Detoxing Off iPhone - Music

As the title suggests, I'm a former (and still largely) Apple user. I'm becoming more platform agnostic over time and got my first Android recently - the Samsung Galaxy S10.

One thing that I don't like about Apple (and seems like this might apply to all) is that you need to either push content to their cloud (and subscribe to cloud storage) OR subscribe to streaming music.

On my Apple, I've purchased my music - song by song - since 2003 (and might even be the occasional audio file from Napster or Limewire). I've backed up my Library onto a physical external hard drive over the years. I sync my iPhone with my iTunes library (on my macbook), which creates a copy of the library and retrieves the music from the Apple store (unless I specify to download my music) so the space occupied on the phone is limited. I do NOT pay any monthly fees to Apple for anything.

Now, on my new phone, I can drop the audio files into the 'Music' folder and play them with an app like 'Folder Music' - but I see two drawbacks, 1) I need to actually copy all the files to my phone and that consumes alot of space and 2) the music is not easy to organize. On Apple, I can browse and create a playlist in the music app or on my macbook and then copy to the phone.

So the questions I have are:

1. What are my options if I want to transfer my old iTunes Library to my Samsung if I don't want to subscribe to any monthly services and don't want to deal with unorganized audio files?

I think this ideally looks like a sync of the library (and playlists) that would then be able to play the songs themselves from the cloud (again at no monthly cost - this is how my iPhone works now).

2. Assuming there is no answer to 1, what are the alternatives to paying Apple $15/mo. for Apple Music (family subscription) - a monthly fee to access music I already purchased? Would any of these options let me bring in my old music to my library?

3. Assuming I breakdown and finally paying for streaming music - are there services that let you build out playlists (e.g. for the gym) and play songs on demand?
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Thanks to all in advance.

 

Thanks for the welcome @MrJavi

Much appreciate the reply @ajhk.

• So I have the Apple Music app for Android installed and its prompting me to enroll their subscription service. It does not take my login (which I confirmed on my other devices is correct). My guess is that I MUST subscribe to Apple Music to use this app.
• Uploading music to the cloud could work but I would need to pay for cloud storage and also would have the same issue with unstructured audio files
• I'll check out YouTube music. I assume this is a subscription as well.
• Thanks for the helpful tips on local media. I do have properly tagged (mostly) files but these apps still seem like a challenge to work with.

Long story short - I think I'm going to have to pay for either a subscription music service or subscription cloud storage!

 

Cool. YouTube seems like a good service.

Don't laugh but - I actually already pay for YouTube premium to avoid ads and I guess music is included with my subscription.