How to upload music to iTunes
Thanks to your new iPhone you have discovered the convenience of iTunes, which now you intend to rely on to play all the music on your computer: it is a program as simple as functional, just know where to “get your hands” to turn it into a valid ally in managing single songs, albums and entire playlists! Before making this idea concrete, though, you asked yourself a very specific question: How to upload music to iTunes? And if it were too difficult for your skills?
I’m very happy to tell you that it’s not like that. In fact, you can add music to your iTunes library in many ways, all very simple to put into practice: for example, you can upload files and folders containing music already on your computer, manage individual albums available in your Apple Music subscription, import songs purchased from the iTunes Store, transfer libraries on old computers and even load tracks on audio CDs. Yes, you understood correctly! iTunes really does all this and you do not need to be an expert to do it!
How do you say? Can not wait to find out how? Well said! Take a few minutes, sit in front of your computer and carefully read everything I have to explain on the subject: I’m sure that, at the end of this guide, you will be able to juggle comfortably loading the music on what is about to become the your favorite media player. At this point I can only wish you good reading and … good listening!
Load music already on your computer
The first method to load music on iTunes that I want to illustrate you is what regards the music tracks already available on your computer: iTunes, in fact, provides the ability to import files and folders already on your PC and add them in a few seconds to your library. The supported file types are numerous (MP3, AAC, FLAC and WMA, to name a few), so incompatibility problems are unlikely to occur.
To import the songs already on your computer, start iTunes, select the Music item from the drop-down menu located at the top left and drag the individual tracks or folders in the program window: in this way, the files will be automatically added to the latter’s library.
If you do not like to work with the mouse, you can proceed to import via the menu: open the File menu located at the top left and select the item Add files to the library … (on Windows) or Add to the library … (on macOS), select the file (s) you want to upload to iTunes and you’re done! To import an entire folder, however, click on the File menu and select the item Add folder to the library, choose the folder that contains the desired tracks and presses the Select folder button.
As a last resort, I suggest you make a copy of all the files imported into your library, so you can easily transfer it (I’ll talk about it later) in case you need it. To do so, open the menu Edit> Preferences on Windows or iTunes> Preferences on Mac, click on the Advanced tab, set the check mark next to Keep the iTunes Media folder organized and click on OK: the copies of the tracks will be stored in the folder displayed inside the box immediately above.
How to upload music to iTunes from Apple Music
Do you have a subscription to Apple Music, the music streaming service provided by Apple? Perfect, you can upload music to your iTunes in an extremely simple way! To proceed, click on the search bar at the top right of the iTunes window and search for the song or album you wish to upload, making sure that the Apple Music button is selected in the small box that appears.
Having done this, positioned with the mouse on the song or album to be loaded and click on the button (…) next to its title, then on the entry Add to Music in the context menu that is proposed. In the same way, you can also upload music from Apple Music “navigating” from the thematic sections News and For You: the procedure is absolutely identical. If you want, you can download the tracks in offline mode (to have them available even in the absence of Internet), after adding them, by clicking on the cloud icon.
How to upload music to iTunes from the iTunes store
Do not have a subscription to Apple Music and prefer to buy individually the tracks you prefer? No problem: you can do it with the iTunes Store, Apple’s virtual store that sells all sorts of multimedia content (tracks, albums, ebooks and movies). You can access it comfortably by selecting the item Music from the drop-down menu located at the top left and then clicking on the item Store (or iTunes Store on Mac) that you find at the top right.
You can browse through the tracks using links to categories, music genres and personal collections, or search for them using the appropriate bar located at the top right of the program. Once you find the song (or album) you want to buy, select it with a click of the mouse and then press the button that shows the price, enter when required the credentials of your Apple ID (or the password if you already have logged in to iTunes) and presses the Buy button. In this way, the song will automatically be uploaded to iTunes and made available both in the local library and in all other devices associated with the ID.
How do you say? Did not you use your Apple ID for a long time and you received an unpleasant message that warns you of its deactivation for security reasons? Do not worry, you can re-enable your Apple ID without having to create a new one by following the procedure outlined in my simple tutorial. How to upload music to iTunes.
Load an existing library
You are going to upload a music library on your computer to iTunes, but you have no idea how to proceed? Do not worry, it’s much simpler than you think. The first thing you need to do is start iTunes on the old computer, activate the automatic copy of the imported files as I explained in the previous section, note the path of the iTunes folder in the Preferences> Advanced screen and wait a few minutes (depending on the number of tracks in the library) so that the copy procedure is successful.
After that, close iTunes on the “old” computer and copy the folder that contains the music library, previously noted, on an external disk or USB stick: on Windows this folder should correspond to C: \ Users \ Your Name \ Music \ iTunes , while on macOS a / Users / yourname / Music / iTunes. Now move to the “new” computer, close iTunes completely, create a backup of the iTunes folder (to be restored if something does not go right) and copy the iTunes folder from the dongle / disk to the Music folder of the computer, confirming the desire to overwrite it. Reopen iTunes et voila, your songs will be there waiting for you!
If iTunes does not recognize files uploaded this way, proceed as follows.
- Close iTunes completely.
- Hold down Shift (on Windows) or alt (on Mac) and start iTunes again by double clicking on its icon.
- In the window that appears, click on the button Choose a library ….
- Move to the previously copied folder (thus in Music> iTunes) and double-click the .itl file for the library you just imported.
In this way, all files belonging to the library should be uploaded to the new iTunes. If you need further clarification on the steps described above, I invite you to consult my tutorial on how to export iTunes library.
How to upload music to iTunes from Audio CDs
The last method I want to tell you about loading songs from an “old” Audio CD: thanks to a convenient integrated function, in a few clicks you can import the songs on the diskette into the iTunes library and save them in compressed format!
To proceed, start iTunes and then insert the Audio CD into your computer’s drive. After a few seconds, the program will show you a window that will ask you if you want to import your CD into the iTunes library: confirm by clicking on the Yes button, and wait for the completion of the procedure, which may be more or less short depending on the speed reading your optical media.
In this way, the songs imported from the disk will be copied into AAC format on the PC. If you want to use a different format (eg MP3) for importing, go to the Edit> Preferences menu (on Windows) or iTunes> Preferences (on Mac), click on the General tab and then on the Import Settings button located below right.
At this point, in the new window that opens, click on the drop-down menu Import using and select the format that best suits your needs: you can choose between AAC, AIFF, MP3, WAV and Apple Lossless.
The songs you upload will be automatically saved to the default iTunes folder, the one you learned to recognize in previous chapters of this tutorial.