Copy music from 2 different Macs to iPhone 5c

You can only sync to one computer at a time. You could copy the music from the Mac mini to the MacBookPro's iTunes library and sync after that.

Or try Home Sharing:

How to share music and video with iTunes - Apple Support

Learn more about Home Sharing - Apple Support

Home Sharing - Apple Support

Rather than syncing music you can use iTunes to manually manage music and videos. This will allow you to copy music from both your computers tto your iPhone.

See here: Manage content manually on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod - Apple Support

Am I misinterpreting the part from this article, that an iPhone can only sync music from one iTunes library, an iPod, on the other hand, can sync to more than one iTunes library?

6. Click Apply. If you see a message that your device is synced with another library:

• iPhone can only add music or video from a single iTunes Library.
• iPad and iPod can add music from multiple iTunes Libraries, but video from only one iTunes Library.
• If you choose to manually manage your movies and music with the new iTunes Library, the iTunes content currently on your device will be erased and replaced.
• You can’t manually manage music while using iTunes Match on your device.

copied from Manage content manually on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod - Apple Support

Whyblahblahblah wrote:

Ok, thanks for your help.

I thought that was probably the case. Just a little annoying. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to own 2 macs with different things stored on each. The mac mini is at my office and the macbook pro is at home, so a little annoying to copy the 2 libraries. I guess it's yet another Apple ploy to make you buy all of your music from iTunes rather than other retailers. I'm not sure why Apple have made this bizarre decision to only allow one mac per iPhone. I think this could be the final nail in the coffin for me. Time to return to an Android phone with a nice handy HD card slot to make life considerably easier.

Thanks again for your reply.

It's an anti-piracy feature, agreed upon between Apple and the artists. Why are you unable to move your music from one mac to another so that all of your music is on one computer, and then just sync from that iTunes library?

Whyblahblahblah wrote:

My mac mini has more music on than will fit onto my macbook, I do loads of audio editing for post production and have a big part of my sound library on there. And yes, I know the other solution would be to put all of my music on the mac mini, but that's at my office so then I can't use the iPhone with the macbook at home. And, I don't want to have to take one of my computers to work or vice-versa just to solve this problem. Anyway, the question is not 'how do I get the music onto my iPhone'. I just wanted to know if there was any way I could use my iPhone with both of my macs but it seems the answer is no. As I said, I'll be returning to an android phone as soon as someone buys this crappy iPhone 5c on ebay and then I won't have the problem anymore 🙂

As for anti-piracy????? It is so ridiculously easy to pirate music despite this bizarre system where you can't use 3 bits of technology made by the same company, together? I would have thought it's more to do with encouraging people to buy their music from the iTunes store rather than other sources. Maybe I'm just a cynic.....

Have you considered an external hard drive? Also, if you don't like the Apple procedure, then tell Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

You're welcome 🙂