I want to upload a whole bunch of songs from my desktop iTunes library to my iPad, and play them through a dock like this one that I have already. I thought this was a simple thing to do, but my google searches are not answering my question.
Do I need iTunes on my iPad? Do I already have iTunes on my iPad? What is this Apple Music thing that keeps coming up every time I search for “play music on my iPad?” Do I have to pay a subscription to Apple Music to play my own music on my own iPad?
You have a lot choices for music players on your iPad. I use 3 right now: iTunes (AKA Apple Music), Amazon Music, and Pandora. Since you already have an iTune library on your desktop, Apple Music is probably the easiest for you to use. Yes, it is on your iPad. It shows up as a white square with a multi-color musical note and the word “music” underneath it.
The instructions mention turning on iCloud music library. I don’t recommend it. It will delete your songs from your device and tie you to Apple. It’s a pain in the ass, frankly.
Thanks for your response. I do have Apple Music on my iPad, but it says I have a three-month free trial. Any ideas about the cost after the three-months? Apple Music is the same as iTunes, except for your iPad?
The Apple Music app on your iPad plays music a couple of different ways. One is via Apple’s streaming service, which is what the three month trial is all about. I really love that service, but it doesn’t sound like it’s what your looking for so let’s skip over that for now…
The other option you have is the traditional model where the Apple Music app on your iPad plays music stored locally on the tablet. To get music on there you have a couple options, the most straightforward being plugging your iPad into your computer, then looking for that iPad to appear as a connected device in your computer’s iTunes app. Then you just drag and drop what you want (songs, albums, playlists etc) onto your iPad and you’re done. I can’t describe it in full detail since I haven’t used iTunes at all since I’ve switched to the streaming model. But i hope the description is close enough to get you where you need to be.
Ah, got it! I have no interest in a streaming service, you’re right. So I can just play my library that I uploaded to my iPad with Apple Music, but not have to pay for it - good. That’s what I’m looking for.
From the Wikipedia entry on Apple Music - “The original iOS version of Apple Music received mixed reviews, with criticism directed towards a user interface deemed “not intuitive” and a “mess”.” Yeah. I had to start a thread to figure out what the hell to do to get music playing on my iPad - this is not as obvious and easy as it should be.
Every version of iTunes for both desktop and iOS has had a UI worse than the last. I honestly don’t understand how they do it. They go out of their way to violate every single one of the commandments in the human interface guidelines that Apple pioneered 35 years ago. It deliberately obfuscates where things are, provides zero user feedback about what it’s doing, constantly annoys the user to turn on features that they don’t want to enable, and presents the same information in wildly different formats in different places for indiscernible reasons. iTunes has been around for 17 years; why the hell haven’t they figured it out yet?
iTunes is about 30% of the reason I dropped out of the Apple ecosystem a few years ago. Look, “sync” means make the same files be on the phone and computer, right? What the hell is so hard about that? I got so tired of spending a half hour after each sync trying to figure out why half my files weren’t on my phone any more.
That’s a very good idea - I have something like 10,000 songs, and if I lose them…I will NOT be happy.
Yup, I clicked on that. It was the, “Three month free trial” that was worrying me.
I concur that the “upgrades” are not making things better. Way back when, my husband and I each had an iMac, and we were able to share our music by calling up the other’s computer and dragging and dropping all the music we wanted - easiest thing in the world. Apple took that away a long time ago, and they have never brought it back. I suppose they think the cloud is working that way, but I don’t use the cloud, and don’t plan to start.
A recent OS upgrade has stolen the focus of my keyboard controls for iTunes away from iTunes and given them to YouTube - I have iTunes running all the time I am at my computer, and I watch maybe one video a day. If I could choose which app to give preference to, it would be iTunes, but I don’t seem to have that option.
If the music on the computer was purchase though Apple, it should just appear in iTunes on the iPad.
If it was from other sources, such as ripping CDs, Pork Rind’s advice is the way to go if you have enough storage space on your iPad to hold it all.
If it won’t fit on the iPad, your other option is iTunes Match, which will let you play all your non-Apple-puchased music on any of your devices for $25/year.
I once set up Kodi (customizable media box that will play locally stored files, files from a networked file server, files streaming over the Internet (including Youtube), files via AirPlay, etc.) on an old IPad as a music player, and it worked fine, including custom skins and so forth, but I had to “jailbreak” the IPad to do this because it seems Apple won’t add their app to the official app store. Free software (GPL) so no problem with limited trials.
