How do I back up my music library to iCloud on an iPhone.

Have you already subscribed to Apple Music or iTunes Match?

If yes, then you can activate Sync Library... this enables you to access your music library and music that you've downloaded from Apple Music on all of your devices.

Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music - Apple Support

Also, information about music (content) that you have purchased from the iTunes Store is associated/recorded against the Apple ID you used to purchase that content. When you backup to iCloud (iCloud Backup is ON), then this information is also backed up.

(Note: Your iCloud Backup includes information about the content you buy, but not the content itself. When you restore from an iCloud backup, your purchased content is automatically redownloaded from the iTunes Store, App Store, or Books Store. )

What does iCloud back up? - Apple Support

How do I back up my music library to iCloud on an iPhone?

As such, as I have explained above, the music library is not backed up to iCloud.

May I ask: how or from where did you add songs to your music library? Apple Music? iTunes Store? or did you sync from a computer via iTunes/Finder?

ZeroGravityfilms wrote:

Hi Siabh- Thanks for the response. I manually manage my music library and half of the library is imported by a third party app bypassing iTunes on my Mac. Syncing the iPhone with iTunes is not an option because all my imported music and playlists will be lost. It would be easiest to backup the iPhone to iCloud and then restore but I don't think it would include the music..? Maybe restoring from a backup on my Mac would work? Ron

Hi Ron!

Thanks for the information.

Yes, as you correctly stated, an iCloud backup of your iPhone will most likely, not include the music. I cannot say definitely because I do not know whether the specific app you use on your Mac instead of iTunes has a counterpart app on the iPhone which you use to manage your music on your iPhone and whether this app uploads data to iCloud.

Even if you backup your iPhone on your Mac, you would have to use iTunes (or Finder depending on the macOS), and this backup would not include the music files but only the (iTunes) information about the music files... and since you do not use iTunes to begin with, I do not think a restore from this backup will work in your case!

I am assuming you have enough iCloud storage to backup your entire music collection. This, then, might work in some way for you. On your Mac, activate iCloud Drive, if it is not already activated. Consider saving your music collection in (a sub-folder in) iCloud Drive. In this way, your music collection is saved on iCloud (Drive).

Set up iCloud Drive - Apple Support