Contemplating getting an iPhone SE, which comes in 32GB or 128GB options.

I have music library from my own CDs and Amazon purchases, which runs to about 90GB or so and something like 12,000 tracks.

So the difference between the two storage options is basically whether or not I stick my music on it. Currently I have an Android phone with a 128GB card in it, containing music.

What are my options if I go with the (£100 cheaper) 32GB option?

Does Apple Music work by just making all my stuff available by streaming? What’s the catch there? Seems like getting something for free, which always makes me suspicious, especially when it comes to things like music or video where the industry hates people getting something for free.

I’d prefer not to have to carry my current phone as a music store, partly because one of the issues I have with it is related to audio playback over my Bluetooth headphones.

Equally I’d prefer not to spend £100 more than necessary on an already expensive (by my standards) phone.

So what’s the best solution for cheapskates with iPhones and lots of music?

Google play music is good, you can upload I think 40k tracks to that and stream them.

But – iphones really bake in their own music player so it’s a bit clunky using a different one, so I tend to just keep most played tracks on my phone, and swap them about and used play music if there’s something I fancy listening to that I’ve not got saved to my phone.

Edit – I’d still go with the 128gb one though, mines 64gb and I wouldn’t want anything smaller I don’t think

just make a playlist in itunes and have your favourites on the phone

I used to just select the tunes I wanted and drag them onto the phone. Pretty easy, and weeds out a lot of the dross I’ve accumulated over the years. Any new stuff was manually added as and when.

I always went with the largest capacity phone as my music collection is around 90GB or so. If all of your music is ‘decent’ then I’d go with a larger capacity one.

Oh, and don’t underestimate how much photos can take up as well etc.

Hooking it up to a computer and copying a subset of tracks across every so often is not an option, it’s all or nothing.

I probably should have bought a 128 when they were available for £349 a couple of weeks ago, I guess.

32GB is fine for all my other usage. I don’t use huge apps like games, I don’t store videos, and any photos worth keeping get offloaded to Lightroom every so often.

Does Apple Music work by just making all my stuff available by streaming? What’s the catch there? Seems like getting something for free

£10 a month for that, so definitely not free.

My collection lives on my own cloud (NAS) and I stream off that.
Oldskool iPod adapted with high capacity SD card for everywhere else.

Ah, right. Important detail overlooked 😉 Already paying for Spotify so don’t want to pay to access my own stuff.

Tell me more about streaming from your own setup though.

I have a Raspberry Pi which I’ve not yet done anything with. Can I set that up and stream from that?

For £22 per year you can rip stuff onto your computer and upload it to Apple’s servers, then stream it via Apple Music. Although I haven’t done this with a lot of music, it’s worth it to me for the few things I want that aren’t on AM. I guess I could just copy it to all my devices manually, but my time is worth more than that 🙂 Obviously you can then download stuff as and when if you need to listen to it offline.

Slight caveat is that even if you rip/upload in a high bitrate I think[/I] it stores/streams at a lower bitrate (or at least it used to, been a long time since I looked up the specs). Never been an issue for me but committed audiophiles might object.

£22 per year?

Tell me more about streaming from your own setup though.

It’s not a cheapskate option though! Good few hundred quid for NAS a couple of TB storage. But it’s great – I have a Qnap NAS with the Qnap app, qmusic to stream.. Gives you a cloud address so you can access your own NAS from anywhere.
Have iTunes on the PC where all music is stored and music folders synced to the NAS.
You can have the complete iTunes library synced and use iTunes straight of the NAS, but I didn’t start out like that and can’t be bothered (don’t need to) change it now.

£22 per year.. checking that!

(Can only see £10 per month or £100 per year)
“After you join, you can change to an Annual Membership. With an Annual Membership, you get 12 months of Apple Music for the price of 10.”

£22 per year?

AFAIK

(Can only see £10 per month or £100 per year)

it’s not the same thing as Apple Music. It only works for stuff you’ve already bought/own/pirated and uploaded yourself

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204146

EDIT: actually according to that link it’s now included in AM membership? So maybe I’m not paying an extra £22 any more 🙂

EDIT EDIT: I don’t know whether it stores the songs you upload in your own iCloud storage (in which case you’d have to pay for extra storage) or just stores a reference to them if they already exist in the main Apple Music database (in which case you’d probably get by without much extra storage). Might be worth checking.

Oh ok, why didn’t you say iTunes Match then?!
Good option for Bez, that looks. (although, in the same spirit of secrecy they don’t show the price to subscribe anywhere visible! I think it’s limited storage until you pay up)

Does Apple not let you stream your own music collection for free the way Google Play Music does?

Oh ok, why didn’t you say iTunes Match then?!

cos I forgot 🙂 I will now flagellate myself by using Microsoft Windows for 1 hour

Does Apple not let you stream your own music collection for free the way Google Play Music does?

potentially yes (see my edit above!)

Crikey, they certainly don’t make it easy to find the pricing for Match. It’s been around longer than Apple Music hasn’t it? And they want everyone to sign up to Music rather than the cheaper version..!
Going through this – https://www.imore.com/how-sign-itunes-match

to be fair, they’re different services (although AM does now include IM functionality so you don’t need to pay for both!) but yes, the only official Apple place I can see the cost is when I go to subscribe via iTunes!

I have around 130gb of music in my collection,. I can stream it to my phones, tablet etc using iTunes. “Free” across Wi-fi or obviously using data allowance on my phone if outside Wi-fi area. I’ve got a contract with a 30gb monthly data allowance so no danger of me going over that unless i stream all day every day…

I also pay £9.99 for Spotify because i like listening to some playlists on there and use it to discover new music I might like.

If you only buy from iTunes, you only need Match for a year to get all your CD added stuff digitised into the cloud.

That said, I’ve forgotten to cancel it, twice…

I have 2 x 250gb media drives in my PC that are mirrors, so 250gb total music storage.

Monthly cost, pretty much nothing.

Contemplating getting an iPhone SE, which comes in 32GB or 128GB options

Ive been looking recently too. The 128gb was very similar on contract price to an iPhone 7.

Surly if you stream you have to pay for 3g/4g which I guess to get a decent enough amount of data becomes quite expensive?

I have 2 x 250gb media drives in my PC that are mirrors, so 250gb total music storage.

Monthly cost, pretty much nothing.

How does that work when you’re on the train?

Surly if you stream you have to pay for 3g/4g which I guess to get a decent enough amount of data becomes quite expensive?

I’m currently on Giffgaff’s £15 goodybag, which includes 5GB of data. I haven’t yet maxed that out with Spotify (though I used to occasionally use a 4GB one a few days before it expired) but if I had to stream my own music as well then I might have to move up to the next one.

How does that work when you’re on the train

Put an memory card with loads of tunes into your phone? It’s not rocket science.

I’m on 20Gb data. Music doesn’t even put a dent in it really & I stream quite a lot in the car, gym, walking etc.

Put an memory card with loads of tunes into your phone? It’s not rocket science.

Did you read *any* of this thread? Like even just the title? 😉

Slight caveat is that even if you rip/upload in a high bitrate I think it stores/streams at a lower bitrate (or at least it used to, been a long time since I looked up the specs). Never been an issue for me but committed audiophiles might object.

AFAIK, it downgrades anything uploaded to 128Kb, and as I rip all my music at 320Kb, that’s unacceptable.
Plus streaming it is fine with a decent 4G signal, but you’re stuffed in huge areas of the country where 3G is the best you can expect, and gprs or E is what you’ll see on the top of your phone.
Where I’m going camping next week, even a phone signal is unlikely, and I’ve driven for nearly ten miles across south Wiltshire and/or Dorset without any signal.
Put your music on your phone, and it’s with you regardless of shitty network connections.
I have a 128Gb 6+, which has roughly 15Gb free, there’s probably forty to fifty gig of music, about 2500 songs, whatever that is capacity-wise, and every so often I might download something I’ve Shazamed, or I’ll hook it up to my Mac and just play stuff on shuffle through my audio system, copying across things that catch my attention keeping an eye on what’s on the phone to avoid duplication.
Next phone will be 256Gb, I won’t dump everything onto the phone, I have a bit of classical that won’t work on shuffle, and there’s other stuff I’ve acquired that I’m not interested in carrying around, but I’ll be damned if I use any form of streaming, it’s far too compromised by our crap phone networks, plus I won’t allow music I’ve ripped over quite a few years to be reduced in quality, that is just not going to happen.
Unless they introduce iTunes Match that upgrades to Lossless, then I might, possibly, be interested, but having said that, I deeply resent actually having to pay to gain access to my music that I’ve already paid a significant amount of money for over many years.

From what I read you can choose the bitrate on Match. 256kbps is acceptable to anyone unless they think they can tell the difference , but they’d have to know what the bitrate is to actually get upset about it.
Not sure what help that is to the OP anyway.

Contemplating getting an iPhone SE, which comes in 32GB or 128GB options.

64GB ones are readily available on eBay. Got mine a couple of weeks ago for £195 in mint condition with accessories.

AFAIK, it downgrades anything uploaded to 128Kb, and as I rip all my music at 320K

256kbps AAC for iTunes Match.

On the iPhone capacity, I’ve found 64Gb to be just right. 128Gb iphones remain just under half empty even with some prime and Netflix downloads on. 16Gb iphones are insufficient.

I used iTunes Match until Apple Music came out and included it.

Like a few who have posted here I have a NAS that will stream my music. Though I generally just use Apple Music.

On the ‘you can only stream when you have a signal’ point. Absolutely. But then even with a 32Gb iPhone there’s enough storage there to hold some music for the dead zones. And how often are you somewhere with a desperate wish to listen to something obscure from your collection?

You can use the amazon music app. Not as well integrated into the iPhone as Apple Music but it will give you that amazon collection. As with an Apple Music or Spotify sub it will let you download for offline play.

I remember when it was C90s and no auto-reverse on your Walkman. ‘Only’ being able to carry around, say, 1000 or so of your favourite tracks doesn’t seem too bad.

Go for 32Gb and spend the spare cash on some fun.

Assuming like me you’ve ripped all your cds at apple lossless you can sync all your music to your phone at a lower bit rate so your 90gb of music will be a third of that or maybe less. You really don’t need apple lossless quality on your phone unless you’re listening through super expensive shit hot earphones, and even then still maybe not.

unless you’re listening through super expensive shit hot earphones and a separate DAC, and even then still maybe not.

The DAC in the phone is not fantastic for the full audiophile experience a separate DAC ups the quality but then it’s not really portable! Serviceable headphones will do direct to the phone.

64GB ones are readily available on eBay. Got mine a couple of weeks ago for £195 in mint condition with accessories.

Blimey. I’ve been keeping an eye on it and can only find 16GB ones at that price. (Though I’m a little wary of buying phones off eBay.)

64GB is no real use to me: it won’t fit all my music, so (given my stubborn reluctance to have to decide which music not to put on there) it’s not much practical benefit over a 32. From what I see, used/refurb 64s seem to go for not far off a new 32, and I’d rather have the warranty and fresh battery than the extra 32GB.

Assuming like me you’ve ripped all your cds at apple lossless you can sync all your music to your phone at a lower bit rate so your 90gb of music will be a third of that or maybe less.

I can’t remember what my settings are but they’re definitely not lossless. An average album comes out at about 30MB I think.