Is There a Better Music Player to Sync Mac Library with iPhone?

[wonderings]

Seems strange that $25 is the hold up for simply having something work. You can look at it as a backup of your music as well as it all goes in the cloud. $25 a year for cloud backup of your music collection is pretty cheap.

Benefits:
- Does exactly what you want
- Your music is safe and backed up in the cloud if something horrible was to happen to your house or computer
- It just works with no headaches

Cons:
- $25

My time and piece of mind is worth far more then that amount of money. Of all the subscriptions it is the cheapest and again does what you want and offers the security of keeping all your valuable music that you have meticulously catalogued safe and secure in the magical cloud.

 

[landshark2]

Seems strange that $25 is the hold up for simply having something work. You can look at it as a backup of your music as well as it all goes in the cloud. $25 a year for cloud backup of your music collection is pretty cheap.

Benefits:
- Does exactly what you want
- Your music is safe and backed up in the cloud if something horrible was to happen to your house or computer
- It just works with no headaches

Cons:
- $25

My time and piece of mind is worth far more then that amount of money. Of all the subscriptions it is the cheapest and again does what you want and offers the security of keeping all your valuable music that you have meticulously catalogued safe and secure in the magical cloud.

I have three questions for you regarding iTunes Match; does it "honor" my painstakingly edited sort tags when syncing to my iPhone, does it "honor" my painstakingly corrected album art, and must I really upgrade to the newest OS ???

Subscribe to iTunes Match - Apple Support

iTunes Match gives you access to all of your music on all of your devices, even songs that you've imported from other sources such as CDs.

support.apple.com

To subscribe to iTunes Match, update your Mac to the latest version of macOS.

That is quoted from the current iTunes Match page, and the Music App in Tahoe is a HARD NO for me.

 

[landshark2]

For sorting, you could select all the Frank Zappa tracks that are listed under Z, then Get Info, Sorting, clear the contents of the 'sort as' field which will probably be Zappa, Frank. It will then default to be the same as the name.

The goal is to have the album view on the iPhone be the same as the album view on the Mini / MBP.

The only time I view tracks on any device is when I've selected an album.

Albums by Zephyr and ZZ Top are the only albums that should show after albums by Zappa.

 

[wonderings]

I have three questions for you regarding iTunes Match; does it "honor" my painstakingly edited sort tags when syncing to my iPhone, does it "honor" my painstakingly corrected album art, and must I really upgrade to the newest OS ???

Subscribe to iTunes Match - Apple Support

iTunes Match gives you access to all of your music on all of your devices, even songs that you've imported from other sources such as CDs.

support.apple.com

To subscribe to iTunes Match, update your Mac to the latest version of macOS.

That is quoted from the current iTunes Match page, and the Music App in Tahoe is a HARD NO for me.

I can do some tests to see if you give me more info on the sort tags. I have a bunch of lectures that were taken from old tapes so they were never digital to begin with, have no tagging or artwork. Just now I made artwork with ChatGPT and added it via iTunes on my MacBook Pro. I then check in the music app on my iPhone and the custom artwork is there. So you can check that one off.

I can't see why any tag edited or applied in Apple Music would not sync over, my iPhone is identical to my computer.

What OS version are you using?

 

[sgtaylor5]

Since this thread, as far as I can tell, was supposed to be alternate music players, here’s my take:

Sonora music player local to the phone music player. I had to copy my music as MP3 and only as MP3 to iCloud and then moved it into Sonora‘s folder.

Swinsian on the Mac

I don’t have any problems with anything being changed.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I have three questions for you regarding iTunes Match; does it "honor" my painstakingly edited sort tags when syncing to my iPhone, does it "honor" my painstakingly corrected album art, and must I really upgrade to the newest OS ???

NO -- Do not use iTunes Match if you care about your own metadata.
I learned that one the hard way and spent a full year rebuilding my Library.

I will NEVER use iTM again.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Since this thread, as far as I can tell, was supposed to be alternate music players, here’s my take:

Sonora music player local to the phone music player. I had to copy my music as MP3 and only as MP3 to iCloud and then moved it into Sonora‘s folder.

Swinsian on the Mac

Can you share more about why you had to copy your music as MP3 and only MP3 to iCloud to make that work? Sonora's page suggests it plays all formats. Virtually all my music is in AAC (no DRM) with a few in lossless (of which I also have the original FLAC/WAV). I have no interest in converting those files to MP3 nor using iCloud to sync my music but yours otherwise sounds like a good solution for me if I could avoid that piece of it.