Music off two computers onto iphone4

hexenductionhour · Mar 5, 2011

Hi,

New Iphone 4 user here. Experiencing a problem which I am hoping someone may be able to help me with.

Basically, I have a laptop and a desktop. Most music on the desktop - which is not internet enabled, incidentally.

Anyway when I first got the iphone 4, I hooked it up to the laptop (for convenience, as it is hooked up to the internet) and copied the music on my existing itunes library onto the iphone.

However, when I subsequently connected the iphone to my desktop, where most of the music is, and tried to copy the music from itunes to my iphone, I get a message saying: "This iphone is synced with another library".

I am somwhat gobsmacked that I spent all this cash on this flash iphone 4 and I can't even use it to access my own music on two machines!

Am I missing something? Is there a way to do this? Can anyone help?

Many thanks

hawaiian · Mar 5, 2011

What I did was put all music on one computer on a flash drive and added to the other computers iTunes library. Was time consuming, but worth it...

iGaz · Mar 5, 2011

iPhones can only be synced to one iTunes library at a time. It's to stop piracy of apps and such...

hawaiian · Mar 6, 2011

But if it's the same iTunes account but on different computers--desktop & laptop, it wouldn't be piracy. It's all your own music that you bought and downloaded on different computers.

iGaz · Mar 6, 2011

Ok, maybe not apps but take mp3's for example,

If you were to sync your phone to your computer and get all your mp3's, then sync it to a friends computer and get all their mp3's that would technically be piracy as you haven't paid for your friends music. That's one reason I can think of why your only allowed to sync to one iTunes library at a time...

hawaiian · Mar 6, 2011

But if you transfer your OWN music from your two separate computers, those are all your own files. No piracy involved there...

iGaz · Mar 6, 2011

Nope, but if you do that then you only need one iTunes libary so your problems solved...

big.daddy · Mar 6, 2011

if you own the two computers, simply copy the itunes music library.xml and the itunes music library.itc files from the computer that you currently have the phone synced to to the new computer and all is well. I currently do this for my home and work computer.

Heckler · Mar 10, 2011

What his issue is, is that he has some music on one computer and some on another, what he wants (needs) to do is merge those 2 music library's together then find a way to be able to sync with both. The only way I know of to merge them is as suggested above, copy the music from one thats not on the other to a thumb drive and add them to the other.

Now I remember reading a while back that there was a way to sync the same phone with 2 different computers but dont recall how to do it, it involves copying some type of identifier from one computer to the other so iTunes thinks it's there the same..

EDIT: Found the LINK

New4Us · Apr 20, 2011

having the same problem with old library on pc but new iphone (already sync'd to pc) and new macbook! we have copied the .xml and .itc2 files to a thumbdrive but then what? find and overwrite same files on the new macbook? how do we "add" the thumbdrive files to the new macbook/itunes to sync? thanks for any help here!

craigfoot · Apr 20, 2011

I have 3 different computers that I manage music on my iPhone. I use a small Windows app called foobar on two of the computers, and on my Linux machine I use an app called amarok.

These are basically drag and drop to the iPhone.

IF you really want to use iTunes, the only way you will be able to do it is get all of your music into one place, and then add it fresh into iTunes on your main computer. Then once you sync it you'll be where you want to be.

Use something like foobar to copy your music on and off your iPhone whilst you organize yourself. After you have got yourself where you want with all of your music, you could check "Manage Music & Video Manually" in iTunes. This won't let you keep a Library, but will let you add / remove files from the device from multiple machines as well.

Again I prefer foobar and amarok to do this. Quicker and easier in my opinion.

Good luck!

EDIT - I know the reason behind the "one library" thing must be to try and help prevent music piracy but I really don't like it. You should be able to manage your music from multiple machines. At least from the 5 machines that you are allowed to 'authorize' with Apple.

iGaz · Apr 21, 2011

craigfoot said:
I have 3 different computers that I manage music on my iPhone. I use a small Windows app called foobar on two of the computers, and on my Linux machine I use an app called amarok.

These are basically drag and drop to the iPhone.

IF you really want to use iTunes, the only way you will be able to do it is get all of your music into one place, and then add it fresh into iTunes on your main computer. Then once you sync it you'll be where you want to be.

Use something like foobar to copy your music on and off your iPhone whilst you organize yourself. After you have got yourself where you want with all of your music, you could check "Manage Music & Video Manually" in iTunes. This won't let you keep a Library, but will let you add / remove files from the device from multiple machines as well.

Again I prefer foobar and amarok to do this. Quicker and easier in my opinion.

Good luck!

EDIT - I know the reason behind the "one library" thing must be to try and help prevent music piracy but I really don't like it. You should be able to manage your music from multiple machines. At least from the 5 machines that you are allowed to 'authorize' with Apple.