Summary
iTunes won’t sync Apple Music to iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch? If you can’t sync Apple Music to iPhone or iPod Touch using iTunes, you can follow this tutorial to turn off iCloud Music Library or convert Apple Music to M4A files.

iTunes makes it easier to manage your media, including music, movies, audiobooks, etc., and sync the media files from computer to your Apple device. Recently, we received reports that iTunes won’t sync Apple Music to iPhone/iPad/iPod. If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod (Nano, Shuffle, Classic, Touch…) and Apple Music subscription, then you can’t miss this article. It is a common problem that Apple Music cannot sync with iTunes. This article is written to help you solve these issues like Why Apple Music music can’t be synced to iPhone with iTunes? Why Apple Music won’t sync across my iPhone/iPod devices? Why won’t my Apple Music let me sync? How do I manually sync Apple Music to my iPhone? Check it out!

Part 1. Turn Off “iCloud Music Library” and Sync Apple Music

When you can’t sync music from iTunes to iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or other Apple devices, the best way is to turn of iCloud Music Library. In this way, you may sync Apple Music from iTunes to iPhone, iPad.

Everything You Need to Know about iCloud Music Library

“iCloud Music Library” is an Apple term for all the music you’ve stored in iCloud (up to 100,000 songs), such sa songs, artists, albums, and playlists. Apple provides you with two music subscription services that work with iCloud Music Library: iTunes Match and Apple Music. If you use it, the music data in the iTunes library will be updated and saved in iCloud. Then, you can stream songs to the cloud via iCloud and enjoy them freely, without saving the music data to iTunes or iPhone. You can enable or disable iCloud Music Library at any time through the “Settings” menu of your iPhone or iPad, or through the Apple Music or iTunes application on your Mac or PC.

Preparation:
● Update iTunes to the latest version on your computer.
● Update your iPhone or iPod touch to the latest version of iOS, and update your iPad to the latest version of iPadOS.

Step 1. Go to “Settings” on your iPhone or iPad, and select “Music”.

Step 2. Scroll down, and turn off “Music”> “Sync Library”.

music settings on ios

Step 3. Turn off the “Sync Library”, it will turn gray.

disabled sync library on ios

Note: Disabling iCloud Music Library will delete all cloud music on your device, including downloaded Apple Music tracks. You can enable the iCloud Music Library again to recover your Apple Music Library.

Step 4. Launch iTunes app, and download the Apple Music tracks that you want to sync to your Apple device to the computer.

Step 5. Then reconnect your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to your computer via Apple USB cable. Now you could sync Apple Music to your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch with iTunes.

Part 2. Convert Apple Music to MP3 and Sync to All iPhone/iPad/iPod

If Apple Music music can’t be synced to iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch through iTunes, you can find another alternative method to save Apple Music songs as local files. As you know, all downloaded Apple Music tracks are cache files, not real songs. This is because Apple uses copyright technology to prevent songs from being copied and transferred. Worse, the old iPod Nano, Shuffle do not have built-in Wi-Fi. It is a pity that users can’t transfer Apple Music to iPod Nano, Shuffle, etc. Luck for you, you can use some third-party tools to get rid of the DRM lock and convert Apple Music to MP3, M4A files. Here TunesBank Apple Music Converter comes in handy.

TunesBank Apple Music Converter is developed to help users remove DRM from Apple Music tracks, and convert Apple Music songs to MP3, M4A, FLAC, WAV formats supported by most devices and players. As an improved iTunes Audio Converter, it also enables users to convert iTunes purchased music, iTunes M4A/M4B Audiobooks, Audible AA/AAX Audiobooks and iTunes music videos to plain MP3, M4A, etc. Even better, TunesBank Apple Music Converter balances the output quality and speed, which means you can convert Apple Music at 10X higher speed with lossless quality kept. Thanks to the built-in ID3 tag editor, it will retain the original ID3 tags and metadata in the output MP3 file, and you can even edit metadata such as artist, artwork, album, genre, etc.

After conversion, you can easily import the converted Apple Music MP3 songs to iTunes library, and then sync the music to iPhone, iPad, iPod Nano/Shuffle/Classic/Touch, Apple TV, Apple Home Pod, etc. Also, you could transfer Apple Music to MP3 player, Sony Walkman, Android phone & tablet, USB drive, SD card, PSP, PS4, Xbox, etc.

Guide: Convert Apple Music to M4A and Sync Apple Music to iPhone/iPad/iPod

Step 1. Run TunesBank Apple Music Converter on Mac/Windows
Download and install TunesBank Apple Music Converter on Windows or Mac computer. When you run the TunesBank program, you need to sign in with your Apple ID. Because TunesBank comes with a built-in Apple Music Web Player and Music Player.

launch the converter and sign in Apple ID

Step 2. Add Apple Music to TunesBank
As you can see, you enter the Apple Music Web Player. Click the “Song”, “Playlist”, “Album” or “Artist”, and drag it to the “+” icon. Or you enter the song name in the Search Box to locate it.

add Apple Music playlist

By the way, you can select desired songs or the entire playlist as you like.

Select Apple Music Songs

Step 3. Set Preferences of Apple Music
Next, you can set the Output Format (M4A or MP3 is recommended), Output Path, Output Quality, Bitrate, SampleRate, Codec, Channel, etc. as your needs.

customize Bitrate and Sample Rate

Step 4. Start Converting Apple Music to M4A
After finishing the customization, click the “Convert” button to export Apple Music songs to the local drive. They will be saved in MP3 format without DRM.

Convert Apple Music to MP3

Wait a few minutes, you can tap “Finished” tab, and click “View Output File” to get the DRM-free Apple Music M4A songs.

get drm-free Apple Music

Step 6. Sync Converted Apple Music to iPhone/iPad/iPod Nano/Shuffle/Classic/Touch
Now launch iTunes app, create a new playlist, and then drag and drop the converted Apple Music M4A songs to the playlist. Next, connect your iOS device or iPod to iTunes via USB cable. Finally, sync the Apple Music songs to your iOS devices.

sync songs to iphone on itunes

Extra Tips: To sync Apple Music to iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch without iTunes, you can try this smart iOS & Android Transfer tool. It is the best iTunes alternative.

transfer music to iphone

The Bottom Line

If you need to sync and save Apple Music songs to your iPhone, iPad or iPod devices, the best way is to convert Apple Music to M4A or MP3 files using TunesBank Apple Music Converter. By converting Apple Music to M4A, you’ll be able to keep all your Apple Music songs forever, and transfer them to any Apple devices, Android devices, MP3 players, smart speakers, game consoles, smart TVs, etc.

iTunes Won’t Sync Apple Music

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Christina has always had great enthusiasm for writing, programming and web development. He likes writing about software and technology, his works are featured on some tech blogs or forums like Tom's Hardware, CNET, etc.