on any one device is begging to lose it all at any random point in time... for all kinds of possible reasons.

It's all legal, it is all my ripped CDs. Issue is, one can sync from Mac to iPhone easily, getting things from your iPhone to Mac is not possible as far as I can tell without some 3rd party software (such as @Mr_Brightside_@ suggested) or evidently a subscription to Apple Music. Really stupid on Apple's part to make it this difficult.

Yes, I have already re-evaluated my backups, I simply never anticipated Apple would make it this difficult.

 

[icanhazmac]

Thanks all, I picked up iMazing and CarbonCopyCloner on Black Friday deals! iMazing moved all my music from my iPhone back to the Mac quickly and with no issues.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Now pick up some cheap hard drives and turn on Time Machine on that Mac: ideally 2 TM backups, one at home and one offsite, regularly rotating the two so the offsite TM backup is pretty fresh. I rotate my set every 30 days. One complete offsite backup will cover you in fire/flood/theft scenarios. Alternatively, you can use CCC the same way. But key is twin backups with one always offsite.