How to get music off an iPod or iPhone 3g / 3gs (firmware 2.x+)

Ah Apple, you jerks!  With all of your smug commercials about how much better your products are than Microsoft, you would think iTunes would be less annoying!  Nope!  Just when you thought you had a workable solution to an annoying problem, Apple goes and makes it even more annoying, all over again.  Doht!  Don't worry, thanks to the rockstar nerds of the world, there will always be new workable solutions.

*This is  a follow up to the previous article  addressing the same problem (1st gen iphone or ipod devices):
(http://www.onegiantmedia.com/how-to-get-music-off-an-ipod-or-iphone)

Problem:

How to get your music off your iPhone or iPod so that you may take the music to another computer- this may be necessary if you have an existing iPhone/iPod that was synced with one computer, and then:

  • You get a new computer and want your music from your iPod / iPhone
  • You have to reformat your hard drive and your only copy of your music is on the iPhone/iPod
  • You want to bring your music to another computer via iPhone/iPod
  • You want to merge your iTunes library from home with your iTunes library at work (new computer)
  • You want to back up your entire device

The problem is, on the 2nd or new computer (not the original synced computer) iTunes will want to erase the device to sync up.  Lame!

Solution 1:  Copy all music off iPhone / iPod manually, reimport wherever you want

1)  Use alternate software (options listed below) to copy all of your music from your iPhone down onto your computer safely (see links below)
2) Let iTunes do it's annoying business (connect your device, activate your acct, sync/erase all of your music off the device)
3) Import all of your music that you manually saved to your computer back into itunes
4) Re-sync now that your entire library is in iTunes, getting it all back onto the device

Software Options:

There are many new software packages for purchase around $20, but there are still some free options too.

Wikipedia's list of Software - most can copy music off your iPod / iPhone:

Free software recommended (in wiki list):

Free software recommended (not in wiki list):

Pay software recommended (in wiki):

Solution 2:  Hack itunes so that it will sync with both computers

You will need the original sync'd computer with itunes still on it to pull your registration key, then insert it manually into the new computer's itunes via hex editor.  It's easier than it sounds, just follow the instructions carefully.

Great article / instructions here:  

http://www.andrewgrant.org/2008/03/30/how-to-sync-an-iphone-with-two-or-more-computers.html

Note:  This is only if you want to use the same account on multiple computers, don't do this to a friend's computer or their itunes will be permanently on your account.  If you want to just share your whole library use steps 1 and 2 from Solution 1.

Posted on Wed, January 13, 2010 by Sean P filed under

4 comments (Add your own)

1. sean wrote:
Note: i-FunBox is simple but your iTunes library comes down exactly as-is off the device (iTunes renames folders weirdly and in it's own directory structure with folder names like F00, F01, F02, F03, etc)

SharePod actually has options for how to undo this naming and folder structure - it allows you to make settings for how it should rename and restructure the folders and the filenames, so you can download everything into a more readable structure like desktop/music_folder/artist_name/album_name/song_name.mp3 instead of random iTunes style

...i swear it seems like Apple just does it this way to make it harder to get away from iTunes once you've started using it. That's even worse than Microsoft! At least Windows is easy to hack apart!

Wed, January 13, 2010 @ 4:48 PM

2. Hannah wrote:
What about one of the apps that turns you iPhone into a portable hard drive so you can drag and drop files into it? I haven´t tried any, I just got my iphone 2 days ago but already this issue is annoying the bajeezus out of me. Anybody tried this option?

Thanks for the post!

Wed, March 3, 2010 @ 2:13 PM

3. Sean wrote:
Hannah, the only thing I know of to make your iphone work free of the apple lockdown is jailbreaking it. This is an option but not one that I've tried out- mainly because I've had to bring my past iphones back to the store under warranty because of lag and battery issues, and gotten a new phone out of it each time. From what I've heard if you jailbreak the phone they may not honor your warranty. In any case, the best thing to do is to keep your own music collection organized and separate from i-tunes. This way, you can use the method above to download all the music off your phone at any time, and wipe itunes clean and re-import whenever necessary- annoying but at least you can manage to not lose music.

Wed, March 3, 2010 @ 6:30 PM

4. Heather wrote:
If you jailbreak your ipod and download free music app
if you get music from that would it erase all tge music that you already bought?
Please help.thanks

Thu, December 9, 2010 @ 4:48 PM

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