How to transfer music from an older iPod to an iPhone

HeraldS

I have a 3rd or 4th gen iPod (not glass wheel but not an iPod Touch) with a lot of music on it and I'd love to get that music onto my phone, which is an iPhone SE. How do I do this? Is there a way to do it without using any third party programs? I read something about putting the iPod into 'disk mode' and futzing with hidden files but I'd like a second opinion before I dive in with that option.

Shadowfire

You're pretty much stuck with third party programs, iTunes won't grab the music anymore unless it's on a computer that was synced to it originally. If it's as old as you say, I believe the files are just hidden, not needing to be messed around with. They can be copied over and they'll have some goofy names but the metadata is usually still there.

Burtletoy

Yeah, you just put it into disk mode, show the hidden folders, and then use windows explorer to move the files.

They will all have goofy names, yes.

HappylilElf

Yeah it's either third party programs or manual fiddling.

Because Apple just works (at making your user experience utter shit).

BlindZenDriver

As others mention you will do it the hard way.
A couple of tools that might be helpful:

dBpoweramp Music Converter
It will let you convert the music files into other formats if needed, be careful you do not end up compress the audio files multiple times using degrading compression - much better to store music in either uncompressed or lossless compression.

Tag&Rename
A tool let you see and edit the meta data in the music files, so it should tell you artist, album, title and so on of those files with garbled names. I should even let you rename the files in bulk using the meta data.

HeraldS

Thanks y'all. I'm gonna try to swap it all over at some point this week.

Mods, can we leave this open for a few more days in case I screw something up and have to come back for more advice? I'll respond when the transfer has been successfully made.

HeraldS

Update: The Microsoft store is down and so I can't seem to download iTunes. Apparently Apple discontinued it for Macs and now makes PCs go through the Microsoft store. I tried to create an account there but couldn't get past the part where they send you a code to verify that you have access to the email address you gave. So I appear to be stuck for the moment.

Nitsua

For Windows 10, I believe it only needs a Microsoft account if you plan on using the app across multiple devices, if you decline that, it just downloads normally - no account needed. I do iOS support for Apple directly, so I know that process pretty well.

HeraldS

Sounds good guys. I'm gonna try again once I'm home from holiday travels.