There are other threads on this topic, but the most recent is ten years old. I thought there might be some more recent developments.
My wife and I both have Apple iPhones and are very happy with these devices. We have no desire to switch to an Android platform. However, iTunes for Windows is absolutely crap software. I simply cannot adequately describe how awful this software is. I’ve spent more than an hour syncing a new CD to my phone. Looking over my library, I have lots of albums with the incorrect artwork. (The new CDs, by Peter Gabriel – a pretty much A-list artist – couldn’t find the relevant artwork.) Other albums have artwork completely unrelated to the album at all. Syncing to the phone is cumbersome and unreliable. It’s just nuts.
Is there some other software that can manage my music library on a Windows computer and sync it to an iPhone with up-to-date iOS?
I think I would go back to 8-track tapes before I would use iTunes.
If I were on a Windows machine (I’m not) and just looking for a music playback software, I’d use WinAmp. But you want to synch with an iPhone, huh? Sorry, I got no clue. Apple doesn’t make it especially easy for 3rd-party softwares to synch and organize stuff on their handheld devices.
Just a few weeks ago, Apple split iTunes for Windows into 3 separate apps — Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Devices. You’ll need Windows 10 or later if you want to try those. No idea if it’s any better (probably not), but maybe it solves whatever syncing problem you’re having at least.
So you would use the new Apple Devices app to manage your iPhones instead of iTunes.
I loved iTunes back in the day, especially for the way it’d manage playlists. It made organizing/sync’ing music and my thousands of audiobooks easy.
I read and heard from friends that things changed with new iPhones and Mac OSes, so I refused to upgrade my laptop or my phone, so I’d be sure that iTunes would keep my stuff how I liked it.
A perfect plan, and it worked for the last twenty-five years, but finally both the phone and the laptop died. And the new ones have (gasp) new operating systems… oh, no, what’ll I …
…
…wait, the new “Music” app looks like iTunes? And still has all my playlists, and all my stuff still syncs perfectly with my phone. What sorcery be this?!?
Though now that I’ve discovered free audiobooks*, I rely on iTunes (sorry, “Music”) less and less.
*Though I really want to own my media, I can’t say no to free 'books through the library (the Libby app), and, for the ones with long waitlists, cheap 'books from Libro.fm.
(I refuse to use Audible because i hate DRM… but Libro.fm gives you basic mp3s or other formats that can be downloaded to a laptop or phone.)
So those are my alternatives to iTunes, for anyone whose focus is listening to books.
Yeah, that surprised me. I was like some here “What, they changed the name? How dare they! I’ll … well, I guess I’ll keep using it 'til I find something better.”
The fact is, my playlists (“Music to Phone” and “Books to Phone”) update whenever I sync my Brand Spankin’ New Phone to my Brand Spankin’ New Laptop!
I have iTunes for Windows and an iPod. I’ve been considering transferring my iTunes library to my Android phone (which I am currently upgrading). I notice that the Apple Music sites on transferring always specifically call out that “you can play all of your purchased content” from iTunes, which I take to means that any rips from CDs or other downloads you’ve imported are gonna be gone, gone, gone…
Am i right? Anyone had success moving an iTunes library (purchased, imported, playlists, etc.) onto an Android phone?
I have no purchased songs in my iTunes library. All of my music is ripped from CDs or digitized from vinyl. That being the case, it was a simple matter to copy the iTunes music folder structure to my Android phone. I told my Android music players where the music was located, and both players that I use imported all the songs and albums and artwork with no problems.
Playlists, however, were a different animal. I exported my iTunes playlists to m3u files, and then changed the filename string within each file to one that matched the filename structure on my Android phone. Then I copied them to the phone and imported them into my music apps. So it certainly wasn’t a seamless process to move the playlists from Windows to Android.
The music player apps I use on Android are Musicolet and AIMP.
Unfortunately I can’t help with your use case, but I thought this would be a good place to post a warning about iTunes and the changes they’ve instituted over the years. I hope you don’t mind.
I am a (former) Windows user of iTunes. Beware that if you purchased any iTunes music before they became Apple Music, you might be screwed if you purchased any of that music under a different email address/“AppleID”.
I purchased iTunes music under three different email addresses over the years and was recently informed that the music purchased under the older email addresses was no longer available and not recoverable - according to them, if I wanted those again, I’d have to repurchase them. Luckily for me, I’d ripped almost all of those old purchases to CD and I was able to restore them to my online library (as a Windows user I have created a cheapo version of a music server using Windows Media Player and a soundbar in my living room - I don’t store music on my phone at all since I also have a subscription to Sirius/XM and use that instead). I have no interest in paying Apple Music a monthly fee for their ‘service’ and I won’t be using iTunes ever again.
It doesn’t surprise me that you are having these problems - I suspect both platforms are perfectly happy to ensure a shitty experience for you.
What exactly happened here? Do you still have the passwords to the Apple IDs you used for purchase? Or were you trying to re-download the songs, but Apple no longer had the distribution rights?
One of the email addresses I don’t have any more - it was with an ISP that we had to leave behind when we moved years ago, so I have no way to access that.
The second problematical email address I can still access, but even with updating the password in the iTunes app, I was not allowed in - I suspect it’s because I used that email address before Apple instituted the “Apple ID;” it was still just an iTunes login back then.
I contacted Apple/iTunes support, and they told me that regardless I would not be able to access any of my old content under those old logins - the only stuff I can still get to is under my current Apple ID login. I also can’t access any of this stuff on either of my old iPods since they used the old addresses. That sure doesn’t sound like a distribution problem to me; it sounds like them just not wanting to bother to track individual users’ purchases over time as their systems (and my user ids) changed.
I’m not sure how they think it’s fair that I repurchase this music, or if I wanted to access it on my phone, I would need to get an Apple Music subscription and pay for that monthly. I paid once. That’s enough. Screw 'em. I won’t buy anything from them again.