For most iPhone users out there, iTunes is the defacto application for managing everything on your device, from apps and contacts to movies and music. However, while iTunes has its appeal and some people really prefer it over other managers and players, there isn’t always the need to use it.
In our case, if we want to listen to our own music tracks on our iPhones, there are some alternatives that you might enjoy even more than iTunes. Here are some good alternatives for copying and listening to music on your iPhone without iTunes.
Put music in your iPhone without iTunes
Dropbox
That’s right, you can use your Dropbox account to store and listen to any music you upload on the cloud platform. You don’t need an additional player to listen to your own tracks, just upload everything you want on Dropbox and tap on your songs to play them, it’s that easy.
What’s even greater is that you don’t need to keep your iPhone unlocked and active so the music won’t stop playing. Go to your Dropbox account using the Safari browser, tap on any track and you’re golden. Alternatively, if you don’t want to use Safari, you can install the Dropbox app and take it from there.
Google Play
People know Google Play as Google’s music streaming service and while that’s correct, most people don’t know that you can add your own music inside Google Play without paying a dime. However, it’s worth noting that Google Play has a 250,000 song limit and while you can do that for free without paying a subscription, you’ll get the occasional ads that might be annoying.
You can also subscribe to Google Play for only $9.99/month which gives you access to their full music library, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Red. If you are already a Google Play subscriber, then all you have to do is to install the Google Play app on your phone and start listening. You have to keep in mind however that copying music to your Google Play account requires you to have a computer to transfer your tracks to the service.
Amazon Music
If you’re not a Google Play fan, there’s also the newer music streaming service from Amazon called Amazon Music. The big difference between Google Play and Amazon Music is, however, the tracks upload limit. You can only upload 250 songs on Amazon Music compared to 250,000 on Google Play when we’re talking about the free version of these services. If you’re willing to pay $24.99 per year, however, Amazon lets you upload 250,000 tracks as well.
Being a Prime subscriber tho will get you all the great services from Amazon including Prime and Twitch, with access to their huge music library. Evidently, this option is more convenient for you if you’re subscribed to the Amazon ecosystem. The app is similar to Google Play in many regards, get the Amazon music app on your iPhone and start listening. The only major drawback we found with Amazon’s service is that you cannot purchase any tracks from the app itself, you have to visit the site for song purchases.
iTunes Alternatives
Since we’re talking about life without iTunes, we have to talk a bit about other pieces of software that can replace iTunes. We’ve made a more details article about the best iTunes alternatives for Windows and we highly recommend reading it. However, since we’re talking about copying music on your iPhone without iTunes, we have two major recommendations.
CopyTrans Manager
CopyTrans Manager is one of the popular iTunes alternatives out there, completely replacing it when it comes to your media files. You can copy song tracks, videos, ringtones, podcasts or books to your iPhone without using iTunes, basically, most of the things you want to copy on your iPhone, you can do with CopyTrans Manager.
You can also create and manage playlists, upload artwork for your tracks and sort your music and much more. When you download CopyTrans Manager for Windows, you’ll actually get the CopyTrans Control Center which offers a suite of apps to manage your iPhone.
MediaMonkey for Windows
MediaMonkey is another great iTunes alternative that lets you copy music on your iPhone without using iTunes. You can sync your PC’s music library with your device and manage it exclusively with the software. MediaMonkey is fully customizable, comes with a bunch of customizations and skins and evidently, is a pretty powerful music organizer for your iPhone or iPad.
The software has a free and a Gold edition which brings several other features such as automatic library organizer, auto-Conversion and leveling or cd/DVD ripping but if you’re looking for just a music organizer, the free version will satisfy most people. However, if you want more features, we suggest getting the Gold version for only 24.99 USD, one-time payment.
There we have it, as you can see, iTunes is not the be-all and end-all of apps for your iPhone and there are some pretty good iTunes alternatives out there.
