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Play side-loaded music offline

Wayne Block

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Thanks to help given on this forum I now have some of my personal music on my iPad. However, I am trying to find out if there is a way to play it when I am not online? There are a number of situations where I want to listen but have no wi-fi connection.
 

giradman

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Is there a specific app I should use?

Hi Wayne - as already stated, is your music downloaded on your iPad or 'in the cloud' to be played w/ a Wi-Fi connection? If downloaded on your iPad, the most logical place would be iPadOS's native Music App - see pic below for the icon (on the most recent iOS) - the right side of the image shows only a portion of the 200+ albums on my iPad Pro. If the music is physically on your device, then can be played as noted by Scifan.. - I usually listen to music from my iPad using either Bluetooth (BT) headphones (small portable ones) or a small portable BT speaker - works great! Dave
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Screen Shot 2020-02-14 at 12.05.03 PM.png
 
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Wayne Block

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Hi Wayne - as already stated, is your music downloaded on your iPad or 'in the cloud' to be played w/ a Wi-Fi connection? If downloaded on your iPad, the most logical place would be iPadOS's native Music App - see pic below for the icon (on the most recent iOS) - the right side of the image shows only a portion of the Th+ albums on my iPad Pro. If the music is physically on your device, then can be played as noted by Scifan.. - I usually listen to music from my iPad using either Bluetooth (BT) headphones (small portable ones) or a small portable BT speaker - works great! Dave
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Thanks Dave. The music I am talking about has been side-loaded to the iPad. I am often in a situation where I don't have a wi-fi connection available. I would love to listen through BT. In fact, I wear hearing aids that I can use with BT. I just don't know how to actually get the music to play without a wi-fi connection.
 

twerppoet

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How you play your side loaded music depends on how you loaded it. Did you go through iTunes on a computer, and are you using iCloud Music Library? Did you load it to a third party music app like NPlayer? Did you dump the music files into the Files app? Each of these has a different answer.

Actually, I’m not sure how you could play your music in from the Files app. Might not be possible. The other two are more common.

If you answered these in a different thread, I’m sorry. I don’t recall reading it.l
 
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Wayne Block

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I loaded it through an app called Touch Copy, on my PC. I would probably prefer loading it through iTunes on my PC but I'm not sure how to do that, or if it would play offline. Bottom line, I would be happy to do it any way as long as it plays offline. Most of this stuff I ripped from my old CDs, in some cases 30-30 years old. Some I actually copied from VERY old vinyl albums.
 

twerppoet

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I looked up Touch Copy, and it appears to be for transferring music (and other content) from an iPhone/iPad/iPod to the computer, rather than the other way around. Perhaps it also works from computer to iDevice. The website doesn’t mention it (from what I can see).

This use of this kind of software is usually for salvaging content from a phone and getting it back to a computer where it can be used or transferred to new devices. It exists because iTunes usually did this poorly, if it didn’t just erase the iDevice entirely.

If the software did transfer music from the computer to the iPad, it should be in the Music app, and it should not need to stream. If it only copied music from another device to the computer, then the music is probably in iTunes (or another music app) on the computer, and another step will be required.

Since you seem to be able to stream the music, I’m guessing this is what is happening.

1) You managed to add the music files to iTunes on your computer.
2) You have iCloud Music Library turned on for both the computer (iTunes) and on the iPad.

In that case, all you have to do is find the music in Music on the iPad, tap hold on it, and select Download from the pop-up menu. This is done in the Library tab. You can view the music by any of the options at the top left, though it you already have it in a play list you can conveniently download the entire playlist instead of selecting individual songs/albums/authors.

As an extra step go to Settings > Music and make sure Optimization is turned off. If you don’t, and the storage gets low on the iPad it will delete the least played tracks in an attempt to save space.

Other than noticing that the download option is gone from a track/album/playlist, the only way to be certain a song is available offline is to turn of wi-fi and cellular, then see if you can play the song. Or wander somewhere where you don’t have those services.

If I’ve guessed wrong, please let us know more details on how things are set up, so we can guess again.

Good luck.
 
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Wayne Block

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First, let me thank you so much for taking the time to work this out for me. And, I'm happy to report, problem solved!
The solution was that native music app. Except, it wasn't native on my iPad. I search all over for it and couldn't find it. Finally I went to the App Store, downloaded it, and everything is working well now.
I was shocked that it didn't come with my device, which I have only had for less than two weeks.
Anyway, thanks again for your help.
 

twerppoet

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That is odd. The Music app is supposed to be on the iPad by default, or it always has been in the past. It can be deleted, unlike some of Apple’s native apps. No idea how your’s went missing.

Anyway, glad it’s working for you now.
 

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