iTunes on Android

[Android Central Question]

Hi all, hoping this will be a little more informed than the usual "can I use iTunes on Android?" post.

Apple, goodbye. Despite the standard company denial, your iOS "upgrades" have intentionally nerfed my battery for the last time. You have succeeded in forcing me to get a new phone, but you have also succeeded in driving me to your competitor. Good riddance.

Now. I own all my iTunes media as physical files on my PC, even the stuff I've purchased via the iTunes store. I know I can transfer the actual song files to an Android, but I'm looking for a way to maintain my playlists, album art, song info and all that other metadata that I've carefully nurtured over the years. I don't want to have to use the Cloud or any other wireless service to access the music, I want to be able to play the physical music files directly from the phone at any time. I don't and won't use Apple Music.

Looking around, it seems that syncing to Google music or DoubleTwist are the best free ways to achieve this, but looking for tips, comments and feedback: what is the best way to transfer my music and all the iTunes playlists and metadata to Android? Tips or traps for not working quite how I'm expecting?

Thanks in advance

 

[hallux]

You can use the Google Play Music Manager to sync your iTunes library to Google Play. Once synced, you can then flag music from your library to be downloaded for local playback (no connection needed to play it then). As for the playlists - not sure.

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[Ossie1972wastaken]

Hi all, I've now joined, thanks. Thanks to hallux, opeing up for a wider spread of answers - in particular maintaining playlists, album art, song info & other metadata.

Cheers

 

[Rukbat]

The format of the playlist depends on the app, so maybe, maybe not. The album art - just copy it to the phone. Metadata is contained in the music file (you can see it using iTag - Music Tag Editor). And you can transfer the files (including playlists) using iSyncr: iTunes to Android. (There's a program you'll have to install on the PC.)

 

[migs_inc]

Did you ever get an answer to this? I've been trying to get one for 2 years and nothing has worked so far. I have tried to use DoubleTwist, and to date, it always fails to sync large parts of the playlists. Just got a new Galaxy S10+, so I am trying on the new device. 435 songs down, 21,000 to go.

In the interim, I've used Google Play Music (I have a MacBook with all my iTunes music and playlists). It has served well to emulate the iTunes library. There are a couple of quirks, in that new additions to the Mac don't always automatically upload to the cloud, nor do changes to or additions to playlists. In those cases, I have resolved it in one of two ways:
- Open Music Manager on computer, re-establish iTunes as source for music, then have everything reload to the cloud; takes about 3 hours to upload and another hour or two to show everything on cloud and phone, or

- Delete complete library on play.google.com (my library), let it sit a day, then reestablish library again. This is simple but a pain as it takes 2-3 days to show all changes.

If you found a solution, let me know. I am perfectly fine to ditch iTunes if I can find something that accepts my existing playlists.

 

[tadpoles]

I use Rocket Player and iSyncr and that have done a good job of pulling in my iTunes playlists.

 

[Ossie1972wastaken]

I'm surprised how difficult this answer is, given the amount of people I would imagine who want to do it.

DoubleTwist worked initially but after the original sync it has failed to sync any subsequent updates: new songs added, changes to playlists etc. I imagine if I deleted the entire DoubleTwist playlist and re-synced afresh each time, it would work, but that's obviously a pain.