Yeah there are a lot of 8 hour "music for studying" tracks I listen to (I like the ones which are mixes of music from the halo video games, with a fav being a mix of the ODST soundtrack with additional rain noises), and those are a prime candidate for ripping versus streaming every time, killing the phone's battery and ending up with ads when you are wandering away from your device.

I use the VLC app on ios and transfer music using its wifi web interface, since my computers all run linux and can't easily transfer MP3s to the phone any other way.