Nano not updating Play Count

I have a 5g nano 16g which I purchased at Best Buy in January 2010. (3g nano was filled and beyond). It does not update either the play count or last played regularly. Once in a while as a surprise, it will mark a couple of songs. I was trying out your suggestion about the G:\iPod_Control/iTunes folder and each time I plugged it in to the computer port, (its F) the F: would show the ipod for about 5 seconds and all of a sudden it's gone. I guess the ipod is not being recognized as a device. I did reinstall the driver like the troubleshooter says, etc. My little 3g never fails.

Our PC got a virus the end of January and we had to remove everything and restart from scratch. The windows 7 is brand new. So the i-tunes backup was used and the ipod was re-installed, etc. as new. All my "most played" , playlists, genius etc is gone, so I'm starting over with my music results. How can genius work if it doesn't know what songs I've played?

I've gone back to the little old 3g I've had for 2 years. Not sure what I'll do with the 5g. Definately not happy with it.

As Applecare refuse to believe this is a problem perhaps the only thing now is to 'feedback' to apple.

Someone might stop and listen if lots of people complain

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodnano.html

Here's something interesting although it might not have anything to do with this.

I ran into this issue after almost two months of everything working just fine. My circumstances were a bit different, though: instead of iTunes, I use Foobar with Audioscrobbler to get the plays to Last.fm. Suddenly today syncing the plays resulted in "0 played tracks" no matter what I tried with Foobar. Also, no Play Count -file anywhere in iTunes-folder.

Foobar's console did bring up something, though: "iPod manager: Warning - SQL post process command failed: column genre is not unique." Just yesterday I uploaded some new music to my iPod, so just for the sake of it, I checked out and deleted all the metadata from the Genre-column of those music files and voila, Play Count is back.

So maybe it's possible that the problem in 5g Nano 16G is caused by some corrupted metadata in this specific column? These new files had commas and strokes, but I still have them in other music files and iPod works with them, so who knows. But if you are desperate you might want to try cleaning the data in the Genre-column.

Actually, not a complete solution, still does the same thing randomly.

I've been having this same issue (sometimes 5th Gen Nano won't record Last Played in iTunes, other times it will), and after a morning's troubleshooting I think this issue is specifically related to playlists. I use my Nano for running music, and I'd set up a playlist to grab anything that had been rated 4+, has the genre Running, and hadn't been played in the last two months. If I would play/skip through a bunch of songs from that playlist and sync, the Last Played information wouldn't copy over. However, if I played songs from the playlist, then played something on the Nano that wasn't part of a playlist (audiobook or podcast), all of the Last Played information would copy over. I was able to reproduce both scenarios several times, so this may be duct-tape-and-bubble-gum solution until Apple can get their act together and fix this.

As a side note, at least Nanos aren't having the problem Shuffles appear to be having with Last Played- iTunes records the information on incorrect songs!

Message was edited by: MVLaing

That's interesting.. for my ipod it seems to be a different set of circumstances. I like to shuffle the contents of the whole pod... it seems - I'm not positive but it seems this way - that if I just shuffle, even I shuffle a bunch of things, then plug it in they will get counted. If I shuffle, then go and listen to specific albums, chances are nothing will be counted. If I don't shuffle at all, and listen to various albums, it seems likely nothing will be counted.

I don't normally use playlists for much of anything.

I tried your suggestion of shuffling between playlists this morning. Today's try was successful. It did register those songs when I synced. I will continue to experiment. Thank you for the idea.

+However, if I played songs from the playlist, then played something on the Nano that wasn't part of a playlist (audiobook or podcast), all of the Last Played information would copy over.+

Hi Just wanted to say thanks to MVLang for being more use than the Apple store Apple 'Care'. Following your advice I've found that i can listen to whatever permutation of music I want through the day. Just so long as I play a snippet (a second or so) of podcast on the nano before synching then the play data updates. Been doing this for the last three days and everything's copied over. Thanks.

Wonder if Apple will sort out this bug in the next software release?

Hi! Also, thank you to MVLang. I have been doing the same thing for a week now and you are right, as long as you switch over to a different playlist and play a few seconds, it seems to "lock in" the information for update. It is a solution I can live with.

Try this if you are having this error:

Create a new user on your windows system and use that for a while. If the problem goes away, there is something associated with your main user account that is interfering with the iPods ability to update the playcount. If this works for you, let us all know.

I mention this as I saw someone on another non-apple forum post that this worked for them

i

Was very happy to find the discussions re the failure of 5th generation to update play counts. It has been a very frustrating 2 months since I bought my new iPod. I even resorted to buying a new computer thinking that would help. I have talked to Apple Support almost weekly for at least an hour each time trying to figure out what is wrong. They have sent me a replacement which still updates intermittantly. I am about to give up and return my pretty red iPod and go back to my 2 year old one. I was thinking of reinstalling iTunes but after reading discussions, have changed my mind.

luv2knit wrote:
I even resorted to buying a new computer thinking that would help.

Well that isn't very smart is it?

I've had some success with the suggestions of MVLang above. Try switching playlists right before you update. You don't even have to listen to the song. It seems to lock in the count for the update. So far that is the only thing that works consistently.

didn't see this so just gonna post it in here now:

iPod Nano 5th Gen
Windows Vista Professional
iTunes 9.0.3.15

Problem only has been occurring for two days. No changes were made to iPod since last software update, problem seems spontaneous.

After syncing iPod, playcounts do not change despite music listened to