Can I download music from Apple Music to my Android phone?

Apple Music is a subscription-based music streaming service developed by Apple. It offers access to over 90 million songs, thousands of playlists, music videos, live radio stations, and more. Apple Music launched in 2015 for iOS devices and became available on Android in 2016.

Apple Music comes with several features like offline listening, curated playlists, music recommendations, and integration with Siri. It competes directly with other streaming services like Spotify.

The goal of this article is to provide a step-by-step guide on how Android users can download music from Apple Music for offline listening. We’ll cover prerequisites, downloading playlists and albums, individual songs, managing storage, and troubleshooting tips.

Prerequisites

Before you can download music from Apple Music to an Android phone, you need to meet a couple requirements:

First, you’ll need an active Apple Music subscription. Apple Music offers individual plans for $9.99/month, family plans for $14.99/month, student plans for $4.99/month, and voice plans with Siri for $4.99/month. Without a subscription, you can only access free content like radio stations. See Apple’s site for more subscription details.

Second, you’ll need to have the latest version of the Apple Music app installed on your Android device. You can download the app for free from the Google Play Store. The app requires Android 5.0 or later.

With an active subscription and the app installed, you’ll be ready to download music for offline listening on your Android phone.

Download over WiFi

Downloading and streaming music from Apple Music uses a significant amount of data, so it’s best to download content over a WiFi connection whenever possible. This ensures you don’t use up your cellular data plan. To enable WiFi downloading in Apple Music for Android:

1. Open the Apple Music app on your Android device.
2. Tap the profile icon in the top right corner of your screen.
3. Select “Settings” and then “Cellular Data”.
4. Toggle “Streaming and Downloading” to the off position.

With this setting disabled, Apple Music will only download music on your Android device when you are connected to a WiFi network ¹. This prevents unwanted data usage over your cellular network. Keep in mind you’ll need to be on WiFi to add new music to your library or download playlists for offline listening.

Download playlists & albums

Apple Music subscribers can download entire playlists and albums to listen to offline on their Android devices. Here are the steps to download playlists and albums from Apple Music on Android:

1. Open the Apple Music app on your Android phone or tablet.

2. Browse or search for the playlist or album you want to download.

3. Tap the “…” icon next to the playlist or album title.

4. Select “Download” from the menu.

5. The playlist or album will start downloading. You can view download progress in the Library tab > Downloads section.

Downloaded playlists and albums are stored locally on your device and can be played offline as long as you maintain an active Apple Music subscription. The downloads are encrypted and can only be played through the Apple Music app.

For complete details, refer to Apple’s support guide on adding and downloading music from Apple Music.

Download individual songs

You can download individual songs from Apple Music on your Android device to listen offline. Here are the steps:

1. Open the Apple Music app and find the song you want to download. Tap on the 3 dots next to the song title.
2. A menu will open. Tap on “Download Song”.
3. The song will start downloading. You can view download progress by going to the Library tab and selecting Downloads.
4. Once the download is complete, you’ll see a checkmark next to the song. It is now saved locally on your device.

Downloaded songs do not count towards your iCloud storage limit. You can listen to them offline by turning on airplane mode or disconnecting from the internet.

Listen offline

Once you have downloaded songs, albums, or playlists from Apple Music, you can listen to them offline without an internet connection. To access your downloaded Apple Music content on your Android device:

1. Open the Apple Music app.

2. Tap on the Library tab at the bottom.

3. Select Downloads to view all your downloaded content.

4. Tap on a song, album or playlist to start listening offline.

Keep in mind you need to be logged into your Apple Music account to access downloaded content. If you are logged out or don’t have an internet connection, you won’t be able to play the downloads.

Manage downloads

You can easily view, delete, and re-download music you’ve downloaded for offline listening from Apple Music on your Android device. Here’s how:

View downloads

To see all your downloaded music in Apple Music on Android:

1. Open the Apple Music app
2. Tap on the Library tab at the bottom
3. Select Downloads

This will show you all the songs, albums, and playlists available for offline listening that you’ve previously downloaded.

Delete downloads

To remove downloads and free up space:

1. Go to Downloads in your Library
2. Tap Edit in the top right corner
3. Tap the red minus icon next to any download to delete it
4. Tap Done when finished removing items

Re-download music

If you want to get a download back that you previously deleted:

1. Find the song, album or playlist you want to re-download
2. Tap the download icon (down arrow inside a circle) next to it

This will re-add it to your Downloads so you can listen offline. You can re-download music as many times as you want.

Downloading limits

Apple Music places some limits on how many songs you can download for offline listening. Each Apple Music account is limited to downloading 100,000 songs per device. So you could download 100,000 songs on your iPhone, and another 100,000 songs on your iPad, for example. According to Apple’s support site, this download limit is “to make sure the experience is seamless for all subscribers.”

In addition to the per-device limit, Apple Music allows you to download songs on up to 10 different devices per account. So an individual subscriber could have up to 1 million downloaded Apple Music songs spread across 10 devices (10 devices x 100,000 song limit per device). If you try to download songs on an 11th device, you’ll need to delete some downloads on another device first.

While 100,000 songs may sound like a lot, some users have reported hitting this limit, especially those with large offline music libraries. If you reach the download cap, you’ll need to manage your offline music by deleting some downloads before adding new ones.

Troubleshooting Tips

If you encounter issues downloading music from Apple Music on your Android device, there are some troubleshooting steps you can try:

If songs aren’t downloading properly, first check that you have a stable Wi-Fi or cellular data connection, as mentioned on Tunefab. Downloads can fail on spotty connections.

You may also want to try clearing the cache and data for the Apple Music app, then re-logging into your account, as suggested on the Apple discussions forum. This can resolve corrupted data issues.

If you get an error code like 300 or 15527 when downloading, this typically indicates an issue connecting to Apple’s servers, according to Tunefab. Trying again later often resolves it.

Check that you have enough storage space for downloads on your Android device. The Apple Music app requires at least 400MB free to function properly.

As a last resort, uninstall and re-install the latest version of the Apple Music app from the Google Play Store to fix persistent download issues.

Summary

In this article, we covered the key steps for downloading Apple Music to your Android device over WiFi, including how to download full playlists, albums, and individual songs. We looked at how to manage your downloads within the Apple Music app and listen to music offline when you don’t have an internet connection.

The main benefits of downloading Apple Music on Android are that you can listen to your favorite songs and playlists without using mobile data, take your music with you anywhere without needing a connection, and save storage space on your device by only keeping certain downloads. Downloading also allows you to keep listening to Apple Music even in areas with poor or no reception.