How to transfer music from windows media player to ipod without itunes

Up until recently, I've never had an iPod. It wasn't that I didn't like them - I think they're the best looking MP3 players out there. There was one reason, and one reason only that I hadn't bought one - iTunes. On Windows, and it has to be amongst the clunkiest applications from a major software company I've ever used. I'm not sure if it's because of the desire to make it look like a Mac and custom-draw everything, or just sloppy coding. It just always seems clunky and unresponsive, and hogs machine resources.

To make things worse, Apple started telling people not to upgrade to Vista because iTunes didn't work properly on it. WTF! Apple had how long to sort this out? You can't just tell people not to upgrade their operating system because you failed at meeting the deadline for your music player! (I do see this has since been fixed).

Anyway, back to the point. What stopped me buying an iPod was iTunes. The software is nasty, and I already have my music collection in Windows Media Player, which plays nice with Windows Media Center and my Xbox 360. If Apple made the iPod work with Windows Media Player, I'd have bought one. Assuming there are other people like me, Apple are losing potential business by trying to force people on to iTunes. I found there were a few ways to get Windows Media Player to work with the iPod, but it required 3rd party plugins (and cost money), and I wasn't about to buy an iPod to find these solutions aren't stable.

As fate would have it, I received a Blue 4GB iPod nano from my auntie when she was visiting from the US. The whole idea of not wanting to buy one in case it didn't work was squashed. I had an iPod, and I was going to use it, with or without Windows Media Player support!

When I got home, I downloaded a trial of MGTEK dopisp - one of the plugins claiming to get the iPod working with Windows Media Player. There are a few other plugins to do this, but a quick Google revealed less unhappy people using this one! I installed the plugin, connected my iPod, and fired up Windows Media Player.

Error! I was greeted with a dialog telling my my iPod had never been set up (via iTunes) and couldn't be used. I had a feeling this would happen, and luckily I had a laptop running Windows XP I was about to flatten! I installed iTunes and set up the iPod, then tried again. The iPod now appeared (with the name I assigned in iTunes) in Windows Media Player as a mobile device. I grabbed a few songs and tried to sync. It worked. It worked exactly like I wanted it to. It was that easy.

That makes me wonder why Apple didn't write a similar plugin? I understand they really want people to use iTunes, but is it really worth losing iPod sales over? Forcing people to use your software is not the way to do business. Sell your iPod on what it is. Sell iTunes on what it is. If people just want one, let them have it. You're lucky I received an iPod as a present, because you'd have missed out on this sale without native Windows Media Player support.

Although smartphones have replaced the need for a separate mp3/mp4 player, the iPods are simply something else. Even the iPod Classic can still be found among the users, as Apple sold a ton of iPods in the United States back when we had no problem paying for each download. It also helps that iPods in general offer longer battery life and fantastic audio quality that has yet to be exceeded.

Of course, all good things often come with a catch. Much like the iPhone, you need iTunes to store music on any iPod. Or do you not?

Why Not iTunes?

There are ways to add music to iPods without iTunes, which this guide will cover soon enough. But why would you not want to use iTunes in the first place? It is intuitive (the essence of every Apple product) and the iOS and macOS interaction is seamless.

But there’s the rub. It’s not as optimized for use with PC devices. It can be clunky and slow here and there. Plus, an Android user only has to drag and drop to load their device full of music. You’ll be happy to know that you can do this with your iPod, too!

Items that You’ll Need

Fortunately, you won’t need any extra items to add music to your iPod without iTunes, unless you need to transfer the music from somewhere else to your PC first.

You’ll only need:

1. Your iPod
2. An iPod USB charging cable

All it takes is a one-off session of tweaking. Here we go.

1. Plug it In

As you might have guessed, the first step would be to plug your iPod into your PC. One end of the cable goes to your iPod and the other to one of the free USB ports on your PC. Your computer will automatically install a driver for your Apple device. Once installed, a notification will pop up in the bottom right corner.

2. Disable Disk Use

If you’ve been using iTunes to transfer music to your iPod, you might’ve enabled disk use. Before proceeding to the other steps, make sure to open iTunes and uncheck “Enable disk use.”

3. Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives

Go to Start, type Control Panel, and enter Control Panel. Find (you can search the Control Panel) File Explorer Options and once you’re there, select the View tab and scroll down until you see the “Show hidden files, folders and drives” option. Now click it, hit Apply and close the window.

4. This PC

Find the “This PC” (or “Computer,” or “My Computer” on pre-Windows 10 versions). Once you’ve entered This PC, double click on a drive titled “iPod” to enter.

5. Music

In the iPod folder, you’ll find another one titled “Music.” This is your iPod’s central music folder. If your iPod is empty, you won’t see anything in it, but if you’ve already transferred music with iTunes, you’ll see a bunch of random numbers and letters. Don’t worry, iTunes renames these songs during the transfer process.

6. Drag-n-Drop

All you need to do now is go to the folder where you store your music, choose what you want to transfer, and do a simple drag-n-drop to your iPod’s Music folder from the previous step. Make sure that all music that you want to transfer to your iPod is transferred directly to the Music folder, and not as a folder itself or into a new subfolder.

You Only Need to Do It Once

Once you’ve followed all these steps successfully, you should be able to seamlessly drag-n-drop music to your iPod device. The best part about this is that when you’ve set everything up like this, you don’t have to go through it again.

Other ways of doing this do exist, however. Do you know of another way to add music to your iPod without iTunes? If you do, remember to share it with the community down below, in the comments section!

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