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?"

[PeteG-1]

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@cstephen wrote:

@mmdwyer

 How is Fitbit antiquated because it can't copy protected music files from google music? Protecting the music files would seem to be a strategic policy of Google's. I'm not sure I understand why you're upset with Fitbit when it's Google that's imposing the restriction.

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Really it's the industry (say "XXYY Records"), they drove most of the DRM implementations that are out there today.

Google, Apple, Amazon, etc, they all must follow the same protocols, per their implementation, in order to "sell" the music (or rent, it or ...).

Most media players use an existing library, or known implementation (plug-in for another media player, etc), for this reason, it abstracts them from the whole mess...

[PeteG-1]

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@Allboyz wrote:

I hope I don’t sound like a jerk, but most of you that are having problems, have you read the user manual that you can find online? I am a big Mac user, but it is broke, so I used my son’s Window 7 Media Player with no help, other then the Fitbit Ionic Manual and fitbhelp.com and found it all very easy to figure out. Simple to load 50+ songs in less than 10 minutes. If you have not printed out manual, do that and go to the uploading  music pages. Hopefully that will help some of you. I was afraid to buy the Ionic due to all the posts, but figured what the heck, I would go for it. I am extremely glad I did. Love using it everyday with my workouts. It kicks **ahem**!!!

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Yeah, if you build a pretty small subset, it works decently enough.

I'm not really willing to build/maintain a separate music library for my Fitbit though, we're waaaay past the 90's, I'll use my phone until they get the app a bit more usable, for most.

[Hendos]

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@PeteG-1 wrote:

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@Flinch57-84 wrote:

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.

---

It's installed, it's just not exposed in the standard Start menu.

If you click on the Windows Menu, and type "med...", by the time you get the third character in, you'll see it, in a short list (at most) of choices.

If you happen to have a Win10 install that excluded it, I can find a pointer to a method to install "alternate Windows Components", it's pretty easy, but there are a LOT of good walk-through write-ups out there already.

Edit: I didn't see the part about Bluetooth. I'm honestly not sure, but I sort of doubt it, since the app won't be able to link to the device prior to the media sync, which is all Bluetooth.

Buy a cheap (but with good reviews) USB Bluetooth dongle, a decent one is $5-10.

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It's not a Bluetooth dongle you need it's a WIFI one, the pc or laptop has to be wireless enabled.

[SunsetRunner]

The music on my ionic takes up about twice as much space than its size on my computer. I’ve tried many playlists and on average the available memory on the ionic reduces by twice the size of the playlist that I have transferred. The 2.5 GB of built-in memory feels more like 1.2 GB. I even made a playlist the was 2.2 GB and tried transferring it to the ionic when it was blank but I got an error that there was not enough space. Is this normal? I expected that 2.5 GB worth of music on computer can be put into the ionic.

[Ithyt]

Thank you so much! This worked ☺

[Chrisjames]

Well I was really looking forward to getting this and I found one brand new on FB market so I picked it up.

I thought I was upgrading from my Tomtom spark cardio plus music. All in the spark is a great watch. It has an easy to use interface, accurate heart rate, easy AND FAST to load music and I never really had any issues streaming to my bluetooth earbuds. My workouts show up pretty much instantaneous on my tomtom profile.

So far this watch is a piece of $hit and I regret buying it. I have not even field tested it yet but i do not have high hopes. I am glad no one has bought my tomtom spark yet because this watch feels like a 10$ mp3 player with a $hitty interface and outdated technology that you would buy off of amazon.

[PeteG-1]

Sort of.  I was going to type something up about lossless, vs acceptable-loss in mp3 bitrates, and file sizes, but this is much more elegantly done: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/mp32.htm

and this gets into what the Ionic *actually* uses: 

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/mp32.htm

For me, I ripped almost all my music at 256(kbps), so when I push to a media player, I usually down-convert it, for size constraints (usually to 192).  CDs aren't lossless anyway, and you can get people started down all sorts of "audio wars", so this is my disclaimer that this is NOT my intention.

Usually files sizes don't increase, although I guess you can up-convert, but I'm not sure why (a FB person would have a better answer here, or if you can view the properties of a file on the FB, it would show you the bitrate), since an up-convert would be done with "generated" data, and would be no better (quality) than the lesser bitrate files, they'd just be bigger (padded data).

I'll probably create a subset of my music (the current player can't deal with my 3600 or so titles, it takes an inordinate amount of time to re-index, every time I go to the Player function), and load a few files on, so I can see the function on the Ionic (originally I figured I'd hold out for FB to "fix" their player-see my earlier comments ;-]).

[pedris]

Could we please get a streaming service that works in Germany/EU? At the moment the average 20€ portable MP3 player works better than the Ionic for transferring music.

[powys]

What I find interesting, is that we do not appear to have had a reply from FB themselves! Talk to your customers guys, we can only help to make things better 🙂

Regards

Jim

Sent from my small iPhone so it's brief.

Moderator edit: removed personal info

[MattFitbit]

Hi everyone! 

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your efforts in transferring personal music to your Ionic. 

For those of you that are having a hard time transferring music, I would highly recommend checking out this personal music transfer checklist, which has a ton of great best practices for transferring music to your Ionic, including a few workarounds for potential blockers. 

Please keep in mind that you must own the digital rights to the music that is being transferred. Songs that have been downloaded from streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music may not transfer due to copyright protections (known as DRM encryption).

Additionally, to help speed up the transfer process I can recommend keeping your Ionic close to your router to avoid any interference. For faster download times, you might want to avoid large playlists.

For more troubleshooting tips, check out our help article, here. 

I hope this information is helpful! If you have any questions, you know where to find me. 

[PeteG-1]

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@Hendos wrote:

---

@PeteG-1 wrote:

---

@Flinch57-84 wrote:

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.

---

It's installed, it's just not exposed in the standard Start menu.

If you click on the Windows Menu, and type "med...", by the time you get the third character in, you'll see it, in a short list (at most) of choices.

If you happen to have a Win10 install that excluded it, I can find a pointer to a method to install "alternate Windows Components", it's pretty easy, but there are a LOT of good walk-through write-ups out there already.

Edit: I didn't see the part about Bluetooth. I'm honestly not sure, but I sort of doubt it, since the app won't be able to link to the device prior to the media sync, which is all Bluetooth.

Buy a cheap (but with good reviews) USB Bluetooth dongle, a decent one is $5-10.

---

It's not a Bluetooth dongle you need it's a WIFI one, the pc or laptop has to be wireless enabled.

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This isn't true, or it's not for me anyway.

I can set up a transfer, with my PC on a wired connection, no problem (other than the fact I have to create a GREATLY reduced set of music, or wait hours for it to index).

The transfer goes through your router, not IGMP, so it shouldn't matter, as long as you're on the same network segment (most home setups are like this, mine's a bit odd, I manage a 2 level setup, to keep a truly isolated guest network).

I suppose it could use WiFi-direct too, but nothing in the setup would indicate this, and setting it up on your home PC would be tricky, if supported.

[PeteG-1]

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@MattFitbit wrote:

Hi everyone! 

Please keep in mind that you must own the digital rights to the music that is being transferred. Songs that have been downloaded from streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music may not transfer due to copyright protections (known as DRM encryption).

Additionally, to help speed up the transfer process I can recommend keeping your Ionic close to your router to avoid any interference. For faster download times, you might want to avoid large playlists.

For more troubleshooting tips, check out our help article, here. 

I hope this information is helpful! If you have any questions, you know where to find me. 

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@MattFitbitI have digital music, that I own, with DRM associated with its' metadata.  Are you saying that you're never going to handle anything in this category?

In terms of "large playlists", do you have some (rough) thresholds?

I'm not having much luck with my default playlist, at about 3600 music tracks, it literally takes a couple of hours, before I can select a few songs for transfer.  If I want to add a podcast, in a couple of days, it takes another couple of hours, to "index" or whatever it's doing there, again, not exactly a great UE.

I hope that there are plans to fix the indexing, or to use deltas, or a decent DB, something, to make performance reasonable. 

I pulled up an old music manager for a really old smart(device, player, really), and it allowed me to select tracks, same music data, in a few minutes, and about 10 seconds the next time...

I really liked my charge2, and I have to say, I'm not so sure the "upgrade" value is there, currently, given other issues (that weren't, on the Charge2).  If the Ionic hadn't been a gift, I'd probably have returned it by now, and gone back to my Charge2.

[Chrisjames]

Cool tips!

Maybe I need to upgrade my 28.8k modem or upgrade to 32mb of ram on my pentium133 to get this to go faster.

[Grubenstier]

After 3 months of sheer frustration with this overpriced Apple-Watch-wanna-be I have given up and bought the real thing, an Apple Watch Series 3. It worked out of the box, no issues whatsoever just like a tech-gadget of this price level should. I really, truly wanted to like the Ionic because I prefer the Fitbit App software, but sorry, releasing a so-called Fitness Tracker/Smartwatch that has such a plethora of bugs and showstopper-issues is what makes or breaks a product.  For me, the Ionic definitely did not make it.  

Fitbit adé! Welcome Apple Watch Series 3 and finally, peace of mind!

[Patrickmememe]

This is the worst transfer system ever...what a waste of time. Honestly..transferimg 22 songs shoild not take an hour, with multiple breaks in connection

.just awful.

[powys]

FitBit team - over to you !

Regards

Jim

Jim Maxwell

07901516615

Sent from my small iPhone so it's brief.

[G_H]

I was able to transfer a playlist of 40 songs using a Windows 10 laptop, but when I touch the playlist all 40 songs are blank with run times of - 0:00.

However, if I touch Shuffle All the songs will start playing over my Bluetooth speakers showing the song names and run times, and I can go into the options by touching ... in the top left corner.  So they are on there.

[Tierus]

It really saddens me that the Ionic is still struggling so many months in. I love mine until I need to do anything with it that involves syncing, and it sure seems like Fitbit doesn't care that they're not fixing its major issues.

[Telly2]

I have now transferred two playlists from itunes to my ionic using my mac.  Both times it's been an easy process.  I followed the instructions listed earlier on this thread and it took 12 minutes to transfer 26 songs. No problems here and I'm enjoying working out and running without having to carry my phone.  It's a nice break from the world.

[derekryan]

Hi everyone. On the whole I'm very pleased with my Ionic!! But I do have a couple of issues with the music side.

I loaded up with music before the last firmware upgrade without to much hassle. After thee upgrade I had sync issues so had to do a Factory Reset. When that was complete I tried to reload my music. I found that I had to do two more resets because it kept saying that the memory was full. This was not true!! I realised that, somehow, it had not forgotten the original Playlist. The problem is that it had most of my music collection in it. Some 900 tracks. This did not bother the first load but now it does by telling me that the memory is full without actually transfering a single track. What it should say is "your trying to load too many tracks or words to that effect. 

The second issue is why is the software remembering the playlist? and as far as I can see, no way of forgetting th playlist .