transferring or uploading my own personal music library

Aah argh !!! Finally, was resolved. Terrific support and help from Apple Customer Service, (as always).

Turns out - actually quite a bit more straightforward than it appears, just not quite transparent enough.

Question was - I had my personal Music library (in a folder of .mp4) from CDs - just how to import it into Music (since a phone upgrade does not back up music, and this collection is not in the cloud, nor do I want it to be).

Solution - Just drag-n-drop the parent folder into Playlists under LHS sidebar of Music app on the Mac. This imports all the curated library into Music.

Now Sync your new phone with this Mac Music library. Yay!

I do think this process could be more transparently laid out up front to avoid the pain when upgrading to a new phone. Not everyone is only listening to music that is downloaded from the cloud.

OK thanks. But: I am not trying to backup my personal music library - I already have all 13GB of music files (.mp4 etc.) that work on my older phone alongside my downloaded/purchased songs from aMusic. "Sync" seems to only work one way : FROM Mac TO iPhone , but NOT the other way around which is what I need.

Sounds like: 1) I need a way to Import these audio files into a player like aMusic (or is Apple so restrictive now that I am forced use a third party player of the files were not purchased from aMusic)?

2) Is iTunes Match a way to accomplish this? - maybe - but it is forcing me to pay Apple $25/year and likely will not play if subscription is canceled at any point. (as this is a cloud-based solution).

I mean - I do get Apple's business motive here, except that it is MY library, why should I have to pay Cloud.apple to play it on my new iPhone? Clearly what Apple seems to be saying is- if you don't pay us for the cloud service, I'll make it really hard for you to play your own music on your own iPhone?