In addition to adding your own music, there are several other important features to know about. For example, you can make an Apple Music song your iPhone alarm or connect Shazam to Apple Music. You might also want to check out the best Siri shortcuts for Apple Music.
To do so, you just need to consider your iPod as an external drive from which you can take music. Once extracted from the iPod, you can add music to your iTunes or Apple Music library and even sync it with your iPhone. We'll show you how below.
Adding Files To Your Itunes Library
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When you connect a device to iTunes or the Music app, the music in your library automatically syncs to your device. You cannot download music from an iPod (or iPhone or iPad) into iTunes or Music. So if you connect an iPod to your computer, the music on the device will be overwritten with what's in your iTunes or Music library.
Now, you can connect your iPod to your computer. It should show up as a drive in File Explorer on Windows and Finder on a Mac. Open the iPod drive and navigate to the iPod_Control > Music folder. You'll see many folders labeled with an F and a number. If your iPod drive appears empty, you need to reveal hidden files and folders on your computer.
Windows users can first use Alt + V to bring up the View tab. Afterward, press the H key two times to reveal hidden items. You can then either uncheck the Hidden items box or repeat the process to hide your files.
For those using macOS, hold down Cmd + Shift + Period to toggle hidden folders on or off. Select all the folders in the iPod_Control > Music folder and copy and paste them to a location on your hard drive. This will transfer your music from your iPod to your computer. The files all have random four-letter file names.
After transferring the music from your iPod to your computer, you can start making adjustments. First, add the music from your iPod to your iTunes library on your Windows PC or Mac. Note that your music library appears in the Apple Music app since iTunes is no longer available for macOS Catalina and newer.
By default, adding items to your iTunes library on Windows creates a reference to the file's current location. The original file remains in its current location. Thus, if you were to move the original files, iTunes would no longer see them.
Open iTunes for Windows and go to Edit > Preferences. Click the Advanced tab and check the Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library box. This option is checked by default in iTunes for Mac (on Mojave and earlier). Once enabled, all media added to your iTunes library from then on will copy directly to the iTunes media folder.
To copy the remaining media files linked to your iTunes library, go to File > Library > Organize Library. On the Organize Library dialog box, check the Consolidate files box and click OK.
To add some or all of the music from your iPod to your iTunes library, go to either File > Add File to Library or File > Add Folder to Library in iTunes for Windows. If you're using a Mac, go to File > Add to Library. Then, select the files or folder you want to add. You can also add music to iTunes by dragging music files from File Explorer or Finder to the iTunes window.
If you want to quickly sync content to your iPhone, you can use iTunes to sync your entire music library. Alternatively, it gives you the option to sync selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres.
To sync your entire library, click Music in the sidebar on the left under Settings. Then make sure to select Sync Music on the right and select Entire music library. Now, press the Apply button in the lower right. If syncing doesn't begin, you can press the Sync button.
Once you've transferred your old iPod music, you can rename the copied files. The random four-letter file names assigned to the files copied from your iPod aren't descriptive at all. On a Mac, you won't know what the songs are without adding them to iTunes or utilizing another app.
On Windows, download Mp3tag and install it. To add Mp3tag to the File Explorer menu, check the Explorer Context Menu box on Choose Components screen during installation. To rename music files from your iPod, select the files in File Explorer. Then right-click on the files and select Mp3tag.
Once the manual opens in your browser, click Renaming files based on tags under Converters. Follow the manual's prompts to either use the helper menu or enter the Format string manually.
Once it finishes downloading, add it directly to the Applications folder on your Mac and run the prepackaged application. Use the same steps above to rename music files using Mp3tag on your Mac.
Below we'll cover how to move your library to a NAS device or network drive as well as a PC. Since iTunes has been replaced in macOS Catalina, we'll also look at how to do it with Apple's new Music app.
When you install and set up iTunes for the first time, the software automatically chooses a location to house your library. By default, that location is C:\users\[username]\ Music\iTunes. That folder stores the iTunes library file, which is a database of all your iTunes content, along with other files.
Why go through the trouble of moving your library to a network drive or NAS device? Well, a computer that houses your iTunes library needs to be turned on any time you want to access the content from a different device.
If you have a network drive or NAS set up, use the software for your router or NAS to create a specific network share to store your iTunes library. Name it something like iTunesContent, then open File Explorer in Windows or Finder in macOS.
The location should say: I:\iTunes\iTunes Media (assuming you used "I" as the drive letter for mapping). Then check the two options for "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library." Click OK to close the Preferences window.
When you're satisfied that all your content files now reside on the network and that iTunes is pointing to them, you can delete the old iTunes folder on your computer. From now on, any time you open iTunes, the software will access your files from the network.
If you're a Windows 7 or 8.1 holdout, you can transfer files from one computer to another through HomeGroup. Once both computers are linked, open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Users\[username]\Music folder. Select and copy the iTunes folder, then click the entry for HomeGroup, the entry for your username, and the entry for the target computer.
HomeGroup is not available in Windows 10, so those with that OS (and Mac users) will have to find an alternative method to copy files between two different machines. You can copy them from the source PC to an external device, then copy them over to the target computer. Another option is to use a USB cable to connect both computers and copy the files over. If your library isn't too large, you can always copy it to and from an online file storage site such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, or Box.
Apple designed iTunes with the intention that it would be your all in one media library across all your devices (computer, iPhone, iPad etc.) While this has some advantages, it also comes with its own set of problems:
When you purchase music from the iTunes Store, these songs and albums are automatically added to your iTunes library: but what if you want to add to iTunes music purchased from other music stores, or add to iTunes MP3's and other audio files from your computer? iTunes makes the process very easy, and this tutorial explains how to do just that.
iTunes' default behavior is not to duplicate files on your computer: therefore, when you add an MP3 or other audio file to your iTunes library, the original file is not copied: the downside to this approach is that when you change computer, a backup of your iTunes library will not include music files you manually added to your library.
From now on, any time you import music into iTunes, it will automatically create copies of these files (MP3 or other) inside your actual music folder! Next time you migrate your iTunes library to another computer, these files will be imported as well.
There are a few different ways to accomplish this task; one approach allows you to play an audio file in an iTunes playlist without copying it to the iTunes music library, and that works in iTunes for both Mac and Windows, and two other approaches will allow you to play audio files and mp3s on a Mac without using iTunes at all, instead utilizing either Quick Time or Quick Look, thereby never adding those audio files into iTunes or any playlist.
This approach will add the audio file to the iTunes Library, but not copy the audio files to the iTunes media library on the computer, essentially using an alias or soft link from iTunes to the files original location on the computer.
But what if you want to play an audio file without even adding it to the iTunes playlist or library? What if you just want to listen to an audio file without iTunes at all, perhaps for hearing a podcast once, listening to an iPhone recorded voice memo, or hearing a shared audio file just once? The next options can be useful for that scenario.
iTunes will only create one entry in your Library for each music file on your computer. In other words, if you try to "re-add" any file to your library that is already being managed by iTunes, iTunes will not make a duplicate.
If you have duplicate music files between the two computers, that is a much more complicated issue to handle automatically. One method involves using rsync. Be aware that with any automated merge method, it's always possible that you might lose your iTunes metadata (playlists, ratings, play counts, etc) -- and even having backups might not help you recover it easily. 2ff7e9595c
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