How to Add Music to an iPod Without Using iTunes
By Michelle Carvo
iPods have become the music player of choice over the past five years. It's now much easier to sync music to your iPod than it is to lug around a case of 25 or 200 CDs. While the iPod is designed to be used with iTunes for the purpose of transferring music, many users dislike having to use iTunes in order to add music to their iPod. If you want to add music to your iPod without having to use iTunes, you'll learn how to do it here.
Step 1
Insert the iPod's USB cable into the bottom of the iPod. Then insert the other end of the cable into an available USB port on your computer. Wait a minute or two as the computer may need to install a driver for the iPod. Once it is successfully installed, you'll see that it has successfully installed in the bottom right corner.
Step 2
Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel on your computer. Double click on \"Folder Options\" and scroll down a bit. You'll see an option to enable hidden files and folders. Click it, then click \"Apply\" and close the window.
Step 3
Go to your computer's desktop and look for the folder titled \"My Computer.\" Double click on that and you'll see another drive titled \"iPod\". This is your iPod's folder and you'll want to double click on it to go in.
Step 4
Look around the folder and find the folder within it titled \"Music\". Double-click on this and now you're in your iPod's central music folder. If you already have transferred music to your iPod using iTunes, you may see a whole lot of random letters and numbers. These are your songs that have been renamed by iTunes during the transfer process.
Step 5
Open up another folder in Windows. Go to the folder where you store all of your music (this is typically in C:\Users\Username\Music).
Step 6
Select all the songs you want to transfer from your computer to your iPod by holding down the \"CTRL\" button and using your mouse to select the songs one by one. This may take a few minutes, depending on how many songs you're wanting to transfer.
Step 7
Drag all the songs from the Music folder to the iPod's Music folder. Make sure to drag them into the actual folder and not into a sub-folder. Wait for the songs to finish transferring and once it's done, unplug the iPod. Power it up and you should see all your music there.
Tips
- If at first you don't succeed, try again. Apple wants you to use iTunes and your iPod together, so you may encounter some difficulty initially in transferring the music Just keep trying it and you'll get it to transfer.
Warnings
- Make sure disk mode is not enabled. If you've used iTunes before to transfer your iPod's music, you might have enabled disk mode, which requires you to hit a button to eject the iPod safely once you're done syncing music to it. Go into iTunes and disable this before transferring music from your computer to your iPod without iTunes.
Writer Bio
Michelle Carvo has been writing professionally since 2006, contributing to a variety of websites. She is also a technical writer with extensive experience in Android/iPhone development and PC repair. Carvo holds a Bachelor of Science in computer information systems from the University of Michigan-Flint and works as an IT SEO project manager.