Manually Manage Music - Help

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Ok so Ive never put any music on my iPhone before. I always just used an iPod or listened to stuff in my dropbox from the dropbox app.

Now i have some stuff I want to put on the phone bc my dropbox is full. I have an iPhone 4S. I tried dragging the mp3s i wanted to the iPhone in iTunes and nothing happened. After a quick google search, i find I need to checkmark the box "manually manage music and videos". Ok - makes sense.

So i check that box, hit apply, and iTunes says something along the lines of "this iPhone was previously synched with another library. To manually manage music you'll need to click 'erase and synch' which will delete all content on your phone"

Firstly, this is the only computer my iPhone 4S has ever plugged into, so im not sure why its thinking otherwise.

Secondly, it's going to delete all my notes, pictures, contacts, texts, etc. just so i can put 10 mp3s manually on the device? I dont get it. How can i put music on my iPhone without deleting my content? Theres currently no music or video on my iphone (other than video in my camera roll). Is the wording of the message more ominous than it actually is, and it means it will only delee all music/videos currently on the device?

Pretty nerve-racking experience just to put a few songs on this phone

Thanks for any info you can offer

 

I'm always wary of sync because I'm scared I'm going to accidentally delete something from the phone, and then ti will delete it from the computer, which is not something I would ever want.

So the only thing it will delete is anything thats in the Music on the iPhone? What a scary, vague warning it gave haha

 

But you could delete it from the phone, then drag it again, no?

 

Makes sense. Again I've never had any music on my phone, so I've never first-hand experienced the need to edit song info once it was already on there.

Maybe setting up a special playlist in iTunes and just synching that with the phone would be the fastest way. If you only synch a playlist, you can't actually have any songs erased from your computer, correct?