Got a new iPhone or iPad? I understand your excitement.
But, I’ve seen enough smiles fading into disappointed frowns when people learn they cannot freely download music on an iPhone. And that’s perfectly normal in Apple’s guarded ecosystem.
In this tutorial, we are going to directly download songs by officially buying them on iTunes. Once bought, the song will be automatically, instantly available to play on your iPhone through the built-in music player. This is a fading medium to get tracks into a iPhone; but it is by far the best method; if you want to spend money.
But before we de facto get into learning how, let’s consider why Apple doesn’t allow users to download songs and audio files from the web.
Why doesn’t Apple allow to download songs directly to the iPhone’s built-in music player?
Apple has, since the very beginning, been very protective of users’ privacy and security. And for that matter, it has been delimiting various functions on iPhones that you can easily perform on Android. Inhibiting external music downloads, eventually, is one of those functions.
But why?
Everything relates back to the internet. Among dank memes and playful videos, lay a ton of malware and ongoing phishing scams. Some of the millions of malware directly attack on your personal data including passwords, addresses, contact information, credit card details, etc.
Android, per se, has strong measures against malware and phishing scams. But not everything is perfect. And since Android allows free transfer of files, there’s a high risk of them containing potential malware that focuses on a vulnerability or an opening that the folks at Google have yet to patch.
Now, according to Apple, problems as such won’t occur if files are inhibited from free transfer and sharing in the first place. But that doesn’t mean the company hasn’t implemented fight-back mechanisms. In a one-out-of-million chance, there’ll be someone who’ll be able to hack into Apple’s devices. Yet, that wouldn’t budge anything.
So, since transferring music is highly contagious for iPhones and iPads, Apple limits it to only systems pre-approved by itself.
Another reason- and a very important one -is that since you’re intending to transfer music from an external source, it could be pirated. Ethically, it’s wrong and is called stealing. Although, there’s no ethical vandalism in adding your own audio files that isn’t copyrighted by someone else.
Here’s a food for thought. Apple even doesn’t allow iPhone-to-iPhone music transfer. This shows the extent of awareness of security among Apple officials.
So why can you download songs to a computer then transfer them to your iPhone?
Although, ironically, you can download and transfer audio files from your computer to your iPhone. Isn’t it the same? Downloading music on an iPhone directly or Downloading music on a computer then transferring it? Let me explain.
When transferring downloaded music from your computer to an iPhone, iTunes- companion app on PC and Mac for iOS devices -encodes it with Apple’s secure audio file formats before transferring it to the connected iPhone or iPad. So, there’s no room for mistakes. iPhone, however, cannot encode audio formats by itself. All it can do is play and interact with them.
iTunes, on the iPhone, by contrast has songs pre-encoded by Apple. So there’s no need to do any work on those tracks. And hence, iTunes is considered to be secure.
Thus, if you download a song directly on iPhone, there’s a high security risk, and that’s why you need to use a computer to download songs on an iPhone or iPad.
That said…
What are the ways you can transfer music from your computer to your new iPhone or iPad?
There are a lot of ways.
- Add music using iTunes
- Buy music on iTunes
- Use Apple Music
- Use the iMyFone transfer tool.
- Use Dropbox to download songs directly from your iPhone
The first three methods are the official ways you can add music to your iPhone. While, the two from the last are workarounds. Although, using a workaround is always a better option because…
- iTunes is exasperatingly heavy-to-use. Complicated.
- Workaround software like iMyFone offer better functionality as well they make transferring a breeze.
- You get additional, useful features with iMyFone. And
- Downloading songs in Dropbox is the easiest way you could slip some tunes into your iOS device.
Disclaimer: Since this is a vast topic to cover, it’s best if we feed it to you in bits. For this one:
Buy music on iTunes
The best method, out of all, is to officially buy an album like you physically would walking into a store. But with iTunes, you need not move an inch.
Unlike Apple Music’s subscription based service, you don’t lose songs once you subscription period is over. All the songs you buy from iTunes stay with you as long as you own an Apple device.
However, a major disadvantage is the pricing. On iTunes, you only have the option to pay per album or song. Imagine how much you’d have to spend if you wanted to have thousands of tracks in your playlist. Well, with Apple Music, you can download and store as many songs you want for a minimal fee which you have to pay on a timely basis.
How to buy music on iTunes
- Open iTunes on your iPhone/iPad/iPod.
- Select the song you want to download.
- Tap on the price tag to get the song.
After authentication and payment, the track will be automatically added to the music app on your iPhone.
That’s it for this tutorial.
Last post in this guide, we talked about how to transfer music from computer to an iPhone using iTunes. Check out that post here: