How to get your iTunes music onto Android

You’ve finally decided it’s time to break-up with your iPhone.

While the relationship has been decent for years, you’ve finally mustered up the courage to move onto greener pastures: Android.

Will it be a shiny new Samsung S6 edge+? A smooth metallic HTC M9? A waterproof Sony Xperia Z3?

Oh, to play the field.

You’ve wanted to dump that controlling ‘ol Apple device for years now—even practicing your “it’s not you, it’s me” line—but you always go back to it for one main reason: fear of giving up all that music you’ve bought over iTunes.

Guess what: transferring music from your iTunes library over to a new Android device isn’t as difficult as you think. In fact, there are a few different ways to do it—and you don’t need a degree in computer engineering to handle the task.

If you’re ready for the Big Move, the following are some convenient options when transferring your songs over to your new squeeze.

The manual way

For many, manually transferring your music files from iTunes into your Android phone (or tablet) may be the easiest—and you don’t need any special software to pull it off if you’re on a Windows PC.

All you need is your Android phone, its microUSB cable, and the laptop or desktop you’ve got iTunes installed on. But you don’t need to open iTunes to get music onto your folder.

The first step is to turn on your Android device, type in any PIN, password or pattern to unlock it, and connect it to your PC. Now open up Windows Explorer —that program that lets you see your computer’s folders and files, and find your iTunes Media folder.

Usually, the directory is simply called “Music,” which you’ll see on the left-hand side of Windows Explorer. Click it to open and you’ll see the “iTunes” folder inside. Open this one and you’ll see “iTunes Media,” with your music inside. With me so far?

Select all the music you want, right-mouse click and choose “Copy.” (Remember, you can click on one music file or folder, hold down the SHIFT key and click on the last file or folder to select all the songs highlighted. Or click on the music file or folder you want, hold down the CTRL key and select all other music files or folders, even if they’re not in sequential order, and then right-mouse click to select all highlighted ones.

Now it’s time to paste this music onto your Android phone or tablet. To do so, select the name of your device in Windows Explorer, listed on the left-hand side of the screen, which might be called something like “Samsung Galaxy” or “Mary’s Phone” or “LG G4,” or whatever. Choose to place the music on an external memory card (if you prefer) or on the phone’s internal memory, if you prefer, and look for a folder called “Music,” “Media,” or “Downloads.’ Any of these will do. Right-mouse click and choose “Paste.”

That’s it!

Alternatively, you can have two Windows Explorer windows open on your PC at the same time, and use your mouse to drag-and-drop the music files or folders from iTunes onto your Android phone.

The process is similar for Mac users—you’ll need your Android phone and a microUSB cable – but you’ll also need to download and install the free Android File Transfer app installed on your phone or tablet.

On your Mac, open up Finder and locate the directory on your Mac that houses the actual physical music files. Similar to Windows, it should be in Music>iTunes>iTunes Media. Drag and drop your music onto your Android, by dropping it into the desired folder on the device.

Wild about wireless

Don’t have any patience for antiquated tech like USB cables?

Good thing you can also wirelessly transfer your iTunes music on a computer to your Android phone or tablet.

You’ll need a program like AirDroid 3, which works on PCs, Macs, the web, and your Android device. The free version might do the trick for music—as you’re limited in file size limits up to 1-gigabyte per transfers—but the Premium version of AirDroid 3 can handle all for $1.99 a month (or $19.99/year).

AirDroid doesn’t just allow you to wirelessly transfer files to and from your ‘droid and computer (via Wi-Fi), but it blurs the lines between the two by letting you access and manage your phone from any computer, anywhere. You can access and send text messages from your PC or Mac, view app notifications, enable screen mirroring, and fully control your phone from your computer.

But for our purposes, you can also transfer files between both machines—without looking for a cable.

To get going, download and install AirDroid 3 on your computer and mobile device. Now open up the program on your computer and select your music files for upload—likely located in your Music>iTunes>iTunes Media folder—and then pull them back down using the app on your phone. Once the tracks on your phone or tablet, you can open up your favorite music program and have access to your tunes.

Try the cloud

Rather than transfer your iTunes music from one device to another, some might prefer to upload the tracks to an online cloud account to access anytime, anywhere and on multiple devices.

As long as you have an Internet connection and an app like Google Play Music, which is preinstalled on all Android devices these days.

And it’s pretty freakin’ easy.

To get going, install the free Music Manager (for PC, Mac or Linux) or Google Play Music (for Chromebooks or the Chrome browser). Sign in with your Google I.D. Now it’s time to upload your favorite songs from your computer to your Google Play library. You can upload up to 50,000 songs and listen on your mobile device, computer, or Android TV.

To do this, select Preferences and then click Upload to select the location of your music collection on your computer (e.g. Music>iTunes>iTunes Media). Follow the on-screen setup instructions to select folders to upload to Google Play Music.

And this is handy: you can have Google Play Music automatically upload any new tracks it detects in your iTunes folder. Simply leave the app open and it'll handle the task in the background.

Sync & play

All of the solutions covered here work just fine, but if you’re in search of a new Android music player, radio streamer and podcast manager—that can also sync with your iTunes library at the same time – you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the free doubleTwist.

Downloadable from Google Play, doubleTwist offers a simple user interface, smart playlists, podcast subscriptions, support for video playback, and for the purposes of our discussion here, you can sync iTunes playlists from your laptop to your smartphone via USB cable as part of this free software. You’ll first need to download the free doubleTwist desktop app for your PC or Mac (the app will email you a link to download it).

You can have check off to sync your iTunes playlists with doubleTwist or create a new playlist in doubleTwist using the tracks it imports from iTunes.

Unlike other music software for Android, doubleTwist isn’t a restricted trial version of the real deal: it is the real deal.

But if you want to pay for the optional in-app upgrade to doubleTwist Pro ($8.99), you can unlock additional features like AirSync (sync music, even iTunes playlists, with your PC or Mac over Wi-Fi); AirPlay your phone’s music to Apple TV, Sonos, Xbox 360 or PS3; download new podcasts automatically and without ads; retrieve missing album art for your music library; and take advantage of the doubleTwist equalizer.

Yahoo Shopping readers, what methods do you use to listen to iTunes on your Android devices? Share them with us below in the comments section.