Itunes/Apple Music music transfer from iMac to iPhone 13 Pro

I am not great with technology and don't at present choose to stream unless forced to. Had an old iTunes account which now shows as Apple Music. I do not have a monthly subscription. Think I have only paid for 5-10 ads tracks to download to date. The rest in the library are my own cds which I have loaded onto the account.

Until this last month I have always been able to drag and drop any new cd purchases onto my iPhone when plugged into my computer. This way I can listen to the albums I want to both when out and about or in the car linked through apple car play. Now if I try to drag and drop the rainbow wheel comes up and it stalls so I have to force a quit.

Imagine this is Apple ceasing to support old practises and forcing me to get a paid for Apple Music account. Looked through older years suggestions re synching etc but cannot find them on the operating system now.

Any help or just confirmation that I now need to move forward would be appreciated and that I am just not missing a trick. Thanks.

Posted on Oct 21, 2026 2:34 PM

5 replies

Phil0124

Level 10 (242,520 points)

Oct 21, 2026 2:50 PM in response to hibs13

hibs13 wrote:

Imagine this is Apple ceasing to support old practises and forcing me to get a paid for Apple Music account.

It is not. That is an entirely different issue altogether. Spawning the rainbow wheel usually suggests there is an issue reading the file from the drive or some other background task preventing the completion of the transfer.

If Apple was actively doing somethint to prevent the transfer it would not just hang the app and foce the colored spnning wheel. It proably just issue an error in that case.

Apple still supports manual syncing oveer USB for songs and albums in the local library.

You might however want to run a diagnostic on your hard drive, as it may be having some corruption issues causing that pinwheel when trying to transfer a track.

click here ➜ Check if a Mac disk is about to fail - Apple Support

picas

Level 7 (21,779 points)

Oct 21, 2026 2:53 PM in response to hibs13

See Sync content between your Mac and iPhone or iPad – Apple Support (AU)

hibs13 Author

Level 1 (15 points)

Oct 22, 2026 10:17 AM in response to hibs13

Thank you for info, I will give it a go and see what I can do. Glad from what you say that the facility has not been withdrawn. Just bought a new iMac so possibly a more up to date machine may help. This one is a 2015.

hibs13 Author

Level 1 (15 points)

Oct 22, 2026 10:18 AM in response to hibs13

Thank you I will review and try and resolve. May just be an old machine losing ability to communicate now as its a 2015 model.

Phil0124

Level 10 (242,520 points)

Oct 22, 2026 1:11 PM in response to hibs13

You're welcome.

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256380501