[Solved] How Can I Sync Apple Music to iPod?

Q: I downloaded some Apple Music songs but when I try to sync them to my iPod nano, I got the error message saying “Apple Music songs cannot be copied to an iPod.” What’s wrong? Can’t Apple’s devices support its own service? Come on. Any solution?

Syncing Apple Music tracks to iPod, especially the iPod nano or shuffle is no easy job at all. According to Apple, currently there’s no way to put Apple Music songs on iPods except iPod touch because of the copyright protection. Can’t believe it? But it’s 100% true. Not only iPods, other popular MP3 players like Walkman, Zune can’t support playing Apple Music either. However, that’s possible now thanks to the rapid development of some special Apple Music tools. Here in this post, we’ll show you one of the best solutions to put Apple Music songs on iPod nano/shuffle for offline listening.

Part 1. iPod won’t sync Apple Music, why?

Firstly, let’s take a look at the reason why Apple Music can’t be synced to iPod nano or shuffle. In fact, that’s simply because iPod nano and shuffle lack Wi-Fi capabilities without which Apple can’t authenticate whether or not the device has an active Apple Music subscription. In other words, Apple can’t track and control your use of those Apple Music songs on your iPods since in this case you can freely download the Apple Music songs within the 3-month free trial subscription and then cancel the service permanently. To avoid such situation, Apple disables the sync between Apple Music and iPod nano and shuffle as well as other common MP3 players. In result, only selected devices like iPhone, iPad, Android could stream Apple Music tracks properly.

The technology Apple used to track your subscription and authorization of Apple Music is called DRM. Because of which, once the Apple Music subscription is cancelled, the music collections will withdraw from all your devices automatically. Therefore, in order to offline sync Apple Music tracks to iPod nano or shuffle, the key is to find a way to break the DRM restriction from Apple Music.

Part 2. Best tool to remove DRM from Apple Music

To delete DRM lock from Apple Music tracks, a professional Apple Music DRM removal software is necessary. TunesKit Apple Music Converter is such a great 3rd party Apple Music converting tool that can help you completely remove DRM protection from Apple Music songs and playlists. It will also convert the specially encoded Apple Music files to common MP3 format compatible with iPod nano/shuffle while keeping the original quality and ID3 tags. With this smart app, you can keep the Apple Music songs on your iPod forever even when the subscription expires.

Part 3. Guide on syncing Apple Music to iPod nano/shuffle

You can download the free trial version of TunesKit Apple Music Converter on your Mac or PC and begin to follow these instructions to see how to easily copy Apple Music songs to iPods.

Step 1. Download and add Apple Music songs to TunesKit

After installing TunesKit Apple Music Converter, click the shortcut icon on the desktop to launch it. Then click “+” button to load the Apple Music tracks from your iTunes library folder to TunesKit. You can also import the offline songs from Apple Music to TunesKit by drag-and-drop.

Step 2. Customize output settings

Once the Apple Music songs are added to TunesKit, move to Format panel and click the MP3 format. Then in the popup window, you can choose the output format as MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC or others as you want. In order to make the converted songs compatible with iPod, you are suggested to select MP3 as the output. You can also set other parameters including audio codec, channel, sample rate, bit rate according to your own requirements.

Step 3. Start to convert Apple Music to MP3

Now simply click the “Convert” button at the right corner to let the program begin converting Apple Music songs to DRM-free MP3 format. The whole conversion time will depend on the number of songs you are converting. Normally it will process at 30X faster speed.

Step 4. TransferApple Music to iPod via iTunes

Once converted, you can find the DRM-free Apple Music songs in MP3 format in converted folder by clicking history folder. Then you can copy those songs to your iTunes library folder on your computer. Connect your iPod with iTunes. Then, click “Music” > “Sync Music” > “selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres”. In “Playlists” section, choose “Recently added” which includes the unprotected Apple Music songs that you put in iTunes library. Click “Apply” and iTunes will automatically sync the Apple Music songs to your iPods as expected.