iphone, playlists, upload my own mp3

[MBrokensword]

Hello; I'm new to having a cell phone and have a used iphone se gen 2. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to upload TO the phone some mp3 songs and have either Music play them in a playlist or some other app to do this. Spent an hour with a supposed Apple expert with no joy. I don't use icloud, or any cloud service and would like my phone to basically act like my ipod once did. Is there way? I'm using an older iMac (High Sierra), iTunes (12.8), and cannot get iOS17.5 to sync. Which is fine if I can find a way to do what I outlined above. I have figured out how to upload via Airdrop, the music in mp3 form. I put them in 'Files'. That's as far as I can get. They'll each play fine. When I go to Music, create new playlist, there's no option for me to tell the app where the files are ON the phone. Which seems odd in so many ways. Has anyone else accomplished what is so easy on my old mac, on their iphone? What is the secret?

 

[kitKAC]

Install a more recent version of macOS that supports iOS 17 so you can put music on your device.

 

[MBrokensword]

Install a more recent version of macOS that supports iOS 17 so you can put music on your device.

yes, that's the standard response; so that means I have no way of Music finding and playlisting uploaded files (mp3) on my iphone? I can't even get the app to use my computer as a music source to draw from, apparently, to create a library from which I can set up a playlist. Something my cheap non Apple mp3 player can do? Have the mighty fallen that far? I think if it comes to that, I'll just update the mp3 player to include bluetooth and not bother. I had suggested to my wife when she went for walks, to just take her phone for music and leave the ipod at home but guess that won't work for her now, either.