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?"

[buyerremorse]

I could not agree more.  This is the worst purchase I have ever made.

[Misterbit]

I had to completely undo bridge mode with my Comcast router to abandon my
Airport Extreme in order to go back in time to a 2.4ghz connection, but it
enabled me to transfer music from iTunes to the Ionic without a problem. It
really does work, please do not give up. I can work out now with a 24. pair
of excellent blue tooth earbuds and the sound quality is astounding. I am
an audio engineer, so I will do anything to hear good music on such a
convenient small device. Please read the Carlo Post that leads you through
the steps of transferring. It identifies problems early. I do dread the
thought, though of removing music from the device or changing songs. The
process is an abhorration, but I just wanted to say you can get it to work
if you are persistent. I had an apple watch and would never buy another due
to battery life, small screen etc. The Ionic is worth the trouble, but I
agree FitBit doesn't care about its customers or they would have fixed this
months ago.



*"life is good"*

[buyerremorse]

Why the hell there is not a "transfer music" option from a dashboard in either the mobile ap or the desktop website (after log in to your profile) is beyond me.  I have had to uninstall/reinstall the ridiculous Fitbit Connect ap about 8 times just to get to the upload music function.  STUPID.  It's like the software was written for Windows 3.1

[Susan-L]

How do I tell the ghz on my modem

[SunsetRunner]

What model is it (should be a sticker on the bottom, or on the back)

[Susan-L]

It’s like 9 years old. Netgear n150 wnr1000 v2.

[Susan-L]

Found it , it’s the 2.5.  Still cannot get music download 

[Misterbit]

It should show up in your wireless settings. If not, call your ISP and ask
them. If you are only getting 5g, they can temporarily switch you into
2.4ghz. How ridiculous that anyone would have to do this just to listen to
music!

[Osmar]

Yes, i can transfer music to my ionic.

After the 27 steps proceeding explained by the moderator in this post.

I just have to spend ONE ENTIRE DAY just to create playlists, edit file names, rearrange files not found by the fitbit app and wait about 4 or 5 hours to index and transfer.

And the transfer is usually incomplete.

It still the dumbest proceeding i have ever seen.

And fitbit is acting like it is normal.

[John1206]

At this point, I know we are all just screAming into the void and being referred to as snowflakes because we bought an item and are upset that it doesn’t do what it says it does without a Masters in Computer Networking.

If you bought a smartphone, and it powered on and off, and made phone calls, but to use any apps you needed to reconfigure a router and wait for it update for hours, would that be considered something you’d feel happy you invested money in?

I just can’t believ that Fitbit, the same company that was selling a product that was LITERALLY burning people, have this level of poor customer support.  

[Runnermike]

It’s quite amazingly poor

[Jaz.Virtue]

My gosh I'm so stuck dont even know if I'm actually doing this in the right place. Ok so lastnight I was on my computer for hours trying to load music onto my ionic i used to have 18 songs on there loaded up about xmas time. But only wanted to load on 2 more songs so i hooked up my ionic to my computer it ended up wiping all my songs off and do you think I can reload any songs on there no. I've tried syncing my phone to Windows media which takes bloody ages. Ive tried dragging my songs from Windows media to itunes it doesnt work either. I've actually uninstalled itunes tonight but installed it again. Because last night it wasnt working so I downloaded heaps of songs from mp3 youtube converter but my computer doesnt pick up any songs in a folder when it has down the bottom add folder. I've downloaded tunesgo so I can transfer my music from my andriod to itunes but it says after 10songs I need to pay. This is so frustrating. What can I do can anyone help me out please. 

[dowdhm]

The short answer is NO, there is no easy way.  I've contacted Fitbit support by email directly, since I now see I am over my 45 day limit to return it.  I will say they are very quick to respond to every email, They ask you the typical stupid questions at the beginning, are you connected to the same wifi, do you have the latest versions of the app, do you have the ionic plugged in during the process...blah blah, of course I followed the online directions.  So now they are helping me isolate the problem with more specific set up questions.  My problem is there is no consistent problem, something different goes wrong every time! So if you have an inconsistent problem, it's very hard to solve the issue.  This has been a process for me for 3 weekends in a row and countless hours......

Every time I try a sync something goes wrong and it is different every time.

 1) Starts syncing then says watch disconnected from wifi when it has not

 2) Can't find the watch to even start a sync, even though on the watch is ready to transfer.

 3) Syncs a few songs from the playlist then the watch won't play the tracks saying it's missing the file, so i see tracks listed on the watch but it won't play. 

 4) Syncs a few songs and the rest of the songs in the playlist have a red triangle saying transfer interrupted. 

 5) Syncs a few songs then the rest of the songs on the play list show a red triangle saying can't locate the music files, remap the folder...which I've done a million times, and I own and have downloaded all my music files from itunes to my local computer. 

 6) Syncs no songs then says the watch storage is full.

I have managed to get about 50 songs onto the watch from my playlist of 200 songs.  So for now, I am a tiny bit content, but I will start to get sick of those same 50 songs and want to update it, and then the process starts again.  I have a paid Pandora account, but since I live in Norway at the moment, I have to run a VPN to be able to listen to my playlists. Which means I can't listen to them on the ionic.  But that would be my go to solution if I was in USA, just download Pandora playlists directly without a computer.  I love Pandora.  But I have asked Fitbit support why they can't figure out how to just download your iTunes playlist the same way you do with Pandora?? Or playlists saved to your phone directly to ionic? Seems simple to me if Pandora can work that way?? But I am not a programmer, so I guess I really don't know. 

[SunsetRunner]

Try turning off the Bluetooth to Fitbit and to computer.

Steven McCrary
-"ciao," derives from the Venetian phrase meaning "I am your slave." Ciao!

[Misterbit]

I know I have said this before, but please try reviewing Carlos' post. This works with my "strictly" iTunes application. That said, when I add music, the fit bit app sometimes says "Wi-Fi connection lost " instead of restarting the app or rebooting the watch or anything else, I simply hit "transfer music" again on my ionic.
After about five minutes it reconnects and starts the upload to the watch. I noticed, no matter what step I do, I have to sit an wait for several minutes for it to begin. Also, Carlos is right. If you have any other Wi-Fi or Bluetooth device turned on anywhere near the area of your transfer, the transfer will not work. I've had the Apple Watch, and I like the ionic much better, mostly due to the much longer battery life. Also I never used the watch-talk feature of the Apple Watch anyway and couldn't see the numbers on the watch face.

Another thing, is that Carlos said some feature on iTunes have to be disabled for the transfer to work. Again please check his post.

Last, although I've managed to fill up 85% of the Ionic with music, I have to repair my Bluetooth earbuds every single time I use the ionic. It does not save the settings and I'm scared to death to load or delete any music for fear the whole watch will wipe.

Ionic really needs a new software patch before the company goes under over these issues.

"Life is good" ⚽️

[Misterbit]

I have about 250 songs on my watch now, but I get your error message #1 all the time. Also, I have gotten the red triangles before, but this is due to the fact that some of my files were not MP3s, but were in fact wave files or they authorized songs or songs, where the file could not be found. It could be the red triangle files are upsetting the operation of the program?

"Life is good" ⚽️

[Nicky89]

This Fitbit Ionic is the worst purchase I ever made. And an ex^pensive one. Nothing works: bluetooth? Rubbish! Wi-Fi? Can't get a stable (+ 1 minute) connection. Music transfer? I took a few hours to transfer music via the Windows desktop app. But after working out using the playlist, both Ionic and app signal there is a problem with the sync. All music files seem to have "vanished" somewhere.

Fitbit, shame on you you set this ticket to "solved"!

[Leaving]

I don’t really have any music on my computer other then what I down load with my iPhone subscription. I pay $12 a month to have access to anything and can download this easlity to any device. The problem I’m being told is that Fitbit is in bed with pandora and unless you actually buy the music and don’t just ”rent it” then it can’t be transferred over. If I rent it from pandora then I’m fine. Unfortunately I and probably a lot of people are invested, musically speaking, with iTunes. This is my Forth fit bit and I was excited to have music with out needing my phone when I run but I’m going to have to switch sports watches if Fitbit is picking sides, musically speaking. I’ll be returning this tomorrow. A huge disappointment.

[Leaving]

Having the same issue. I’m returning tomorrow. This is at least a year away from being a good product. 

[dowdhm]

By only making a deal with Pandora, Fitbit leaves out most of the world buying market for the ionic. That doesn't make sense to me, why would they be that stupid?? Don't get me wrong, I do think Pandora is the best music streaming, I've tested Spodify, iTunes Radio, Amazon music, etc.... And with Pandora's 'Music Genome Project', they are the best at putting together playlists and predicting new music you will like. BUT it's only available in USA and Australia correct?  I have to run a VPN to listen to my Pandora here in Norway, and even though I can get Pandora playlists to easily load onto my watch, the songs will not play because I can't run a VPN on my Ionic. So for me, seeing how easy it was to load a Pandora playlist, it's shocking that music you own in iTunes can't work the same way??? By only making Pandora music easy to load on the device, the Ionic will only sell to a very niche market. That's not a way to make money!  I am hoping with some big update on the software, it will solve this issue...I'll keep dreaming.... ha