Q: Synching music library from my iPhone to my Mac
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Dec 12, 2015 10:01 PMby morrispe,You can't sync back from your iPhone to the new Macbook as syncing only works from the Mac to the iPhone using iTunes. This is a concession to the music industry to prevent people from easily offloading their DRM free music collections onto multiple computers.
You would want to transfer your music library from your old computer to the new Macbook and load it into iTunes. Then you can establish syncing from the Macbook's iTunes Library to the iPhone if you choose to do so.
Once you have all your music on the Macbook within iTunes you can then decide if you wish to use iTunes Match or Apple Music with iCloud Music Library. These options will make your music library available on any device you're logged into with the same account. Under this configuration you no longer need to manually sync from the Mac to the iPhone. You will see all of your music on the phone available for streaming or you can choose to make some of it available offline for local listening rather than streaming.
If you have additional questions just let us know.
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Dec 12, 2015 11:22 PMby Kenichi Watanabe,HelpfulOnce you have your iTunes media files on your new MacBook, you don't actually need to choose either iTunes Match or Apple Music. You certainly can, to add convenience and other useful features, but you can simply sync your iPhone directly with the new MacBook using iTunes. That's probably how you did things with your old computer.
If you happen to have access to your old computer, you should transfer the complete iTunes library from it to your new Mac. This involves copying the iTunes folder (in your user account Music or My Music folder) on the old computer to an external drive. This folder has your iTunes data. On the new Mac, find the equivalent iTunes folder (in your user account Music folder) and replace it with the iTunes folder from the old computer (do this with iTunes not running). The next time iTunes launches, it uses data in your old iTunes folder, and it looks like iTunes on the old computer (including all content AND supporting data such as playlists, play count, and ratings). This document has more details; keep my short summary (above) in mind when you read it
How to move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Support
If you no longer have access to your old computer... For the media files on the iPhone (that are not iTunes Store purchases), it is true that you cannot use iTunes to transfer them from iPhone to computer, which is by design (iTunes CAN transfer iTunes Store purchases because iTunes can verify ownership). However, there are third-party utilities that can transfer from iPhone to computer. If you do an Internet search on something like "iPhone computer transfer," you should get useful information.
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Dec 12, 2015 11:25 PMby rocker164,Thanks! The problem is that the old machine won't boot back up but I have had success accessing the hard drive so I may be able to get the old music file.
So are you saying that if I can get the old music file to load and in the future if I burn CDs to iTunes on the new Mac, I will be able to sync that music, burned from the CD, to my iPhone, like I could on the old machine?
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Dec 12, 2015 11:57 PMby Kenichi Watanabe,HelpfulIt's not a "music file." It is a folder named iTunes, that is in your user account, in the Music (or My Music) folder. This folder has your old iTunes data, including the iTunes library database and a sub-folder (named iTunes Media) with your media (such as your song and movie files).
NOTE: Your media files are in that Music/iTunes/iTunes Media folder as the default location. But it is possible that all of your media files are NOT there, because you can change the location in iTunes preferences Advanced pane. If iTunes was accessing its media files from a different location, such as from an external drive, please post back with more info; it can make the procedure easier or more complicated.
If you can put that old iTunes folder on the Mac, and replace the iTunes folder that is there now, iTunes on the Mac will use your old iTunes data, and it will be like iTunes on the old computer. You should move (drag) the existing iTunes folder on the Mac to a different location, like the Desktop, (instead of deleting it) in case there is anything there that is not in your old iTunes folder. This is better than simply adding the media files to a new iTunes library, because you'll have things like your playlists and song ratings. And, to answer your question, you can add new content to this iTunes library, and sync to iPhone. To your iPhone, it's really the same iTunes library.
