Music On Phone Questions...

MonacoMike

MonacoMike

Well-Known Member
Sep 15, 2009
14,721
Indiana lakes and Lake Michigan
Boat Info
2000 Cruisers 3870
8.2 Mercs
Engines
85 Sea Ray Monaco 197
260hp Alpha 1
So I want to have music to play when out of range of the internet phone connections. I have 400 CD's that I want to access and have much on my phone as well as several thousand songs from a hard drive. What is the best way to do this in the Apple ecosystem? If I load them am I listening to my music or theirs? If a song has a imperfection on the CD will that transfer?

Should I put them in iTunes or another way? What is the most efficient way to have them on my phone and move them when the inevitable upgrade occurs?
 
I have an old iPod with 1,000’s of songs on it and just plug it into the stereo....stereo keeps it charged and just switch to it...it stays plugged in all the time
 
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Way back I took all of my CD's and put them onto my PC. Then open itunes and IIRC I had to import and convert them. You can also just put them on a flash drive in their original format and if your stereo has a USB post you can just plug it into there.

Either way keep the original formatted files separately too in case you ever want to put them on a flash drive, etc
 
The way to leverage the Apple Music ecosystem is to subscribe to iTunes Match for $2/month. Any CDs you load into iTunes would then be "registered" as belonging to you; you only need to do this once. When you want to use them on the iPhone, Apple actually uses its own copy of the song which will be free of any defects that might have been on the CD and will download that to your phone. Whatever is in your library will be available to download on to an upgraded device or another member of the Apple family like an iPad. You can also pick and choose what to keep on your phone at any given time. If you tried to keep everything on your phone at once you might run out of memory.
 
We use Spotify. I have my music lists downloaded on the phone. I Bluetooth or connect via hardware. What is a CD?
 
I loaded all mine into iTunes years ago, works good
MonacoMike said:
So I want to have music to play when out of range of the internet phone connections. I have 400 CD's that I want to access and have much on my phone as well as several thousand songs from a hard drive. What is the best way to do this in the Apple ecosystem? If I load them am I listening to my music or theirs? If a song has a imperfection on the CD will that transfer?

Should I put them in iTunes or another way? What is the most efficient way to have them on my phone and move them when the inevitable upgrade occurs?
Click to expand...
 
boatman37 said:
Way back I took all of my CD's and put them onto my PC. Then open itunes and IIRC I had to import and convert them. You can also just put them on a flash drive in their original format and if your stereo has a USB post you can just plug it into there.

Either way keep the original formatted files separately too in case you ever want to put them on a flash drive, etc
Click to expand...

Please explain the format you "put them onto" your PC? Did you just copy them or rip them?
 
MonacoMike said:
Please explain the format you "put them onto" your PC? Did you just copy them or rip them?
Click to expand...
IIRC just copy/pasted them. Think they were mp3 but can't remember now. But this was like 10 years ago so I might be wrong. I threw out all of my CD's after that
 
I have Spotify and just download the playlists to my phone in case I don’t have service. Listened to music all winter from my phone on the boat stereo while in the black hole of a storage building.
 
MonacoMike said:
Please explain the format you "put them onto" your PC? Did you just copy them or rip them?
Click to expand...
Iirc

when I loaded the cd in the drive, it would automatically come up and start ripping it to the hard drive. Then I believe after I did some, in one of the tabs of iTunes you could search for usable files, that’s what put the cd into iTunes. I would rip a bunch then load those into iTunes as a group
 
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Old iPods are great for what you want to do. Between the wife and I we have about 4 of them.
iTunes sometime has problems if you try to clone one iPods contents to another one.
If you just want to load up MP3's there is a program called AnyTrans that works really well.

https://www.imobie.com/anytrans/

It also has and upgrade feature that will clone old to new.
 
Years ago I imported all my CD’s into iTunes. It was basically an automated process. Out I the disk and iTunes rips it to the library. Took time to convert them all.

The one on the hard drive should be about to simply be imported to iTunes. Point iTunes a a folder, hit import, and go have coffee.

Then you can managed what gets synced to your phone.
 
I think you basically have two options. Itunes on your phone or a streaming service you pay monthly for. Ripping the cds is a lot of work. We use Napster (formally Rhapsody), kid uses Apple music. The streaming service is much easier and you can just setup playlists of your favorites -- like "boat tunes." They'll download to your phone so you don't need internet.
 
Years ago I started building a music library in iTunes. Loaded a lot of CD's that we had, bought other songs off iTunes. Would sync to an old iPod which we carried from the house to the boat and back.

Couple of years ago changed out the system on the boat to a Fusion with BT. Around the same time installed an Apple TV device which is connected into the Control4 automation system at the house for whole house audio.

I moved the iTunes to iCloud. Connected the AppleTV at home and connected my phone.

When on the boat, I connect my phone to the fusion system via BT - can play the library.

The OP referenced access to music when away from internet phone connections.

Not sure about the underlying tech discussion - but the approach I am using will play music well beyond the range of voice communications.

We run a pretty standard route on a regular basis, come out of Clearwater inlet, turn south and burn diesel. Most of the time we angle out and run 7-8 miles off the coast. Cell service is spotty, music fine.

There are spots along the coast where we are technically further from a cell tower due to curvature of the coast and still have music.

Granted we haven't run out 30-40 miles with music playing. But seems to work pretty well for us.
 
Carver370 said:
I have Spotify and just download the playlists to my phone in case I don’t have service. Listened to music all winter from my phone on the boat stereo while in the black hole of a storage building.
Click to expand...
I’m also doing this instead of satellite radio.
However, I have to reload them every morning on my IPhone using the down arrow.
Is that normal?
 
BEH said:
I’m also doing this instead of satellite radio.
However, I have to reload them every morning on my IPhone using the down arrow.
Is that normal?
Click to expand...
I don't think so. I have thousands of saved songs on Spotify including a boating play list and I have never had to re-save them. They have always been available even when a cell signal is not. It's my go to for music on the boat.
 
BEH said:
I’m also doing this instead of satellite radio.
However, I have to reload them every morning on my IPhone using the down arrow.
Is that normal?
Click to expand...
The phone will free up space automatically if needed for other apps. Go to Settings, Music, Optimize storage. Set a minimum storage and the most recent songs will be kept. Or, turn it off, if you have plenty of free space on your device...
6C33C447-FC06-46CD-8C1D-D96624279DD5.jpeg
 
For the OP, iTunes Match was already mentioned, time consuming and you need a Mac/PC with a CD/DVD drive, I’m pretty sure it would simply quickly scan the drive (I did this over time after getting my first iPod back in the early 2000’s), then it finds the matching music in Apple’s library, and finally downloads it. I’m assuming this is still available, not certain. Alternatively, we have shared Apple Music(15$/month and everyone in the family gets free music, or 10$/month for individual?), so in most cases, any album is available for download onto your phone. Use the settings above to ensure it stays on your phone. This is similar to the non-free Spotify option.
You can also turn on Automatic Downloads in Settings -> Music, this will ensure any song/album added to your library will be downloaded, space can be a concern, of course...
 
I just re-ripped my entire CD collection. I had a bunch of junk and mismatched or duplicate files in my digital library. I just set up a 2nd laptop on my desk with an external CD drive, and fed it as I was working on other things. I then created a series of playlists for certain things. I also found I own a lot of CDs that I have no interest in listening to, so I didn't bother with those.

I use iTunes but I'm on Windows, but I ended ripping these in Windows Media Player. It doesn't matter what you use - either player can read the files, and you can set the file format in either. If you want to move the files to your phone, you can really do it either way. They key is whether you have enough storage space. On some Android phones you can add a separate SD card and have plenty of space. On an iPhone I think your space needs to be original to the phone.

Rather than saving this all on my phone, I copied the ripped files to a couple of 64gb USB thumb drives, about $15 each. I put one in my car and one on the boat, and these are the source for my music. It's really easy, and I can navigate those files using the head unit so I'm not fiddling with my phone to select music. I just leave them in place, and there isn't any connectivity needed at any point. If I make changes to the master on my computer, I can just copy the new files over.

I keep a subset of the music on my phone to listen to when I am working out.
 
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