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?"

[Crazy-Fritter]

---

@crustypupwrote:

Appreciate the sentiment but being a dev is no reason to excuse poor design.

For the record, once I gave up on the music aspect, the unit performs per spec. Great battery life and relatively accurate measurements... some room for improvement but if I can charge only once or twice a week... great. 

The unit has storage we can't access directly because 'reasons'. Let's be clear, drag and drop transfers to external storage are not a snazzy new feature for any platform you care to waggle your primary digit at. 

WiFi has been with us for some time now and the engineering and mechanics behind it have been bedded down.

File transfer protocols, even the most hideous thereof, have been with us since inception and there are zero mysteries here either. 

The design, start to finish, is broken because someone decided to roll their own, hilariously poor, excuse for a file transfer solution. 

Sorry, but no free pass to the team responsible for the decisions behind this. Wrong from the outset and it appears to now be plumbed in with zero solution.

At this price point I would expect at least team leads to be shown the door. 

---

Very well and entertainingly said 😄👍

[MaginB]

I totally understand your frustration to this matter, Fitbit is constantly working to improve the user experience and your feedback help us to gather important data for quality updates. 

There are several factors that could cause the slow transfer of the music, like, size of the song, storage on the tracker, wi-fi signal or even the different format of the song. I do recommend that you follow the steps provided on the Why can't I download music and podcasts to my Fitbit watch? article, this has been useful for many users. 

I know that many of you are already familiarized with these troubleshoots but at the moment this is the most helpful resource that we have to get this solved. 

Thanks for your patience, I'll be around! 

[Nicky89]

Transferring music is a nightmare.

After a few hours, I managed to get a 130 song playlist on the Ionic. But when I started to upload a second playlist, the first one simply vanished! This happened before as well. 

Fitbit please. Admit there can only be maximum 1 playlist on the Ionic. Honoust communication lasts longer.

[Misterbit]

FitBit still does not appear to appreciate the customer "rage" re the Ionic
music transfer issues. By referring to the size of the music files as
slowing the transfer is an obfuscation. The fact is, 2.4gz is a lot slower
than 5ghz, and that is only where the transfer problem begins. The good
news is that if you are one of the "lucky ones" and are able to load the
music, the Ionic will play for hours on a fraction of battery life at
wonderful fidelity, although the functionality is compromised while the
music is playing. For instance, you have to stop your work out (not pause
it) in order to change volume. Surely the engineers should have noticed
this in the product testing phase. The Ionic is so unstable regarding music
transfer, people are paranoid to update the OS or even to add or delete
music for fear the music files will disappear. The Ionic has the potential
to be a great "all around" smart watch, but was introduced way too early
before it was even remotely functional. Please FitBit, if you are reading
this, address the specific concerns of your customers before it is too
late..


*"life is good"*

[Nicky89]

@MaginB

Thanks for your message. However, I have tried zillion of these stupid troubleshoot lists. Nothing works. Not just the music transfer. Sorry to say, but every tiny functionality that this Ionic is supposed to deliver, fails. The Ionic is a product that never should have passed QA. It's way less than a bèta, perhaps a zeta. Actually, people who release such a piece of garbage to the market, should be shamed.

I have this Ionic now for 4 days. I spent over 24 hours on troubleshooting. Some findings:

* WI-FI always disconnects  (don't tell me it's my weak signal - I never have any Wi-FI problems);

* Bluetooth only lasts for a few seconds;

* Music transfer is ridiculous: A 700 MB playlist takes 5 hours (estimated time by Fitbit's app), but it breaks and disconnects after every 2 songs. I once managed to get this playlist on the device. But all of a sudden it vanished. It was gone... After 8 hours I managed to upload the list again. And guess what? Gone, yep. Now my attempts today without success. 3 songs, and then they are disappearing and I have to start again. Heart rate goes up...

* Clock face changed twice without me triggering it.

* Lists of exercises always resets to the default (I don't want "weights" or some of the other defaults, I want "elleptical" to be included in my defaults). This morning I was in the gym. I couldn't track my elliptical exercise, because the Ionic reset again...

* Syncing is a nightmare. The app is buggy and constant connectivity issues.

Sometimes I think there is a bad ghost living in this device (it hurts calling it "my" Ionic - I feel so stupid to have bought this).

Witchcraft this is, not watchcraft.

[PeteG-1]

@Misterbit 2.4 Can transfer 40-50, on the right wavelength, as much as 100 (max) on the wider ones, which allow a bit more range, typically.

5GHz is great, particularly for homes where you have a lot of walls, and similar applications, but line-of-sight range is quite a bit less than 2.4, 1/3-1/2, typically.

At 40 Mbps, lets just say, and a typical CD (album/artist) ranging from 100-200 MB, hmm, well the math is pretty dead-simple (and the reason this is so fast on even a 2.4 media player, from say 2010-ish).

From what I've seen, the responses on the forum about this issue, from FB support, it's pretty meager.

I'm sure they know they have a mess, and who knows, maybe they're in the middle of a re-write (ideally with known-good transfer libraries this time), anything is possible, I suppose.

Of course there's the insane WiFi and BT instability of the Ionic, the reason I returned mine anyway.  A "flagship" or whatever you want to call it, should at least be as stable as say the Charge2, which I reverted to.  I tend to get a BT error, maybe a couple of times/month, with my Charge2, hmm....

And yep, it pretty much works, with most client chipsets out there; I'm sure there are some that are troublesome, but most just work.  You have to ask yourself, or I do, if this is just a firmware fix, what's the dev/test team waiting for, exactly.

Me, I'm waiting for the "dust to settle", and then I'll move to the V2, or whatever comes out post-next; I'm confident the BT will be "well tested", to say the VERY least.

[Runnermike]

Barron’s magazine ran an article this weekend titled “Time Is Running Out on Fitbit” by Tiernan Ray.  You can find it at Barrons.com

Unfortunately it sums up our frustrations.

[SunsetRunner]

I have eight playlists on my ionic. But I put them all on at the same
time. I've never tried modifying the songs on the ionic after getting the
ones I wanted onto it.

[Nicky89]

@SunsetRunner Did you manage this before the latest firmware update or after?

I have split my list of 120 songs in 6 playlists to see if there is improved syncing. Unfortunately... The Ionic doesn't even succeed in syncing 1. And every time I try again, the few songs which have been synced, are simply... gone!

[Misterbit]

Hello Nicki89

If you are able to get any music on your Ionic, you should be able to get
many play lists on it. Keep trying and make sure all Bluetooth in the area
are turned off and disconnected. It is very fussy.

[PeteG-1]

---

@Misterbitwrote:
Hello Nicki89

If you are able to get any music on your Ionic, you should be able to get
many play lists on it. Keep trying and make sure all Bluetooth in the area
are turned off and disconnected. It is very fussy.

---

@MisterbitI agree with the fact that if you can get one playlist, you can typically get more, although it can take many, many attempts, particularly with longer titles, such as podcasts.

Bluetooth really *shouldn't* play into it, the "other devices" thing.  The WiFi that it's using is also in the 2.4 band, and if anything, you really should be shutting down ALL THINGS 2.4 (includes wireless home phones too, and many other light controls, etc.).

This is problematic though, and in this current tech-age, should NOT require putting your PC/router/FB in a Faraday-cage type of setup, to get it to sync.

The two other FBs I've owned, while occasionally finicky about syncing, are about 95-98% more reliable than my Ionic was, before I returned it.

I have a SMB 2.4 setup too, BTW, and all SMB core-networking components as well, and can easily push 80-100 on any test-able 2.4 WiFi client (and about 375-400 on my 5G).

At this rate, songs should take a few seconds per, to transfer, not tens-of-minutes, each.

I literally gave up on the podcasts, it was crazy trying to put 3-4 50-minute titles on the Ionic.

[SunsetRunner]

I'm not certain of the timing relative to the latest firmware update. I
did it the first time about 2 months ago, and then the most recent time I
synced my music was Sunday February 11th. Before that I had to factory
reset my ionic for another issue and I know there were updates done as a
result of that, but if that was the "latest" I'm unsure.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

~dry_runner

[Misterbit]

Well said. Wi-Fi and anything else in the area (including your television or toaster) should be turned off. I think the watch has ADHD. It simply cannot focus on the music transfer, and instead wants to pick up on any electronic interference in the house.

That said, I went running in the mountains for two hours on Saturday with the watch supplying all music to my Bluetooth earbuds. Aside from an occasional fading Bluetooth signal, the watch performed well. Remember though, if you do get your music on, you cannot adjust the volume during your workout, so do that beforehand. Moreover you must forget, delete, and re-connect your Bluetooth earbuds each time you use the music function.

"Life is good" ⚽️

[SunsetRunner]

My Bluetooth headphones have buttons to adjust the volume and they work
fine while listening to music.

Also, I have not found it necessary to delete / forget my headphones each
time I want to use them. I just go to settings ->> Bluetooth --> and click
the icon for my headphones at the top of the screen (it's necessary to turn
them on first).

When I'm done I just power down the headphones.

I have also noticed the fade in / fade out with the Bluetooth connection,
but it hasn't been too bad. It'll happen for a few moments, and then the
rest of the run is fine. Not sure if I can do anything to improve that or
not.

[Misterbit]

Thanks for the heads up. It's probably my cheap earbuds that cause the re-connect issues. I haven't seen any other posts regarding Bluetooth re-connecting issues and with all the other issues, I assumed it had to be ionic!

Anyway, aside from the difficulty of loading the music, I'm pretty happy with the performance. After two hours of working out with Music it only uses about 10% power while simultaneously running the work out and music apps. Afraid though to download the update.

"Life is good" ⚽️

[hankrunsfast]

Don't download the update if you have it working the way you want it to. As I can't still get music to successfully transfer and my notifications stopped working even after I reset/reboot it, I bit the bullet yesterday and did the update. Got notifications back - but now it spontaneously resets for no reason. Has happened twice in the last twelve hours....

[NavyDP1]

Fitbit, you have a long road ahead of you to fix transferring music to the Ionic.  It is woefully painful, especially for those of us with HUGE iTunes libraries.  It can take anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour for Fitbit Connect to read in my library before I can even make the attempt to transfer a small playlist to my Ionic.

And don't even talk to me about the Windows 10 store Fitbit App.  That is even more worthless than Fitbit Connect is.  At least I somehow got two playlists on my Ionic and I can work with this but I like to rotate and Connect just isn't getting the job done.

Get to work, Fitbit.  Fix this.

[Loriann0207]

This is a lot of work just to transfer some music to your watch.  I wish there was an easier way. I have read a lot of the articles and I am overwhelmed and confused.  I have tried step by step and it just doesn't work right.  I am sure it's all on me but I am old and dumb when it comes to electronics! I hope Fitbit can figure out an easier way of doing this!    

[SunsetRunner]

Nope, not you...it is on Fitbit, we are all struggling.

[Misterbit]

Did you read Carlos' post? It's the best advice yet. Best

"Life is good" ⚽️