Transferring Personal Music to Ionic

[ErickFitbit]

Update 10/6/17 -- Thanks for sharing your experiences with attempting to transfer your playlists onto Ionic. After reading through the discussions in this thread, I noticed some users where successful and others not so much.

Users are running into various blockers that are preventing a successful transfer. I've compiled the complications into the following categories:

• Stuck on "Looking for Ionic" message on Fitbit connect even though Ionic/Fitbit App/Computer on same Network) 

Cannot connect unless a force manual IP address for Ionic is done(entering IP address manually)

• Frozen at "Determining Transfer Time" (check out @xTommyG's workaround here)
• Stuck on "Transfer in progress" (try restarting your Ionic and then reestablish Wi-Fi connection on Ionic)
• Ionic won't connect to Wi-Fi (see Why won't my Fitbit watch connect to Wi-Fi? for tips)

I've created a guide to help anyone that's having issues with this. So, without further ado, let's start transferring some music!  

Requirements

• Windows 10 (PC) or Mac computer 
• Wi-Fi capable computer: Must be able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi (direct ethernet connections will not work)
• Must connect to a 2.4GHz frequency network (5 GHz frequency is not supported)
• Fitbit Connect Software (Win10/Mac) must be installed
• Ionic battery life must be above 40% to transfer music (Keeping Ionic charging during this process is recommended)
• Create at least 1 playlist of songs or podcasts in iTunes or Windows Media Player to download to your watch. You can also create playlists in the Fitbit Music app using the drag-and-drop feature to add individual tracks. 
• To download music files, they must fall under one of the following audio file types: 
  • Windows 10
    • MP3 files
    • MP4 files with AAC audio
    • WMA files
  • Mac
    • MP3 files
    • AIFF
    • MP4 files with AAC audio

• If you use iTunes, make sure you approve the app to share playlists with your watch: Open iTunes on your computer > Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Share iTunes Library XML with other applications > OK.

 

• For best results, perform this process as close to your router as possible to reduce any interference 

Transfer Music Checklist

1. Restart computer
2. Make sure your computer is connected to a strong Wi-Fi network (note: personal or work network that requires a password to connect is recommended - 2.4 GHz) 
3. Restart phone
4. Restart Ionic
5. In the Fitbit app go to Account/Media/Manage Wi-fi Networks and remove all saved networks
6. Connect back to your Wi-Fi network 
7. Plug-in your watch to charge
8. On your Ionic, tap Music app and then Transfer Music: 
9. Ionic will show this screen when connection is established: 
10. Open Fitbit Connect and click on Manage My Music 
11. When prompted, follow the on-screen instructions on your Mac/PC to choose the playlists you want to download to your watch. After you choose a playlist, the download starts automatically. Download/transfer times vary based on how large your playlist is (was able to download 1 hours worth of music in about 6-8 minutes).

Note: For faster download times, you might want to avoid large playlists. The more songs you transfer under one playlist the longer download times you will experience. Should you run into an issue please let us know where in the process you get stuck.

Thanks everyone for your continued insight and feedback in this thread. I hope all of you Ionic users get transferred, drop your phones on your dressers and start working out to the music you most enjoy, phone free!

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Update 9/28/17 -- The latest version of Fitbit Connect for Mac is now live! The update can now be found on the setup page. Please update if you haven't already so you can start transferring your favorite tunes to your Ionic!

• Download Fitbit Connect for Mac: www.fitbit.com/setup

• Download Fitbit Connect for PC: http://cache.fitbit.com/FitbitConnect/FitbitConnect-v2.0.2.6954-2017-09-28.exe 

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Everyone -- To transfer music with Fitbit Connect, please click the applicable link below to download and install the Fitbit Connect software:

• Download Fitbit Connect for Mac: www.fitbit.com/setup

• Download Fitbit Connect for PC: http://cache.fitbit.com/FitbitConnect/FitbitConnect-v2.0.2.6954-2017-09-28.exe

With the Music app on Fitbit Ionic, you can store and play several hours worth of your favorite songs and podcasts right on your wrist. After you download playlists to your watch, connect Bluetooth headphones or another audio device to listen to your tracks.

You need a Windows 10 PC or a Mac connected to Wi-Fi to download music and podcasts to your watch. Keep in mind you can only transfer files that you own or don’t require a license. 

If you live in the United States, you can also use the Pandora app to download stations to your watch. 

For full instructions, I recommend checking out "How do I listen to music and podcasts on my Fitbit watch?"

[justinesarah]

Hi, thank you so much for your info, I have managed to transfer music over.  

However, only 3 of 18 songs transferred.  The other 15 say 'DRM-encrypted file.  Can't transfer'.

I got all the songs off iMusic, all recently.  Is there some way to fix this problem?  Thank you

[PeteG-1]

@justinesarah You'll want to determine if those 15 are actually DRM (I think iTunes has a "Type" field you can sort by).   If they are, you can't transfer them.

Sometimes the metadata isn't right though, so double-check the types, before giving up, there are ways to fix corrupted DRM-like metadata.  There aren't ways (legal anyway) to remove the actual DRM info.

[cstephen]

I'm not sure why everyone is having so much trouble. In an earlier post in this topic, I outlined the process that I used, which is exactly according to the user guide. It works well, and relatively smoothly. For reference again, here is what I did:

1. Put Ionic into Music Transfer mode (it must be able to connect to your wifi, and as stated many times, it cannot be a public wifi that requires a login)

2. Inside Fitbit App on PC, select music icon in top right of the screen, just beside the image of the Ionic

3. Select Personal Music (the app will look for the Ionic and show you how much storage space you've used)

4. Create a playlist (yes, that's right - no need to create Windows Media or iTunes playlists. The playlist can be created in the app)

5. Add songs to the playlist. You can drag and drop or select using the file browser

6. Once you've built your playlist, select it and transfer starts immediately and automatically.

For all those complaining about this process, think about what Fitbit have done, and why, and you'll see that it's a reasonable process - there seems to be so much anger and angst at Fitbit, and yet frankly most of the complaints either don't offer an alternative solution, or offer a solution that won't work. Let me illustrate:

Transfer directly from phone - the connection to the phone is by low power Bluetooth, one of the reasons that the battery lasts so long. However, this would be a slow connection to send that amount of data in music files. Speed it up and chew up the battery - no thanks.

Transfer directly through the USB cable - the cable is a charging cable with no data connections. This was done, I assume to keep the ionic waterproof. I know that I would prefer it to be waterproof than have a dodgy USB connection to the watch that may fail. For all those who have suggested their old MP3 players and Android (and other) phones can connect directly and act as a USB storage device, each of those devices has non-waterproof USB connectors.

Time taken to find/locate ionic when initiating transfer - remember that when you're in the app, managing the transfer process, you are using Bluetooth. When the app wants to start actually transferring the music files, it must initiate the wifi connection. So, the app goes out on the wifi network and looks for the ionic that it's already talking to on Bluetooth. When it finds it, the app then establishes the wifi connection and starts transferring data. Your computer, the router, and the connection quality between each of the devices must dramatically affect the performance and connections times.

The process in the first post on this topic suggests using the Fitbit Connect app. However, I tried that and it didn't work for me. I notice that Fitbit have updated the Windows 10 app and suggest that the Fitbit Connect app is an old version and should be updated to the Windows 10 app. Clearly they want us to use the Windows 10 app, and so suggestions on how to trick the update process into keeping the Fitbit Connect app without updating seems unsupported and probably not the best long term solution.

I still haven't figured out how to trigger the ionic to connect to the PC (through the Windows 10 app) after it's been talking to the phone app. This seems to be a little inconsistent, working first time sometimes, or taking a number of attempts at other times. But once connected to the PC, the whole music transfer process seems OK to me (reasonable performance, reliability, and usability). It's certainly not bad enough to warrant the emotional outbursts seen on this forum topic.

PS, Just as an aside, how many of you have tried transferring playlists or music files from Google Play? Surely this is a more open and easier process....

[Fireresq7]

Not sure. There’s a PC app called Gold wave (free). You can convert any audio file to another format and try from there?

[Nimeous]

Just "upgraded" from a Forerunner in order to have phone free runs.

Tranferring music is an awful, AWFUL, user experience. I've done it, in part: a 65 song transfer took four hours and, then, it turns out that only 11 of the songs went across.

Other experiences included the Windows 10 app not finding playlists, finding old playlists (as I deleted the first ones and replaced them with new names to see if that made a difference) and constant dreary disconnects.

If this process demands a PC - and why? - then it should allow a cable transfer.

The whole process is grossly unintuitive. I've never had to hit a cross to start a process (that normally means you cancel), and there's absolutely no instruction whatsoever.

The official instructions on this thread (turn off wifi, turn it on, wave your phone at the moon etc) are obvious work-arounds that hide the fact the system is ropey at best.

If my latest "upload" doesn't work this **ahem** is going back for a Vivoactive 3.

[BigRalphN]

Unfortunately no. Apple released a lot of music, especially early on, DRM encoded. What it meant for us is that they could only be played on iTunes. Oddly you could still burn a cd. So the workaround was to burn it to cd then rip it as mp3's. I believe they stopped that practice awhile ago. The only other way would be if they made an Itunes app.. I haven't ran across the drm issue with anything I have bought in the past few years but that doesn't mean an artist could not request it. It is not a Fitbit issue. It is Apple

[BigRalphN]

First, Pandora works great. I loaded my playlists in about 45 minutes. If they would add a Spotify app I would be set. I realize people want everything free so they won't want these. I don't know that there is a fix in the current Ionic. If the had a 5g chip they could have done things quicker by WiFi transfer. As others have stated cable transfer would have killed waterproof. I had no trouble transferring but ended up removing all of it because Pandora is perfect for me. My only gripe is that you can only use one Bluetooth device at a time. I have a set of nice Bluetooth totally wireless buds but you need to connect left and right. So I can only get one ear on Fitbit. So I am using an old cruddy pair for now.

[Nimeous]

I'm trying to transfer drm free music. Have been for over 12 hours.

Pandora isn't available in the UK, which is where I am.

So, Amazon return and me bad mouthing Fitbit to all and sundry is the best I can hope for.

[Osmar]

@cstephen

it simply does not work. It is easy to understand

1- the ionic, my phone and my pc are connected to my Wi-Fi.

2- i do not have Windows 10 and it isn't reasonable to obligate me to buy another computer or change a common used OS just to use my watch. I use Windows 7.

3- the fitbit connect app has the option "manage my music" but it is a torment hell. It does not detect all my mp3s and when it does, it says some of them are in unsupported format (but they are all in the same format).

4- i have never used playlists to listen to my songs and now i have to search all songs and create playlists just for the watch. It is a hell.

5- i have never used Windows media player, but the fitbit program does not recognize Winamp or it's playlists. So, i must use Windows media player just for that. It is a hell.

6- the music must be in a specific folder "/music" of the computer orfitbitt can't access it. So i must move all the songs i have selected and the playlists that i have created to that folder. The fitbit connect app does not recognize songs in another folder.

7- the fitbit connect app does not recognize some leters and numbers, so, i have to change the names and the tags of the mp3s.

8- so, after all that, I start the sync and pray. After hours and hours of waiting, the fitbit ramdomly exclude songs, saying it couldn't find them. But they are all there.

9- hours, days, weeks, to transfer music.

10- it is absurd.

11- should be a simple drag and drop.

12- there is no excuse for that.

13- it does not work the way you said.

[Osmar]

And 14: most of the times, as the process takes hours, the watch disconnects and the process is interrupted. So, i need to restart it all over again.

As i said, hell. It seems like this process was conceived by Satan himself.

[lisa0069]

At Stephen  

I am happy it worked for you but if this many people are saying it doesn't work for them, how many people are not posting that is also doesn't work for.

I think I finally figured out that my issue is I live out in the boonies and have Hughesnet 5g satellite internet.  Constantly slow, computer won't get past the constantly looking for my Ionic, then how long would it take to transfer one song.

There are a lot of people who buy thing but don't even know what issues might come about so they don't know what to investigate before purchase.  Then once we have it try to do what the company says to no avail.  

S yes some of us are upset, I mean come on they only have a few banks approved for the wallet and you can't see who is approved before purchase.  Do they advertise that you need to have an upgraded Pandora account, no.

Maybe if they were a little more up front about what can a d cannot be done maybe some people would not be upset.  So far my only advantage for my upgraded purchase is I can now shower in my watch.

just my 2 cents

[PeteG-1]

Yeah, Fitbit hasn't done the best job on this one.  I have to admit, I like their s/w as a whole (coming from a s/w engineering background), because it's "simple enough" for almost any user (got my 80YO mom started on a Charge2, and she's having fun checking her stats, daily, on the PC or her phone), yet extensible and offering just enough, for those of us wanting to "delve in" and customize a bit.  It's a tricky balance to to get to, and even hard to maintain, IME.

The music is a mess though, they're re-indexing things constantly, from my evaluation of my rather large library, and watching the apps' threads processing.  I don't understand why they'd be doing some custom "strangeness" here, when there are great packages out there (libraries, essentially) that they could just use, cheap, that are proven/tested, with probably way more music than any of us have in our "libraries".

The DRM thing is dumb too, there are ways to work around this "fumble" by the industry (I worked on some of the earlier DRM implementations, from the h/w side, and was constantly scratching my head, copy-protection is a losing game, mostly), and at the least Fitbit could throw a better warning.  Plus, they could suggest that people look into some specific ways to get DRM-free versions (legal ways) of their music.

I have exactly 0% of "online-only owned" music, I've always purchased physical CDs, and archived them myself, because of the shifting "mess" of DRM and similar schemas out there.

In terms of the slowness/hangs, the way it works now, I'm pretty sure, is Fitbit is building some sort of HUGE (2.8GB worth on my PC) customized music DB, at: %userdata%\AppData\Local\Packages\Fitbit.Fitbit_<GUID>\LocalState\fitbit".

Perhaps they're just using a poor library implementation, but it's hard to imagine, in this day and age, when music indexing has been done a dozen ways, all sound already.

Their transfer thing isn't well conceived either, it should have a "pick up from before" mechanism, so that if/when they have a failure, it's not a reset, particularly if you just waited 20-30 minutes for your music to index, and then a couple of hours to do a partial transfer.

I'm really wondering, I might trace the (network) packet flow from the app to the device, I'm kind of starting to suspect they're pushing this through their online DB, or at least some data, in tandem.  Even a slow 802.11 device should easily be able to transfer a TON of music, in a manner of minutes.

Their documentation is "strange" too, it makes it sound like your music "source" and Ionic have to be on the same wireless frequency/channel, which I'm almost positive isn't the case, you just need to be on the same network segment (most people have 1, or maybe 2 at home anyway). They should NOT need to all be on 2.4, channel 11, unless you were doing an IGMP type of transfer, which I highly doubt, for a variety of technical reasons.

On top of that, many who have paired their BT headphones have lost the ability to sync, so the multi-BT, so even if you get music transferred, connecting your headphones may hose the whole thing anyway.

Personally, I think they'd be smart to pull/disable this feature, take a bit of heat on it, and go back and finish the work on it, and re-release it as a "polished" package.  I think this would irritate a whole lot less users, than the current situation...

[PeteG-1]

@lisa0069 The speed of your WAN connection shouldn't be a factor, for pushing music, unless you're streaming it straight through a virtual drive or something, to the Fitbit app (if this part doesn't make sense, then you're probably not).

There are plenty of other factors that are hosing this right now, per my Loong post...

[PeteG-1]

---

@BigRalphN wrote:
Unfortunately no. Apple released a lot of music, especially early on, DRM encoded. What it meant for us is that they could only be played on iTunes. Oddly you could still burn a cd. So the workaround was to burn it to cd then rip it as mp3's. I believe they stopped that practice awhile ago. The only other way would be if they made an Itunes app.. I haven't ran across the drm issue with anything I have bought in the past few years but that doesn't mean an artist could not request it. It is not a Fitbit issue. It is Apple

---

@BigRalphNThis is partly true, the Fitbit/Apple, it's really both/neither, IMO.

At the least (since they seem to be building a big DB anyway, why not flag the DRM tracks) they should be presenting you with a list of music entities (songs, albums, whatever) that won't be able to sync, due to DRM, and helping you figure out options, with a nice help article.

A better case would  be if they got certified, and just transferred the DRM protected music accordingly.  It is a tough process though, and maybe thought that the amount of protected titles would be small enough, bad gamble on their part.

There used to be an option to "upgrade" your iTunes (I've never had an account, but I've looked at the DRM side programatically), to an account that allowed you to RIP to a CD, essentially creating a "DRM free" version of your music (others have mentioned this too).  I'm not sure if this is still available though, someone with an account would have more success looking at the current "tiers" available.

[Jactatt]

The most annoying bit is Fitbit directs you if you are already using ITunes. So why it does that when it' not compatible is frustrating.

[PeteG-1]

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@Fireresq7 wrote:

Not sure. There’s a PC app called Gold wave (free). You can convert any audio file to another format and try from there?

---

@Fireresq7This is sketchy though. 

There have been a number of rulings on this, and the courts have mostly said that it's okay to tell someone about the possibility of removing DRM, mostly.

When it comes to the act of removing it though (usually called "stripping"), it's a whole different deal, and there are a ton of factors involved.  Some can be legal, but most is not, at least in the US.

I think it's a little distressing, that a very large segment of the (US) population now "owns" music, but only in certain terms (from both the consumer and business sides of things), most of which they're unaware of.

DRM is alive/well, in many new forms too, some in music still being reviewed, and very much so in video.  This is the (biggest) reason you have to have a TV or converter with HDCP 2.2, since all the old TVs/streaming-devices/more only have 1.3 or 1.4.  Consumers pretty much don't know  what's coming, with this part...  "You want to watch the 4k version of those shows? Sure, just upgrade these 3 components, pretty much all of them, no problem, cash or credit?" ;-]

[BigRalphN]

I think Apple did away with DRM music. Either that or their Apple Music subscription now covers the burning to CDs. Early on I got ITunes and burned a few cds to get around DRM. Funny thing is I hate apple and anything with an I in front on it. I still have an iPad but most likely it will be my last. I have always had android phones. But I am off on a tangent. I agree with all you are saying. I especially agree that they should pull the feature until its perfected, Pandora works fine so I am guessing someone else coded the process. It only took me 15 minutes and while I did get a failure lime others mentioned it resumed properly and I didn't lose anything. I am also a guitar player. This reminds me if when I got in on an initial release of the Line 6 Helix. There were tons of bugs and things missing. There were limited options to amps and effects. They released it and basically used the public as beta testers. Updates came frequently at first then spread out. Now it's a fantastic device with very few bugs. Hopefully Fitbit will be similar with this device. Work on speed and more apps while perfecting the music end then add music in when it works. It actually seemed like more apps were added today or I missed some initially. I like the device and want to give them time. First thing that needs addressed are the sync issues across the whole line. How about adapting some of that Pebble tech.

[PeteG-1]

Yeah, @BigRalphN, also not an Apple guy, in any way/shape/form, not since the 80's anyway, when I learned to code initially, on my old IIc....

I'm pretty sure you're right, Apple did require non-DRM at some point, so if your music collection is all from that point forward, this is probably a non-issue.  But, if you have albums (or playlists that span them), that are DRM, then you have to figure out what your strategy is going to be.  I'm not sure if they still have that "iTunes account level" that allows RIP'ing CDs, but that'd be my default if I were stuck, if the level exists.  

Yeah, most smartphone/watch/assistant plug-in apps are authored by 3rd parties; I'm sure Pandora did theirs, but most likely with a "loan" of a couple of "helper engineers" from the Fitbit side (I've worked on and coordinated a lot of this, traversing these boundaries).

Since they likely just ported their existing/tested version in, and mapped to the Fitbit API set accordingly, it's MUCH more stable (I don't have Pandora, but it seems like most are having good luck with it here, except the paid-account issue, but IMO that's a personal choice, of course they're going to implement paid, why wouldn't they...), because it was basically a port-fix-test-fix.  

From what I can tell, the Music plugin is a start mostly from scratch, and either a custom music DB design, or a poor choice of libraries for the DB, ones that cannot handle and large volume of files/tracks/albums/playlists/etc.

I think if they turned off music, a LOT of the sync issues would sort of go away (this appears to be a Bluetooth enumeration thing, from my viewpoint), and allow them time, to fix the multiple BT device problems too, and then come back with both tuned/working.

Good analogy, the only difference is I bet that guitar has at least a 10-15 year lifespan, if not significantly more, and the Ionic has maybe 2-3 years, 5 on the absolute outside.  Plus, the consumer audience is well-informed, and fickle as a result, they can figure out who works better, and switch. 

People buying guitars have an easier time now I bet, although now they have to figure out which of the zillion reviews make sense to them.  I always say too much info is better than not enough though, you can always "filter".

[Flinch57-84]

Is windows media player a app you download or part windows 10? If I don’t have Bluetooth on my windows 10 can I succeed? Sorry I’m pretty incompetent in this area, any help would be great.

[pleephd]

Got it to work!!!!  I have iTunes, iPhone and apple laptop.  I downloaded the apple Fitbit program and installed it on my computer (made sure that both the Fitbit and laptop were on the same wifi network.  Then clicked on Manage music (also on ionic clicked on music and clicked transfer music).  In the past this is where I was having problems and every time I would log on it would say it could not find my ionic (said not linked and would tell me to go to the app and link them, but had already done so). Then for fun, I decided to log on through Fitbit (instead of through Facebook) and I finally got the instructions that everyone said I would.  I have already made a Fitbit playlist in iTunes and it showed up in the Fitbit program and I clicked it and it started transferring.  For some reason, 13 songs did not transfer (I re-purchased some of them in iTunes and then they loaded - not sure what this was necessary).  It took a while to load, but there are on my Fitbit and I am listening to the songs with my wireless headphone. YEAH!!!