How to sync Music from iTunes (not iCloud Match)

[Julien]

Spent a good portion of the day recovering from the Music nightmare and getting my Playlists in order to listen to music. Been a Beats subscriber for a while and guess I will have to move to Spotify if Apple can't get their iCloud/Library crapping house in order.

I have Music and iCloud Library cut off on my iphone and Mac. I'm manually syncing Playlists/Music. However it's not copying my ALAC music files but wants me to download the songs. I don't want this. I want to do like I have in the past and directly copy the music from my Mac to iPhone. What am I missing?

 

[lagwagon]

Are the songs in your first image (1-12, 19 and 20) your ALAC files? If so can't you just check the boxes and then sync?

As for it still giving the option to "make available offline" on the playlist, just ignore that. You can test this with turning on "show music available offline" and you will only see what is on your phone.

 

[Julien]

Are the songs in your first image (1-12, 19 and 20) your ALAC files? If so can't you just check the boxes and then sync?

As for it still giving the option to "make available offline" on the playlist, just ignore that. You can test this with turning on "show music available offline" and you will only see what is on your phone.

They are not songs, they are Playlists named 01,02,03,....

I deleted all the Playlists and restarted my iPhone. I also found and checked a box in iTines called 'Manually manage music and videos' and resented. It now looks to be working as expected.

However it is still confusing. Each song has the Download icon in the top right corner and you still have the Playlist option to 'Make Available Offline'. Selecting this puts a Downloaded icon in the Playlist right corner just like downloading an Music (should be called 'Cancer Music') Playlist. This doesn't make sense since the music is stored on the iPhone.

 

[lagwagon]

They are not songs, they are Playlists named 01,02,03,....

I deleted all the Playlists and restarted my iPhone. I also found and checked a box in iTines called 'Manually manage music and videos' and resented. It now looks to be working as expected.

However it is still confusing. Each song has the Download icon in the top right corner and you still have the Playlist option to 'Make Available Offline'. Selecting this puts a Downloaded icon in the Playlist right corner just like downloading an Music (should be called 'Cancer Music') Playlist. This doesn't make sense since the music is stored on the iPhone.

I can explain why you can still "make available offline" on the whole playlist (adding the icon to the playlist icon's top right corner)

There are what I call "layers" to offline. An example is making a whole playlist you find in Apple Music. You add it and make it available for offline (icon on the playlist top right corner.) Then say you don't want that playlist anymore but you would like to keep some songs and dump the rest. You then add those individual songs as offline from within the playlist (giving those songs the icon.) You can then tap on the playlist and remove it. It will toss the playlist and keep those individual songs you wanted to keep.

In the case of your own playlists. You have the little icons on yours songs. So you won't have to make the whole playlist offline (adding the icon to the playlist top right corner) just to be able to play them offline. It can be a little confusing at first but once you get it, it works well. (The two level "offline" is so the music app knows what to remove when you remove something and still keep what you wanted from that playlist or album.)

As long as either.
1. Songs have the little phone icon.
2. Playlist icon has the little phone icon.
3. Album art has the little phone icon.

You're good to go.