IPhone 16 music transfer failure

[Calperon]

I have lots of music on my iMac ripped from my own CDs and I have previously copied these to my iPhone to listen to in the car or with earphones. My new iPhone 16 Pro however will not allow the transfer of these non-Apple files during the setup copy procedure from my iPhone 8+. Online I have seen suggestions as to how to copy these files to my 16 but none of them will work for me including using Dropbox, despite they all clearly state that they will work with non-apple files onto a 16. I am not clever but I reckon I can read the methods they give and so I am lost. I see many expensive apps for sale but will any actually work? Please does someone have an answer worded for a nerd?

 

[OldSchool]

It seems that the music formats that Music on a iPhone 16 are the same ones that other iPhones use. It might be that you are trying to import them fro Dropbox that might be the problem and not transferring them directly from the Music on the Mac to the iPhone.

Apple Music on an iPhone 16 uses several audio formats, including:

• AAC: Advanced Audio Coding, a lossy format that's good for streaming. AAC files are also known as MPEG-4 AAC and have the .m4p file extension.
  
  
• AIFF: Audio Interchange File Format, a format that retains the original sound quality but takes up more space than MP3s.
  
  
• ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec, a lossless format that Apple developed. ALAC provides higher audio quality than AAC.
  
  
• M4A: A lossy format that's popular for its small file size and good quality.
  
  
• MP3: A format that iPhones can play.
  

Apple Music also supports other audio formats, including CAF, MP4, and WAV.

 

[Calperon]

Sorry, the problem is certainly not Dropbox. That is just one alternative I have tried that previously worked but no longer does. Dropbox transfer is a well established method. Apple admit online that they will no longer permit non-Apple music to be transferred to an iPhone. When one sets up a new iPhone their otherwise excellent app copies everything from the old phone except non-Apple music. Naturally Apple do not publicise this widely.
I am beginning to wonder how they make this block, if it is built into their Music app, perhaps using a non Apple app might solve the problem but I am loathe to change to an alternative app and if that does not work I will be left with even more problems to resolve. I am not the only person to buy an iPhone 16 running IOS 8 so others must suffer and hopefully have resolved the problem.

 

[Calperon]

I have now found a good part answer on this site. Apparently one needs to subscribe to Apple's iTunes Match as an addition to their Music app but this costs £22 per annum and if you stop paying, all the music files which you copied onto an iPhone will disappear. So Apple want to charge me £22 every year to listen to my own music. This is hardly honest of Apple and there must be an alternative somewhere.

 

[MacsBug]

Another option is to just not subscribe to Apple Music, or disable it on your phone if its part of a bundle. Then you will be able to sync your own music.