Downloading music on smart phone (help for old farts please!)

[Tabby]

DH and I finally upgraded our phones and our plan to include data. 2G each. We have no idea if that's a lot or a little. There's just so many things now that you need data for. Anyway, we've joined the 21st century. Among the perks for signing up on Black Friday, we each got a set of headphones and we thought it would be nice to download music. I carpool so it would be nice to have my own music to listen to on the commute.

Question: exactly how do I do this? Can I get Itunes on my phone (it is an LG G3)? I googled Itunes but a whole bunch of things came up including something called "Apple Music". I have a huge library in itunes from back when my old Ipod Shuffle still worked - can I access those songs through that? Do we have to pay song by song for everything? Can we download our old and beloved cd's? I don't want to install an app unless I'm going to use it because I don't want that thing updating every week on my precious allotment of data usage.

We're middle aged pre-tech people. Can someone guide us?

[WheresMyWhite]

Do you have access to a laptop/desktop?

IMO, that will drive how you might want to access your "old" music on the Shuffle as well as CDs.

I have a Mac (not saying that is a requirement) and use iTunes to manage my CD library (which I've downloaded) as well as purchased music for my iPhone and desktop (and, in the past, Nano and Shuffle).

[AirsAboveNC]

No, you can't get iTunes on an LG G3 (nice choice, that's what I use also). It has a built-in music player.

Because I am also a Mac computer user, I had to figure out the best way to get my itunes library to my phone. What I ended up doing was buying an SD card, 32gb, and putting all my music on that. That way it doesn't take up storage space on the phone itself, it takes up none of your data (2g is decent, btw, you shouldn't worry much about running over it unless you go crazy with downloads), and you won't have to re-buy most of your music. I will caution you though that you'll find a handful of iTunes files will not play on a non-Apple device.

The SD card sits right above the SIM card in the back of your phone and comes with an adapter that lets you put it into your computer. I don't know what kind of computer you're using but I am assuming Mac since you mentioned iTunes. If it's a MB Pro, there's a small slot on the left side that holds the SD card in its adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSDH ... ds=sd+card

[Tabby]

Thanks. I have a card in it that I transferred from my old phone with all my photos. It is only 16 GB. Is this what you are referring to or is there a place for a second card? Can I save music to it without erasing my photos? I'm not sure if we have an adapter to attach it to the computer or not - I have a vague memory of using one to check FIL's cards after he died but we could have borrowed it. Neither DH or I are tech savy.

I have an ancient Mac (circa 2005) that has my biggest itunes library (Itunes downloads plus a bunch of cd's I copied into it). It still works but it's on life support (battery doesn't work anymore so it is plugged in and when turned off it doesn't reliably turn back on so it's one power failure away from DNR). I'm not sure if I can save to an SD card on that. It doesn't have bluetooth or anything else, though possibly I could transfer files to a USB stick to my newer (Windows) laptop first? I have itunes on my newer laptop that only has my downloads, not the music from cds. It's no big deal - any music is better than none but it would be nice to get the whole library.

[AirsAboveNC]

The one that transferred from your old phone may be the SIM card but I'm not sure without seeing it. I'm also not sure if your old Mac can take an SD without seeing it, either. Transfer via flash drive would work just fine, I'm quite sure.

[WheresMyWhite]

Does your old Mac have a USB port?

You can find all kinds of connection devices that will use USB. I have a SD/Micro SD reader that plugs into USB (thats how I choose to get photos from my camera to my desktop). You can also find external hard drives with pretty decent capacity that are USB (and hopefully your older Mac will be okay with size).

I found a LAN connector for USB (how I get my MacBook Air hardwired if I want it to be rather than wifi).

I would work on getting your iTunes off it and on to something else. Back up to iCloud or Time Machine that you could restore to a newer Mac. Apple sells refurb'd equipment and that's where I got my MacBook Air and saved some $$.