I hate Apple Music to manage my large CD library. What can I switch to?

gj-n wrote:

There is no iTunes app I can find in the Apple App Store to download to that IPhone. The only Apple music app available on my iPhone appears to be Apple Music.

Correct. The App you use to play music on an iPhone is called "Music".

After 4 hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support - plus an hour in the Apple Genius Bar - it appears that the only way to synch my iPhone 12 mini to my iTunes library on my Windows 11 PC is to convert to Apple Music on the PC & the iPhone 12.

This is wrong. You can continue to use iTunes on your Windows PC to sync music to the Music app on your iPhone. I know, because I do this myself regularly. iTunes on Windows can sync fine to the Music app on an iPhone.

The iTunes app running on the Windows PC cannot recognize the iPhone 12 mini and therefore cannot synch.

That's the main issue to resolve then. It should recognize it and sync music to it. This is unless you had already installed the Music app on your Windows PC. Again, my iTunes app on my Windows PC recognizes my iPhone 15 Pro Max just fine.

In order to have my Windows 11 Pro PC recognize the iPhone 12, I had to load 3 additional apps onto the Windows PC in addition to iTunes: Apple Devices, Apple Music, and Apple TV+. Once I did that, then a) Apple Music converted the entire iTunes library to Apple Music so that b) it allowed the Apple Devices app to finally recognize my iPhone 12 and enable a synch. However, once you convert the music library from iTunes to Apple Music, then you no longer have any access to iTunes to manage the music library - period.

Correct. Apple Music replaces the iTunes Application on Windows once you install it. You can't use both. You need to pick one. But as I said, this was unnecessary to do. But since you have already done this, then you either need to uninstall everything and go back to using iTunes or just use the Devices App on your Windows PC to sync music to the Music app on your iPhone, and use the Music App on your Windows PC to manage your library.

Sadly, there are some very nice features that are then lost when you lose iTunes and are forced into using Apple Music. The artwork disappears, duplicate songs can't be identified (it's on the ITunes app but not Apple Music), but you can still only import new music in iTunes because that's where the import functionality is. I'm finding that importing new CD's from iTunes into Apple Music is "kluge" at best, and I'm finding it unstable.

So I can reinstall iTunes completely on PC (now there's a job - removing all the vestiges of Apple Music from iPhone, iCloud, and the PC), and I'm willing to do that.

You don't need to remove it, but you can if you really really want to. You can remove it from the Windows PC sure, and go back to using iTunes on your PC and it will sync to the Music App on the iPhone directly.

What I don't want to do is to use Apple Music. What other app uses an iTunes library that would allow me to play my music library on my iPhone 12 mini? Please be specific!

None that you can sync to from iTunes directly. You can download a number apps to play your own music, but you would then have to manually copy the music from iTunes to the chosen App through iTunes File sharing option instead of syncing.

Apps like VLC, Musify and a few others work this way.

I've been searching, but the only apps that come up in browser search results are those apps that solely use streaming sources and not my CD library.

There are a few that can manage your own library like I said above.

To sum up, something was causing iTunes to not recognize your iPhone, but it should in normal operation and that was what needed to be resolved. Not installing 3 different Apps.

Paulmilt wrote:

I’ve been following this chain with great interest. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and just upgraded to a new Dell PC using Windows system. My previous PC was using iTunes and I had a library with about 1,000 songs I had ripped from CDs. I tried to move this library to the new laptop but the latest windows doesn’t support ITunes...

Whatever gave you that idea? If you uninstall Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Devices you should be able to install iTunes using this installer:

• https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for further advice on migrating the library.

tt2

Why can't you use iTunes?

Having Apple Music on your iPhone has no bearing on what you use on your computer to sync music to it.

You can use any number of other apps to Manage your music library, but you absolutely need either the iTunes Application or the new Devices App (if have installed the Music or TV apps on Windows) to sync music to your iPhone.

click here ➜ Sync music between your Windows computer and iPhone, iPad, or iPod - Apple Support

Paulmilt wrote:

I tried iTunes initially. Wouldn’t work with Windows 11 so I called both Apple support and Windows support. Both said that there are compatibility issues.

Can you elaborate on: "Wouldn't work with Windows 11"?

What happens when you install it?

When you try to open it?

When you try to sync music?

There really should not be any compatibility issues.

Have you tried the link provided above to download iTunes?

Here it is again: https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64

Paulmilt wrote:

I tried iTunes initially. Wouldn’t work with Windows 11 so I called both Apple support and Windows support. Both said that there are compatibility issues.

Works fine here. It may help to right-click the installer and use the Run as administrator option. While it seems Apple want to abandon iTunes it certainly isn't dead yet. Music for Windows isn't yet as capable as the Mac version, or iTunes.

tt2

I’ve been following this chain with great interest. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and just upgraded to a new Dell PC using Windows system. My previous PC was using iTunes and I had a library with about 1,000 songs I had ripped from CDs. I tried to move this library to the new laptop but the latest windows doesn’t support ITunes. After spending about 6 hours over three days talking to the folks at Apple Support, the best solution they had was to build my library over from scratch. Reluctantly, I deleted my old songs and I’m now using Windows Media Player to rip the songs and then drag them to the Apple Music library on my laptop. Apple Devices can then sync it all. But….

The sync doesn’t always work and songs that aren’t official releases can’t be moved to the phone. They are grayed out and won’t play.

At this point, I’m pretty frustrated. Is there software I can use on both the PC laptop and my iPhone to rip the music to my iPhone without going through all these steps? iTunes was never a problem.

Glad it worked out in the end.

I tried iTunes initially. Wouldn’t work with Windows 11 so I called both Apple support and Windows support. Both said that there are compatibility issues.