Updated 11/14 with more details for syncing the iPhone...
Background: I’m a MusicBee newbie, and use it to curate my music library, including playlists. In a previous post on this forum
(here), I described how I set up MusicBee on a network drive, and made it work with my home SONOS system. I play SONOS from its app on my iPhone, and my computer can be off, since the music is on the (always on) network drive.
My next goal was to clean out the existing music and playlists on my iPhone, and replace them with only certain playlists from MusicBee, and to include only songs used by those playlists. I would repeat this process with my wife’s iPhone, with a different set of playlists/music. Both phones are Bluetooth connected to our Toyota Entunes 2.0/3.0 systems in our cars.
I relied heavily on a 2014 post in the Tips and Tricks section of this forum by Redwing
(here) on how to use iTunes to sync the phone to the MusicBee library, using the “playlists” part of his post. Since there have been many updates to iTunes since then, I expected some differences and I may have seen some—as always, it’s a confusing process using the ever-changing iTunes. I have incorporated portions of his post here, to make this a stand-alone set of instructions.
MusicBee (using Version 3.2.6827):(1) I used MusicBee to make a clean backup copy of my library. I certainly did not want to point iTunes at my pristine library. Strongly recommended you do this step. My backup was put on a USB hard drive hanging off my PC.
iTunes (Updated to Version 12.9.1.4 as of 11/13/18):(2) I opened iTunes, and the first step was to neuter it as much as possible. I went to Edit>>Preferences>>General tab and unchecked all boxes.
(3) On the Restrictions tab I checked all the boxes.
(4) On the Devices tab I checked all the boxes.
(5) On the Advanced tab I first unchecked all boxes. I didn’t want iTunes reorganizing my backup library. Finally, still on the Advanced tab, I hit the Change button for “iTunes Media folder location”, browsed to the MusicBee backup folder, and hit Open. Don’t touch the Reset button.
(6) In the left panel, I clicked on Songs, selected a single song in the main panel, then hit Cntl-A to select all the songs in the old library. I right clicked and selected Delete from Library, and the screen cleared down to just the songs I had purchased from iTunes over the years (only four for me). I left them there. When prompted, I did not delete any source files of actual songs, just the library entries in iTunes that pointed to those locations.
(7) In the left panel, I right-clicked each old playlist, one by one, and chose Delete from Library.
(8) In my other post mentioned above, I described how to set up MusicBee to automatically make mirrored .m3u (ITunes) versions of my playlists from the MusicBee (.mbp) versions, so I assume that has been done (see Steps (5)-(7) in that post). I save those mirrored copies in a folder “Playlists in iTunes Format” and included that in my library backup process. These will be needed in the next step.
(9) I then selected Files>>Library>>Import playlist, navigated to my “Playlists in iTunes Format” folder and selected a playlist that I wanted to have on my iPhone. I hit Open and iTunes imported the playlist, and only the songs in that playlist, into its Library. This step does not move any actual music files, so it goes quickly. I repeated this step for each playlist I wanted on either of our phones.
Syncing (still in iTunes):(10) I plugged my iPhone into the computer using the USB charger cable, unlocked it and responded to its screen to allow a connection. iTunes then displays two phone icons that do different things, one in a top ribbon beside “Music”, and one in the left panel under “Devices”. Only the top ribbon one is used.
(11) I clicked the icon in the top panel, then Settings>>Music in the left panel, and chose “Selected playlists, artists…”. I then checked the boxes for only the playlists I wanted on my iPhone. Leave all other boxes unchecked on this screen, and only songs needed for the selected playlists will sync to the phone.
(12) I clicked Settings>>Summary in the left panel. I checked the box “Convert higher bit rate songs to 256 kbps ACC. I then hit the Sync button at the bottom, and away it went.
Summary: No files in my MusicBee backup Music folder were modified by this process, I’m happy to report. Syncing 483 songs took about 20 minutes because real audio files were being sent to the phone. I repeated Steps (10)-(12) for my wife’s phone, with a different set of playlists.
Ongoing: In Redwing’s post, he states you must repeat Steps (6)-(12) if any changes are made to your music folder or playlists. My Step (1) above must be done as well if you have taken it. I was hoping there would be a cleaner way of doing this using Watched Folders in iTunes, but I haven’t explored it yet. I don’t want to become an expert on iTunes though, because tomorrow it will change. Be alert that if you update iTunes you may have to repeat Steps (2)-(5), since it may install with defaults you don’t want.
Topic: Refreshing iPhone music from MusicBee via iTunes 12.9, sort of an update 2 (Read 2453 times)