How do I select an alarm song without it playing?

If nothing else works for you try putting your finger right over the speak and it pretty much blocks the sound

Select the alarm before it gets late?

Navigate to Settings > Sounds

This should help 🙂

Did you even try to test that before you suggested it? It does not work.

01101001 01110000 01101000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101

:| works for me.

I tried it and it doesn't work

Lower the Ringer & alerts sound to minimum (which is not totally mute just one volume bar) then try to change your alarm tone.

This is what page 139 of the manual says

Change sound settings: Go to Settings > Sounds. Available options include:

••

Set whether iPhone vibrates when get a call.

••

Set whether iPhone vibrates when you turn on silent mode.

••

Adjust the ringer and alerts volume.

••

Prevent the side buttons from changing the ringer volume.

••

Set the ringtone. To set a ringtone for a person, go to their card in Contacts.

••

Set alert and other tones.

••

Turn on keyboard clicks and a sound for when when iPhone locks.

Those settings have everything to do with what happens when the phone receives a call nothing to do with the alarm

Google is free, that doesn't mean we'd use it ALWAYS 😉

That came from page 139 of the manual at http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf I don't suppose you have even read it have you?

01100001 01110010 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01100101 01101111 01110000 01101100 01100101

I told you it works, please try it. Just make sure you increase your ringer & alert volume to desired levels after changing the alarm tone.

Can't you read? I told you above that I did what you said and it did not work. What part of that could you not read? Lets wait for the OP to come back and say that you solved his problem

The alarm picks up volume levels defined for "ringer & alerts" (though they don't specifically mention it).

I'm not sure how you tried it or you're just too pedant to follow the apple manual. Just because they don't mention it, doesn't mean it won't work.