Can I manually add music WITHOUT 'Erasing and Syncing'

I've always been able to import individual songs from my iMac to my iPhone - however, I recently got a MacBook, and now all I'm able to do is create a new playlist under the little "iPhone" badge that appears once you connect it to the computer. Like when you click and drag a song with your iPhone connected, a bar slides out from the right side that typically allowed me to then drop it onto "Ethan's iPhone" which would in turn sync the song.
I believe the solution to that is to check 'manually manage music and videos' under the iPhone settings page in iTunes - however, it then asks me to erase all of the music on my iPhone and sync it with my MacBook. But I would then lose a large majority of what I have since I imported a lot through CD's on my iMac.
Is there anyway around this? I really just want to import one or two individual songs - not erase everything.

Just add the songs you want to your iTunes library, go to 'iPhone', go to 'on this iPhone' and click 'autofill' at the bottom right

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HT1296 add music without erasing and synicing exsisting music

i want to put my music from my phone on to itunes, but i don't wan to erase all my music that is currently on my iphone. i want to know how i can get it on itunes without clearing my playlists or clearing my music.

Tip Via Wjosten
This is for those of you who have no backup of your current iTunes library, and are replacing the computer your phone normally syncs with or are just replacing the hard drive. Again, no backup.
By design, the iPhone will sync iTunes content with one computer at a time. Any attempt to sync such content with a second computer will result in ALL iTunes content being first erased from your phone & then replaced with the content from the second computer. This is a design feature and cannot be overridden. Because you replaced your computer, or hard drive, your phone will see this as a "new" computer. The iTunes content sync is one way: computer to phone. If you have photos that were synced to your phone or music ripped on your own that were not backed up, you will first have to extract them from your phone using third party software, before you do anything else, as Apple makes no provision to do so:
If on a Mac, use this:
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/
If on a PC, use this:
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php
Once you've done that, do the following in the order specified:
1. Disable auto sync when an iPod/iPhone is connected under iTunes>Preferences>Devices(under Edit menu if using Windows).
2. Make sure you have one contact & one event in the supported applications on your computer(iCal & Address Book on a Mac, Windows Address Book or Outlook if using Windows). These entries can be fake, doesn't matter, the important point is that these programs not be empty.
3. Connect your phone, iTunes running, do not sync at this point.
4. Store>Authorize this computer.
5. File>Transfer Purchases(To make sure all purchased content on your phone will be in your iTunes library).
6. Right click your phone in the left device pane & select "Reset warnings".
7. Right click again and select "Backup".
8. Right click again & select "Restore from Backup", select the backup you just made. When prompted to create another backup, decline.
9. This MUST be followed by a sync to restore your iTunes content, which you select from the various tabs, You'll get a popup regarding your contacts & calendars asking to merge or replace, select "Merge".
Your phone should look just like it did when you started, with no data loss.
You should be good to go.

Unable to manually manage music and videos on iPhone 4 without erase and sync, same computer!

Ok, so I know you all have heard this before but I do believe my case is rather unique, and quite frustrating.
I purchased an iPhone 4 and synced it to the same computer I am using now - created the playlist and used it to sync with phone. Worked great for awhile; but one day I contracted some nasty malware and had to wipe my computer and reinstall my OS (Windows 7). Albeit my music library was on my external HDD which survived the onslaught. I obviously had to reinstall iTunes afterwards. The playlist was gone on reinstall.
Afterwards I still didn't see an issue with my iPhone and iTunes: When I plug it in it syncs, everything seems to be working accordingly.
But I recently transferred some new music from a CD to my iTunes and wanted to throw those songs on my iPhone, the drag and drop method I was so very used to did not work and I noticed that "manually manage music and videos" was uncheck under my devices summary.
When I attempt to check this option in iTunes it gives me a popup notification telling me I need to erase and sync in order to use this option because my 'iPhone is synced with another library". Again, I DID have to reinstall iTunes after reinstalling my OS.
I have tried all the tricks that google could supply me with with no avail; authorizing, stopping the sync from automatically starting.... yada yada - none of these cookie cutter methods have worked for me.
Here's a too long didn't read:
>iPhone 4 was working fine - used playlist to sync with.
>Had to reinstall OS (Windows 7) Playlist gone.
>Reinstall iTunes.
>iPhone still syncs with library, no error messages on connect.
>Unable to manually manage music and videos without erase and sync.
>None of the usual methods work.

Hmm, I will say after posting this and looking at the related threads it seems I can only either use manually manage or sync.
I was using sync before but since the playlist disappeared I was syncing with I simply want to add music to my phone without deleting everything. Is this possible?
If I use "manually manage music and videos" will it delete everything or just the music and videos? It doesn't specify...
Could I just create a new playlist and sync it with that? If so how?
The bottom line is it isn't that big of a deal if I need to simply rebuild my iPhone music library but losing my configuration, contacts etc is not an option. Optimally I would just like to be able to add my new music to my iPhone without having to rebuild my library.

How do I download a voice memo from an ipod touch onto my library without erasing and syncing the itouch

how do I download a voice memo from an ipod touch onto my library without erasing and syncing the itouch?

Are you trying the "sync" the Voice Memos to a computer other than your syncing computer? If it is to your syncing computer just follow the instructions in the Users Guide. If to another computer you will have to make a backup of the iPod on that computer and then restore the iPod from that backup and then sync to the computer.

Cannot manually manage music and videos without erasing and syncing first

I have an iPhone 3G bought new from the Apple store using 2.1. Using iTunes 8.0 and checking the "Manually manage music and video" checkbox, iTunes prompts me to "Erase and Sync", no other option is available to me. It was the same when using version 7.7 as well.
I'm not syncing to another computer, it's the same MacBook I've had for almost a year. How do I get the Library Persistent ID in iTunes to match the iPhone. I have the ID from the iTunes Music Library.xml file. I just need to know where the matching file for the iPhone is so I can make them match.
The ID doesn't match because I had to rebuild my drive a month ago and my question to Apple (actually Steve) is why can't I sync the other way from the phone to the computer.
Why does my library on the phone have to be wiped out. Who had the warped thought to come up with this genius idea.
Message was edited by: ep1curus

I cannot express how disappointing this was for me to find out.
I want my music to be mobile, I don't want to have to copy it to every computer I want to listen to it on. I want to listen to it from the device, and be able to buy a new album at work or at home. This is a major disappointment for me, as every other device I have owned including my iPod Touch had this capability. I could authorize 5 machines and manually sync, and the music on that device could be played and managed on those authorized machines. For example, my wife has her own music collection, and I have mine, but we have a media center connected to our flat-screen in the living room, that we use for playing music when we are entertaining guests, and with our old iPods and iPod Touch devices, we could unplug one of our devices and plug the other persons in and listen to music from both our libraries without copying the music to that computer, as long as we authorized that machine for the both of us. Now with our iPhones there is no way to keep our seperate librarys and be able to play music on multiple computers in our house and at work, which we have always been able to do until our iPhones. The whole point of the iPhone for me was to be able to combine two devices and now because of the lack of this feature I still have to keep all our iPods around too... Dumb. I almost took our phones back because of this, and if apple doesn't fix it, I probably won't buy another. They should have at least mentioned this little fact before selling the devices to us. I know it's a different device, but it's similar enough that you expect it to work the same as the iPod and iPod Touch. It's not like I am wanting to be able to copy music from the device to multiple machines, it's exactly the opposite... I just want to be able to copy music to the device and listen to it at home and at work... why all apples other devices do this, and the iPhone doesn't is completely perplexing to me, and a serious oversight on there part. This pill would not be so hard to swallow if I had been warned about this prior to dropping almost a grand for iPhones for myself and my wife, expecting what I saw as a more advanced device to work at least as good as the other similar devices I own did.

How can I manage my music without erasing all of my songs?

For reference I've had iPods since about 2005 and I've been through this many times. My harddrive in my computer recently crashed and I had to replace it. Now all of my songs are gone (other than the ones I got on iTunes obviously). About half of my music (near 500 songs) are off of old CD's that I have since thrown away since I figured I had them saved on my iPhone and my laptop. Reference again: I had this happen when I had an iPod touch also with another computer. With my iPod touch, I was free to manage my music manually without erasing all my songs that were on my iPod. Now why can't I seem to do this now with my iPhone. Please help! I can't loose 500 songs! That's $500 that I DON'T HAVE to spend on music that I've already bought! P.S. I just need to know how to manually manage my music without erasing all my music!

is this the one you're looking for?
Managing content manually on iPhone, iPad, and iPod

My iPod can be seen but won't erase and sync with my new pc

So I've got a new pc, and have put all my music onto it but my iPod will not erase and sync, it just appears in iTunes, when I click sync it just sits there doing nothing, any help would be appreciated.

Hey QuiteMike,
If your iPod seems to be unresponsive when communicating with iTunes, it may be best to run through the following troubleshooting assistant:
Apple - Support - iPod - iPod classic Troubleshooting Assistant
http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/classic/
If all else fails, you can restore your iPod to factory settings (last step of the troubleshooting assistant):
Restoring iPod to factory settings
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1339
Thanks,
Matt M.

How can i get songs back after erase and sync?

How can i get songs back after pressing erase and sync by mistake?

If they are no longer stored in your iTunes library and were only on your iPod, I'm afraid you are out of luck. Sorry.
B-rock

Can't manually add music anymore

I always manage my music manually, never synced. Only my podcasts are synced...oh and an iphoto album.
Anyway, I decided to sync a playlist in my itunes that I constantly change. It ended up erasing my entire ipod. OK, stupid me, I didn't know how it works. Fine.
I then went to the iPod's MUSIC tab and unchecked the Sync Music button. It went and re-erased everything again. Fine. I synced my podcasts again and decided to just manually put all my music back. Now it won't do it. It's like the iPod's locked or something. I drag the music like I've always done, but it just bounces back to the iTunes library and won't go onto the iPod Touch.
I looked and looked, but there doesn't appear to be anything locking it. It's my ipod on my computer, just like it's always been. The SYNC MUSIC button is UNCHECKED.
Any ideas would be really good right about now.

I seem to have this problem as well, but I have had that box checked the whole time. I recently changed computers, so I'm unsure whether that would affect it but I have a lot of music I would like on my iPod but can't without deleting my existing music

How can I manually add music to my iDevice with iCloud (especially Ineligible)?

Greetings!
Is there a way to manually manage my playlists on my iPhone now that I've signed up for iCloud? I've got some tracks that are ineligible (due to being 4 hours long, so conversion is not an option), and I'd like to get them moved over. But they're ineligible.
I would really like some way to manually manage my playlists anyway - it's goofy that I have to wait for music to upload to the cloud then have to re-download it before I can listen to it on my iPhone. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Andy

Thanks for the input. I suppose I could segment the file, that would be OK. It would be nicer if I could simply get the song onto the iDevice w/o doing anything special. Is there a way to *not* use iTunes Match for files like this? Since switching to iTunes in the Cloud / iTunes Match, I can no longer manually select playlists to synch from within iTunes. Is there something I'm missing? What do you mean by "the option on the iDevice to download all associated Song files"?
Thanks again for the help.
-Andy

How to avoid erase and sync when choosing to manually manage media?

I have bought a new iMac and formatted my old Macbook. Now, I am starting with a new iTunes library. I want to add more songs to my iPhone manually (choosing the new ones and adding them and leaving some out) without erasing and syncing, as that would erase my entire iPhone of all my hard-earned purchases. PLEASE help!

Did you backup all your documents and data first? Normally your user profile contains a Music folder which in turn holds the iTunes folder. All the important details of your library are in there, with the media below in a folder called iTunes Media. If you lose this information and then connect your device to an empty iTunes library it will want to clean out the device and start over. Switching to manual management carries the same penalty, at least as far as the media is concerned.
You should be able to transfer your purchases into a newly authorised library, backup the device, recover any non-store purchased media with the tips in this post from forum regular Zevoneer, then restore the device from the backup you just made. That should preserve all your data and switch the assocation of the device to the new machine. I've had positive feedback on this method from other users but I've never had to test it personally as I backup my library.
tt2

Question Concerning Erase and Sync and Itunes backups

Earlier this year my Computers Harddrive exploded without me making a backup. overtime I have moved all my new data to a new Itunes library and now after just about everything has been moved My Itunes is telling me that for my 5 devices, That I need to do an Erase and Sync. If I were to first backup my devices in Itunes would I be able to recover everything after the Erase and Sync ( Notes, Contacts, Remiders,ect.) Also a side question, If I restore my phone from a backup, are the data in the Apps Lost
Sorry For Poor Grammar did this in a hurry

If the songs are still on your computer then you'll have to add them back into iTunes and rebuild your library. Once you've done that you can reload your iPod. Pressing "Erase and Sync" when iTunes brings up the dialogue window asking whether you want to replace the songs on your iPod with the songs in this iTunes does exactly what it says. If you linked to an iTunes with only a few or completely different songs it will have erased your original iPod song list, iTunes itself must have been empty at that point as erase and sync erases the iPod not iTunes. If you lost your songs entirely from the computer and the iPod there are some data recovery programs on the market. I've no personal experience of them so I can't say how effective they are, here's an example: iPod Data RecoveryBuegie - Recovering Songs
None of the recovery programs are particularly cheap so you have to decide if in your particular circumstances it's worth it to get your songs back. It may be if you have a lot of purchased tracks which you would have to pay to download again. If they came primarily from your CDs then it's most likely not as you can re-rip them.

How do I keep my downloaded content on my iPhone 4 when connectng to iTunes? It says erase and sync. I want to keep what I have downloaded, and manually manage contend on iTunes. Can I do this without it saying erase and sync?

How do I keep my downloaded content on my iPhone 4 when connectng to iTunes? It says erase and sync. I want to keep what I have downloaded, and manually manage contend on iTunes. Can I do this without it saying erase and sync?

No backup? Never a good idea to not maintain a backup of your important data. If you do not have a backup, follow these instructions:
By design, the iphone will sync itunes content with one computer at a time. Any attempt to sync such content with a second computer will result in ALL itunes content being first erased from your phone & then replaced with the content from the second computer. This is a design feature and cannot be overridden. Because you formatted your computer, your phone, will see your computer as a "new" computer. The itunes content sync is one way: computer to phone. If you have photos that were synced to your phone or music ripped on your own that were not backed up, you will first have to extract them from your phone using third party software, before you do anything else:
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php
Once you've done that, do the following in the order specified:
1. Disable auto sync when an ipod/iphone is connected under preferences in itunes(under the edit menu).
2. Make sure you have one contact & one event in whatever supported applications you use for contact & calendar syncing. These entries can be fake, doesn't matter, the important point is that these programs not be empty.
3. Connect your phone, itunes running, do not sync at this point.
4. Store>Authorize this computer.
5. File>Transfer Purchases(To make sure all purchased content on your phone will be in your itunes library).
6. Right click in the device pane & select reset warnings.
7. Right click again and select backup.
8. Right click again & select restore from backup, select the backup you just made. When prompted to create another backup, decline.
9. This MUST be followed by a sync to restore your itunes content, which you select from the various tabs, You'll get a popup regarding your contacts & calendars asking to merge or replace, select merge.
That's as good as it gets without a backup of your itunes library and other important data..

New iPhone 6 - "erase and sync" to iTunes library to add non-iTunes music

I'm handy with technology, but not a tech head so bear with me.
My iPhone 5 16GB died so I bought a iPhone 6 64GB. Set it up and then "restored" my old iPhone 5 info from my iTunes backup onto it. So far, so good.
I want to manually add music from the iTunes library onto the new phone. The Music app on my new phone shows I can download from the Cloud any songs onto to it that I purchased thru iTunes. Fine. But I want to move over some of the many songs I added to iTunes over the years from CDs, other online services, etc.
When I click "Manually manage music and video" and try to sync music I get the infamous "The iPhone is synced with another library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync to this library?"
This sounds like what I should do without worry as I have the phone recently backed up to the Cloud AND my iTunes, and have done little with the new phone since buying it. I've put all the iPhone photos on a hard drives, too. So if i "erase and sync," will this just repopulate my phone with all the previous info backed up on iTunes (photos, contacts, calendar, apps, etc) PLUS the music I want to manually add from the iTunes library?
I know this may sound elementary to some of you, but honestly - I can't find any clear explanations online of what will be deleted and what will be added with the "erase and sync" in this situation.
Thanks, all.

Hi, when you indicate that you have checked the songs in the box, where do you mean you have checked them? In your Music Library, or do you mean on the Music Tab that you can only see when you hook your device up to iTunes and select the device? (i.e., in the same place where you see the "Summary" page).
Cheers,
GB

How do I save songs from old version of iTunes that I have on my iPod, as new verson is asking me to erase and sync before I can do ANYTHNG, and I don't want to lose my music!

Hi everyone,
Can anyone help?! Pleeeeease
I have recently bought a new computer (new operating system Windows 7) and downloaded the new iTunes. When I tried to add a new song to my iPod shuffle, it said I had to ERASE and SYNC my iPod to the 'new' iTunes, and there seems to be no way around it. I DON'T repeat DON'T want to lose all my music on my iPod, as I no longer have that music/my old laptop with music on, and there are so many songs on it that it would take like forever to re-download EVRYTHING.
I tried saving playlist on in iTunes, but it only saves it as a Read only file, there are no MP3's in there.
I'm tearing my hair out over this!
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Kitty

How you delete content from your iPod depends on how it is set up to sync with your iTunes library whether that be automatically or manually.
If it's automatically, you must reconfigure your settings so that the album you wish to remove is no longer configured to sync to your iPod. For example, if the Sync only checked songs and videos option is enabled from under the iPod's Summary tab, make sure all the tracks for this album do NOT have a tick mark next to them in your iPod. Then resync your iPod with iTunes.
Otherwise, if you manually manage your iPod's contents, you must manually remove content from it. You can do this by plugging your iPod in and clicking the small black triangle next to your iPod from under the Devices section in the left hand pane of iTunes. This will open up a submenu of content, so go ahead and click on Music. Locate the track or tracks you wish to delete. Highlight them and hit the Delete key or choose Edit -> Delete.
B-rock

Can I manually add music WITHOUT 'Erasing and Syncing'

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