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Is a subscription to Apple Music required to synch owned music to iPhone 14?

I just upgraded from an 8 Plus to the 14 Pro. I have 80 gb of music that I have copied from cd's that I own to my MacBook that I have been synching with my iPhone 8 for the last few years. After restoring the new 14 from a backup, I found that all of the songs that I had on my computer would not play on my new phone. Music that I had purchased from Apple did play. After searching this community and the internet and spending about 3hr with apple support on phone and in person at the local Genius Bar, the only thing we could figure out was that you have to have a subscription to Apple Music to transfer the actual music files to my phone so that I can play them. I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THE REQUIREMENT TO SUBSCRIBE TO AN APPLE PRODUCT TO SYNC AND PLAY MUSIC ON MY PHONE THAT I LEGALLY OWN that I have been able to synch in the past. Don't always have internet so access to music on phone is important. Do I have any recourse or is there a way to synch my owned music to my phone?

iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16

Posted on Sep 30, 2022 1:03 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 30, 2022 2:46 PM

Bring up Music, then in the Library section on the top left,

click Downloaded


Then click Songs section. This will bring all your songs in Alphabetical order.


Look to the right of every song title there is a small gray down arrow, click that

It might bring up a tab that asks if you want to download among other choices like delete from library and such, but your looking for something that says download for that song, which is what you want.


This will allow you to play your music with OUT being online.

If the download section doesn’t come up there, try tapping the three dots and look for download.


5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 30, 2022 2:46 PM in response to pas2010

Bring up Music, then in the Library section on the top left,

click Downloaded


Then click Songs section. This will bring all your songs in Alphabetical order.


Look to the right of every song title there is a small gray down arrow, click that

It might bring up a tab that asks if you want to download among other choices like delete from library and such, but your looking for something that says download for that song, which is what you want.


This will allow you to play your music with OUT being online.

If the download section doesn’t come up there, try tapping the three dots and look for download.


Oct 1, 2022 8:43 AM in response to pas2010

These are the actions I have done so far:

restored from recent backup and remote backups from Mac after restoring to factory setting, restore from backup on iCloud, set and reset country preference to USA, separate attempts to synch with music set to synch all music, no music, then all music then only selected artists, selected downloaded artists, reset apple credit card info, attempted to synch with show Apple Music toggled on and then attempted with toggle off. Same result each time. Music purchased from apple is downloaded and accessible. All the music copied to computer from cd is visible in my library, all the playlists,genre, albums, artists show up on my iPhone library but the actual file with music is not copied. When I try to click on the file name in the library I get the message that the music can not be accessed in my country or region. All of the music is playable on my 2021 MacBook Pro and 2020 iPad which are both running great Apple Music app ( ie the new iTunes ). All three of my apple products have been updated to the most recent operating systems.


Is anyone else having this problem? I have also written a comment about this on the apple.com\feedback site. Thanks for reading this post and any other suggestion would be appreciated.

Is a subscription to Apple Music required to synch owned music to iPhone 14?

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