iPhone Skipping Songs

Ha Ha errrrrrr Well thats solved: Settings: iPod: Shake to Shuffle: on to off........

Every time that it's happened to me it's been in smart playlists as well. I've played 3 or 4 albums all the way through without having any problem. Something else interesting - if I scrub to within 3 seconds of the end of any track in that playlists, the next song played will be the next song in the playlist; in other words, the problem only happens when I listen all the way through a song. I tried a restore of a recent backup, wondering if that would do anything, but no luck. Perhaps I'll have to do a full restore.

Haven't done a restore yet, but I have figured out that the skipping songs problem only happens in smart playlists that are auto-updating behind the songs that are being played. Examples of playlists like this include "Not recently played", "Unplayed", and others that tend to auto-update as soon as you finish a song. I have tried remaking my smart playlists as recommended in this post but no luck.

Found a workaround! Say you have a playlist called "0 plays" that isn't working properly on iPhone 3.0. Create a smart playlist whose only criterion is "Playlist is "0 plays". Name the new playlist appropriately (something like "Unplayed" would work well, as it would come before "0 plays" in the new playlist sorting hierarchy). You're good! This appears to circumvent the live-updating feature of OS 3.0, which seems to be what is causing the problem.

🙂

Has anyone got a solution??? Apprantly this is related to the new update. My iphone seems to also be working slower and crashing more. I've even canceled some apps to try to free up more space, but nothing.

Same problem here, on a smart playlist tracking songs that haven't been played in at least 3 months. The problems with this playlist haven't been very consistent, however; I've seen at least 3 different symptoms:

1. skipping every other song on one album

2. position counters which say things like "98 of 93" (as the number of songs in the playlist counts down, and the current position counts up)

3. one time, songs that I had just played (not from this playlist) appeared in the list. In that case, live updates did not appear to be working, and I did NOT have the "skipping" problem.

In every case, though, the play counts and last-played dates appeared correct after my next sync with iTunes. So the weird, unpredictable behavior is mostly just a temporary inconvenience. I haven't had any 'crash' reports.

I have had this issue since I upgraded to OS 3.0 too.

Smart playlists seem to skip every other track.

I turned "shale to shuffle" off and it seemed to work but is now back.

It is quite annoying - I have smart playlists that are quite order dependant.

Sounds like a bug that we'll have to wait for the next release to sort.

Ho hum

This happened to me and I found that if you go into settings on your phone then click on ipod, you need to turn off shake to shuffle. If you are on the go, moving, or at the gym, sudden shakes will shuffle or stop the music.

Dear Iphone 3G and 3G's users,

I have experienced the so called "ipod skipping phenomena" and after contacting Apple Canada I have found out this.

A: This is not a Hardware issue.
B: Third Party Songs do not cause this issue.
C: There is an easy solution. - If you select your settings application and go directly to the ipod
selection feature, there is a on/off switch for the "shake to shuffle
feature. Please turn the OFF. When you are on the go, at the gym,
moving your iphone, etc. it will shuffle your songs. Most of the
times the music will stop/or repeat. Other times it will skip to a
new album.

As stated above, the fix to this problem is to TURN OFF the SHAKE TO SHUFFLE found in the settings. I hope this helps.

Actually, for many of us - "shake to shuffle" has nothing to do with it. My songs stutter and skip and freeze, very randomly. Sometimes I can go an hour with out a problem, and then it just starts happening. I can not find any reason for this behavior. Most of my playlists are "smart" but not all. Shake to shuffle is OFF by the way. Also, this NEVER happened prior to 3.0

Wrong.

Shake-to-shuffle *is off* already. This is a problem with smart playlists that delete songs via live update, and it is entirely reproducible. The symptoms may vary somewhat, but if you play such a list long enough, it will break. Especially once you go past the "end" of the list.

You may have experienced similar symptoms due to the shake-to-shuffle feature, but that is not the cause here.

I'm having the same problem.
I purchased two new songs off of iTunes directly onto my iPhone yesterday and when I tried to play the Purchased playlist on shuffle it doesn't include the newly purchased music. However, if I take shuffle off both songs are included in the queue. Anyone else found that to happen?

Well, the weird thing is... every since I made my original post, this problem has cured itself. I have no idea why. I was happening quite frequently after the 3.0 update... I tried all I could think of (other than a complete restore) and it kept happening. I made my post, and it had never happened since! And it's been 10 days... so who knows?

also exact same problem, including the tones described by Nelson May.

i'm wondering: when the songs skip in your case, do you hear several tones through the speakers immediately before?

i suspect that we're seeing two issues:

- shake-to-shuffle feature coinciding with the tones (i hear tones on mine when it skips, but it skips for me when i'm playing albums straight out of my library--not playlists). i can get it to skip the same way on purpose by shaking it when shake to shuffle's turned on. obviously a feature.

- the smart playlist situation you describe clearly in your last post


shake to shuffle seems like a cool feature, but not well implemented yet. too sensitive if it does it by accident walking down the street.