How can I listen to my music without a wifi connection or using data?

This has changed a little bit with iOS 9.2...

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

1. In the Music app, find the item that you want to save.
2. Tap the More Options icon to the right of the song, album, or playlist name.
3. Tap the iCloud download icon <- changed bit

Make your music available offline in your iPhone 5s.

Add music from the Apple Music catalog to your library - Apple Support

Save songs, albums, and playlists to listen offline

You can save songs, albums, or playlists to listen to when you're not connected to the Internet.* You must save songs, albums, or playlists on each device that you want to use for offline listening.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

1. In the Music app, find the item that you want to save.
2. Tap the More Options icon to the right of the song, album, or playlist name.
3. Tap Make Available Offline.

Songs and albums appear under My Music > Library. Playlists appear under My Music > Playlists.

I have the same issue. Thanks to Phil for responding, but that doesn't really help me much. I have THOUSANDS of albums and playlists of music I've acquired over the years, initially on CD and now on iTunes, and I've paid Apple every year for iTunes Match. I travel for a living, and I always buy the largest storage on all my devices so my music can travel with me. But now I have to stream it, or spend HOURS punching the "Make available offline" button. Did nobody beta test this product? How can Apple, the world's largest tech company, miss something as simple as lettinag customers listen to music they've ALREADY PAID FOR without having to incur data charges from Verizon? I've been on AppleCare about a half dozen times, and nobody seems able to solve this problem for a very disgruntled Apple fanboy. I would really appreciate some help here.

swandy wrote:

While I won't say that implementing a way to give the user a choice of local syncing (though how much better sounding a locally synced version on an iPhone will sound vs the higher quality AAC file that Apple is downloading is probably open to discussion), I think most people like the idea of the merged library with access to everything - even if it is only via either wifi or cellular streaming.

I agree with an earlier poster that most people don't have their entire library on their iPhones. My full library (which I am still waiting somewhat patiently for Apple to raise the song limit) is about 60,000 tracks, and while it would be cool to be able to listen to them whenever I want, I have no need for them all to be on my iPhone or iPad, taking up space.

I agree. Most people (myself included) like the convenience of having access to my library on all my devices. It has its time and place. Here is where it doesn't:

• When I want to play music through better equipment than earbuds. My CD rips sound better than the AAC file when played through my car's (stock) stereo system.
• When my internet connection is slow. I live in an urban area but have slow internet (not by my choice). It takes 7-10 minutes to download one song for offline playback. If I switch over to my data plan, then I'm having to unnecessarily use my plan when I could more easily sync locally if Apple Music allowed it.
• When Apple's offline download fails. This is easily fixed if Apple Music allowed local syncing.

I don't think myself or others are advocating to store our entire collection on our device when we point out this issue. I want to be in control of my collection. If I forget to sync the CD quality file to my device and want to listen to it, then Apple Music and iCloud Music Library are great. For the scenarios listed above, I should have the choice of syncing my local files to my device. Apple makes the device which supports playback of higher quality files. They removed that functionality if I use Apple Music and iCloud Music Library.

Make a playlist with all the songs you want, then make it available offline. There is no "Make everything available offline" because it would be very impractical.

With many gigabytes of songs, I doubt downloading everything to the device, and then painstakingly removing what you don't want would be less annoying, than selecting what you do want; As most of the timer what people want is a smaller subset than what they don't want.

You need to make the songs available offline on your devices. How else can they be available on their without an internet connection.

With iTunes Match, you can also still sync your music from iTunes directly if that is what you want.

I don't think it's impractical to allow users to locally sync the music they own. I have ripped hundreds of CDs to my MBP in higher quality format than provided by Apple Music. I want to sync these higher quality files to my iPhone but I am prevented from doing this if I use iCloud Music Library. Why would Apple prevent me from syncing my locally owned files?

The user should have the ability to make the decision of either using Apple Music "offline" files or to sync with the ones local. I have the same problem others are experiencing and it will lead to me canceling Apple Music (unfortunately). I like the other aspects of Apple Music, but having access to my high quality files on my device is more important.

withkevin wrote:

I don't think it's impractical to allow users to locally sync the music they own. I have ripped hundreds of CDs to my MBP in higher quality format than provided by Apple Music. I want to sync these higher quality files to my iPhone but I am prevented from doing this if I use iCloud Music Library. Why would Apple prevent me from syncing my locally owned files?

The user should have the ability to make the decision of either using Apple Music "offline" files or to sync with the ones local. I have the same problem others are experiencing and it will lead to me canceling Apple Music (unfortunately). I like the other aspects of Apple Music, but having access to my high quality files on my device is more important.

While I won't say that implementing a way to give the user a choice of local syncing (though how much better sounding a locally synced version on an iPhone will sound vs the higher quality AAC file that Apple is downloading is probably open to discussion), I think most people like the idea of the merged library with access to everything - even if it is only via either wifi or cellular streaming.

I agree with an earlier poster that most people don't have their entire library on their iPhones. My full library (which I am still waiting somewhat patiently for Apple to raise the song limit) is about 60,000 tracks, and while it would be cool to be able to listen to them whenever I want, I have no need for them all to be on my iPhone or iPad, taking up space.

Several comments and questions related to this...

running latest iOS on an iPhone 6S

I do not have the iCloud icon when I tap the ... next to a song.

All of the songs I ripped from CDs that I've synched to my iPhone show up as "downloaded to this iPhone" but they are greyed out and I can't play them.

Finally, when I tried the free trial for Apple Music I discovered multiple times where it played a different version of a song that I had ripped from the CD. These were mostly 70s/80s vintage songs, like James Taylor's Fire & Rain (the original CD was much better than the Apple Music version). So there are other benefits/differences to ripped vs ACC files. I just want to be in control of what I put on my iPhone and right now, I can't play 1000s of songs I've collected over 30+ years on CDs.

(1) If you turn on iCloud Music Library on your computer and iPhone, you can no longer sync music the old way (via USB). You must use the ICML service, and yes, it does make mistakes in the "matching" of your library. Most glaring - at least for me - is I have a live version "matched" with a studio version very often.

(2) If you turn OFF iCloud Music Library on both your computer and iPhone, then you can go back to syncing your music the old way.

The iCloud "download" symbol (the little cloud with the downward pointing arrow) is not always accessed from the ellipse menu (the three dots), it should appear near the title of the song/album/playlist after you add those songs to your iCloud Music Library. If you are talking about individual songs (when the library is in the Song view) or albums (when in the Album view), tapping the ellipse menu should bring up a new menu, and at the top - again next to the album cover - is the little download icon.

Thanks Swandy.

After I terminated Apple Music I did indeed turn off iCloud Music Library on my iPhone and Mac. I even rebooted both of them and then resynched the 1000 or so songs I want to carry around. The music I purchased from the Apple Music Store are fine, the songs I ripped from CDs and a few songs my daughter recorded (she plays and sings) show up, show that they are on the device but are grayed out and will not play. Even when I'm on a wifi network at work and even with Use Cellular Data enabled. I'm not sure what else I can do. As it was it took about 7 hours+ to synch these songs and more than 1/2 of them were ripped or recorded (i.e. not from the Apple Music Store). Any idea what else to try? I do have time capsule backups and archives going back 12 months.