iPod nano/shuffle won’t store your offline Apple Music collections due to piracy concerns

iPod nano mid-2015 image 001

There will be no transferring your offline Apple Music collections onto the new iPod nano or iPod shuffle because Apple is overly concerned about piracy, as it should be, and so the company’s decided to play it safe instead.

As 9to5Mac discovered Friday, attempting to transfer Apple Music songs marked for offline playback onto your nano or shuffle via iTunes produces a “some of the items in the iTunes library were not copied to the iPod because Apple Music songs cannot be copied to an iPod” message.

Of course, you can still sync your own songs that you imported into iTunes and music purchased on the iTunes Store, just like before, but Apple Music including songs marked for offline playback is off limits to the nano and shuffle.

Blame it on the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity.

When you mark a song on Apple Music for offline playback on your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, the Music app on your iOS device, or iTunes on your computer, pings Apple’s servers in order to determine if your Apple Music subscription is currently active.

If so, the requested songs get downloaded locally to your device so you can listen to them without an Internet connection. These locally stored files are copy-protected with Apple’s digital rights management (DRM) solution called FairPlay.

iPod nano Apple Music prompt

Because the iPod nano and iPod shuffle don’t have Wi-Fi capability, there are no guarantees that you won’t sync offline Apple Music songs through iTunes and keep them forever after your Apple Music subscription has expired.

It’s also presumed that offline songs on your iPhone, iPod touch or Mac won’t play after a full month has passed unless the device connected to the network and re-established that you were charged a subscription fee for the following month.

Apple could have adapted the iPod software to ask users to sync with iTunes at least once a month in order to check for the subscription validity, but it didn’t so that’s just the way things are for the time being.

Makes sense, right?

Still, too bad Apple hasn’t overhauled the iPod nano’s interface, added Wi-Fi for streaming capabilities and made it compatible with Apple Music.

Source: 9to5Mac