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Level 1

71 points

Empty Playlists after updating iTunes and iPhone

I never had smart playlist problems – until tonight. After updating iTunes to 9.0.3 and iPhone to 3.1.3, I now have some smart playlists that are totally empty. Is there a fix or workaround for this?

In fact, I deleted the first playlist that this happened with, then re-synced the iPhone, then recreated the playlist WITH A DIFFERENT NAME, and still the list is empty. Now I find that there is at least one other playlist without any content.

I've checked the rules of the playlists, and they work fine in iTunes and when the phone is connected to my Mac, it even shows content in those playlists when I look from iTunes to the phone. But on the phone, no content.

If anyone has an idea, I'll try it (unless it involves fire, hammers, or hydrochloric acid...)

Mac mini 2ghz 2GB 120GB HD (Uniblab), 16GB iPhone 3GS (Gus), Mac OS X (10.6.2), Ext 120gb media drive +400gb Time Machine HD 160gb Apple TV

Posted on Feb 3, 2010 2:49 AM

33 replies

AceNeerav

Level 1

141 points

Feb 12, 2010 3:59 PM in response to kariek

Not that this happened to me but is your regular playlist sorted by genre. Check if your playlist has anythig to do with genre.

iMacli

Level 1

0 points

Feb 16, 2010 4:21 AM in response to KonKrypton

After having gone trough this thread and have a hint, what could be the problem with the empty playlist on iPhone, I did my own testing to this topic.

At my iPhone the playlist stays empty, when the Genre is within a nested selection. If it's not nested, the selection to genre runs fine.

To work around this bug, I just create a new playlist and having as criteria the original playlist with the nested genre selection. With this, the playlist is back to my iPhone without a lot of work.

BTW: This bug seems to only occur on iPhones. On my 2 older iPods the original playlist is working fine.

KonKrypton Author

Level 1

71 points

Feb 16, 2010 9:22 PM in response to iMacli

It doesn't work that way for me. I have a playlist that only has these criteria:

Match ANY of the following:
Comment contains "Mellow"
Genre is "Easy Listening"

Neither of these are "nested", it's an either/or situation and the playlist still fails if have "live updating" checked. The only way I can get anything in the playlist is to turn off live updating.

Feb 17, 2010 5:04 AM in response to KonKrypton

Same problem. My iPhone only displays some of my playlists and some of those are empty even though the songs and the music are both on the iPhone. Makes no sense and is annoying as... Well you can imagine how frustrating this is when one buys a phone designed to play music and organize it and run smooth with no glitches or crashing and now this. Apple better fix this soon and stop wasting time and resources on the iPad....

Feb 17, 2010 5:23 AM in response to Community User

turning off live updating for the missing or empty smart play lists seems to fix the problem although this will require to manually toggle this check mark every time you add music which is going to be a hastle so i hope apple fixes this soon

Feb 17, 2010 5:33 AM in response to KonKrypton

not sure why some smart play lists work fine with live updating checked and some work fine only if this option is unchecked......weird.... FIX IT APPLE!

Feb 18, 2010 4:16 PM in response to KonKrypton

I have exactly the same playlist problem.
Could come from the iTunes update ?
I wondered whether it did not come from the intelligent playlist name ?
So I changed my playlist "Rock", into "Freak", and guess what: the new playlist name did not even appear on the iPhone even after having synchronised it twice !
What should I do then ?
any idea ?

MacHay

Level 1

19 points

Feb 20, 2010 1:06 PM in response to Strakapud

I have had a similar problem, however by adding an extra rule: "Type" equals "Music", this allowed the list to display on my iPhone. It seems that some of the albums in the playlist had the digital booklet and it appears this caused the problem.

I have not tried this on other smart playlist types, but for the music ones it seems to solve the issue.

Feb 23, 2010 10:56 AM in response to MacHay

Same problem with my iPhone, although I'm starting to think its my computer. Recently my dictionary app keeps crashing, so I don't know if it has anything to do with that. I also noticed the empty playlists on my phone, however, when I browse for the contents of the iPhone through iTunes, the playlists are not empty. I do notice that the iPhone freezes for a while when I try to open the playlist, and shows it as empty. Tried restoring the iPhone, and doesn't work. Please let me know if anything works, or if its an iTunes bug. Will reinstalling work? Has anyone contacted apple? Thanks a lot.

jtello98

Level 1

6 points

Feb 23, 2010 7:46 PM in response to KonKrypton

I had the same issue, all I did to fix it was to take of the live updating box and they appear.

ATN5

Level 1

4 points

Feb 24, 2010 1:45 PM in response to KonKrypton

I'm having the same issue - tried renaming, removing the playlists - nothing seems to work. All the music is on the phone though and can be accessed through Albums or Genres.

Feb 27, 2010 12:50 PM in response to KonKrypton

In another forum, I found this recommendation, which seems to work for me: add "Playlist is Music" to the criteria for the list(s) that show up empty.

Mar 2, 2010 10:13 PM in response to Roland Young

....waiting for update / fix from apple......

Mar 11, 2010 10:16 PM in response to KonKrypton

This is getting old. When is Apple going to fix this?

AceNeerav

Level 1

141 points

Mar 12, 2010 12:21 AM in response to Community User

I guess since its a firmware issue they are going to take their time. if it was something with itunes it would be fixed by now.

Empty Playlists after updating iTunes and iPhone