[rsync]

"Help me understand how filename is useful in a way that other metadata doesn’t already cover, please."

If your "music library" is post-iTunes then it isn't that useful - you have compressed media files with metadata embedded in them.

However if your music library is older than itunes and consists of lossless WAV/PCM files there is no metadata. There is only the filename.

[hondo77]

> However if your music library is older than itunes and consists of lossless WAV/PCM files there is no metadata. There is only the filename.

So putting your music on an iPhone isn't impossible. It just means that you would have to take the time to add metadata to the existing files (and possibly first converting them to a lossless format that supports metadata--I'm guessing PCM does not).

[kall]

That sounds like a situation iTunes/Apple Music is completely unfit for. I think foobar2000 was able to manage that kind of thing? You gotta see that it's a niche situation, not something that even most people who seriously care about their library do.

[snowwrestler]

What happens when you drag one of those files into Music? It doesn’t use the filename as the track name? That’s my recollection of how iTunes used to work with naked music files, but I haven’t tried it with the Music app.