How do I put music not eligible for iCloud on my iPhone without turning off iTunes Match?

Question

In short, I have an audio file that is too large for iTunes Match (This item is not eligible for iCloud), but I'd still like to listen to it on my phone. In days past I was still able to drag the track to my iPhone in the sidebar, but that feature now seems to be disabled.

Answer 1

I made the file kind "audiobook," and then they seemed to sync fine, as audiobooks. Since they were lecture files, that's just fine with me.

Answer 2

Just spoke to Sr. Apple Support staff. There is no official way to do this without turning off iTunes Match, selecting the content you want moved to either the iPhone or the iPad (in iTunes), syncing and then turning iTunes Match back on. While not a great solution, that is the official word.

Answer 3

I changed the file type to 'Audiobook', (Right click on the file in iTunes, Get Info, Options, then change 'media kind' to audiobook') and then it allowed me to drag and drop the file on to my iPhone in iTunes. Then, in the Music app on the iPhone, tap 'More' in the bottom right corner, and 'audiobooks' will appear in the list.

Took about an hour of faffing about with iTunes Match before I discovered this tip. Then it was done in about 20 seconds.

Answer 4

As a possible workaround you could use a different app than the default Music.app for this particular song. Some apps (Azul, for example) permit you to use simple iTunes sharing to put media inside and they are independent of the iTunes library.

It is not ideal but it does solve the problem.

Answer 5

I have found to date the best fix to this dilemma is to change the "Media Kind" to iTunes U. Select the track or tracks and then select options, you will see the option to change the media type. This option will be available to only songs that have Not been added from your mac or pc to iCloud i.e. there's the cloud with a line through it next to the track. I have the latest iTunes 11.1.1 and iOS 7 on my iPhone. I used this method to add 323 teaching files that won't sync to the cloud, not sure why because I have other teaching files that are the same length and they sync to the cloud just fine. Turning iTunes match off then moving the files to my phone, then turning iTunes Match back on didn't work, it just erased the files i just moved over when turning match back on.

Answer 6

I had the same issue. My solution was to go onto my iPhone 5S, turn OFF iTunes Match in settings. At the same time, I also turned on Automatic Downloads Music. One of these solved my problem. When I plugged my phone back into the computer, all of my music synced. Good luck.

Answer 7

I had great success with going into iTunes and selecting Get Info → Options and changing the type from Music to Audiobook and selecting the checkboxes for Do Not Shuffle and Remember Location.

Then you can selective-sync audiobooks with your iPhone and sync like in the old days.