No Apple Music for the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle

By David Nield July 19, 2015

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Earlier this week Apple refreshed its iPod Touch range with more modern components, new colors, and Apple Music compatibility. At the same time, the smaller iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle got a bunch of new colors, although no spec upgrades — and it’s now been confirmed that you won’t be able to store Apple Music tracks on these older devices either.

That’s no real surprise considering the Nano and Shuffle don’t have Wi-Fi capabilities, but there was speculation that you’d be able to sync downloaded tracks from Apple Music to these players via iTunes. Some digging by 9to5Mac confirms that this isn’t the case, and it seems piracy worries were the main reason: Specifically people canceling Apple Music but keeping cached songs on their players.

It’s a problem the likes of Spotify and Rdio get around by having users check in every month or so, but it sounds like Apple didn’t want to go to the trouble of implementing such a feature through iTunes. That may change in the future but for now the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle can only take standard audio tracks you’ve bought and downloaded (or ripped) in the traditional way.

Try and sync offline tracks from Apple Music’s streaming library to your Nano or Shuffle and you get a message that “Apple Music songs cannot be copied to an iPod.” If you decide you really must have Pharrell Williams’ latest on your dinky portable audio player then you’re just going to have to pay for the song and download it instead.

Apple Music launched to the world on June 30 with the rollout of iOS 8.4, enabling users to stream millions of tracks on-demand (and sync a selected number for local offline listening) alongside the existing iTunes digital music offerings. For more on the service, read our comprehensive review.

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Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…

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