Hi folks,
Wondering if anyone else experiencing this issue when attempting to play music that is on the iPhone and not on the iWatch (Series 5).
The album details (tracks, artist, etc) appears and are selectable; however, choosing and tracks returns an the above noted error.
Standard reset & repairing performed; still no luck ... was working as expected pre-watchOS 6.1.
Cheers
Apple Watch
Like others, I typically play an entire album start-to-finish and have any media iCloud Library syncing options disabled on my iDevices and iTunes respectively.
Additionally, I typically drag-n-drop albums via the iTunes (Mac and/or Windows) interface after physically connecting my iDevice via USB. This approach yields individual tracks as albums. Using the "Add To Library" option in iTunes and then drag-n-dropping from the iTunes Library to the iDevice instead yields the desired result on the iDevice - still doesn't solve the problem introduced as of watchOS 6.1.
That said ..
*UPDATE*
Created a "test" playlist on the iPhone (8 /w iOS 13.3) and added an entire album to it. Selecting the playlist on the iWatch (S5 /w watchOS 6.1.1) plays the content of the "test" playlist as expected.
Also took a moment to compare the "Song Info" properties via iTunes of a track on the iPhone against the Library version; visually, the track metadata appears consistent.
The files are on my PC and are .m4a (these will play as album)
The ones I rip are 192 bit mp3 (these will NOT play as an album)
Thanks for taking time to do that.
I'd be interested in knowing which logs they had you upload; the logs I've looked at don't contain any iphone/iwatch music related errors/crashes.
I'd be surprised if they haven't encountered the issue, but anything is possible I suppose. I can consistently reproduce the problem with my albums from my audio library (MP3) - similar to others who have posted here. In my case: I don't sync my audio with iCloud, haven't joined Apple music, I'm not signed into Home Sharing, and the following options are "off/disabled" in iOS: Show Apple Music, Show All Purchases, Cellular Data, EQ, Volume Limit, Sound Check.
I spoke with Apple Asia Pacific on Wednesday. Apple Engineers are being very honest saying they don’t know what is causing the issue but are working on it to deliver a fix via a future update, however are unable to give a timeframe for that. They are continuing to use the diagnostics some of us uploaded after installing a logging profile on the watch and running through the steps to reproduce the fault.
Follow-up; selecting a track using "Songs" does play the intended selection ... seems the problem is localized to Artists/Albums.
Noticed this issue after upgrading my apple watch series 3 from watchos 6.0.1 to 6.1.1. Apple should really fix this bug asap!!
Is that for the benefit of the engineers? They don’t monitor these forums so you’ll need to contact Apple Support like I did if you have some info that might help diagnose the problem.
Typos ...
”The album details (tracks, artist, etc) appears and are selectable; however, choosing and tracks returns an the above noted error.”
Should have been ...
”The album details (tracks, artist, etc) appears and are selectable on iWatch; however, choosing a track returns the above noted error.”
Post-watchOS 6.1 update and pre-reset/pair, selecting an album/track would play a track from a different album/artist.
Playing a song first by selecting it from "Songs" still left me with the issue of not being able to start an "Album" from the watch. Note that I can not start any song after selecting an album first. This started after watch OS 6.1 install. My setup: Watch 4 with XS Max.
Here is an example of an album I purchased due to it not being available on physical CD.
It plays from the watch when selected as an "Album", but note that I did change the tag a while back so that it would bunch Soundtracks under z-soundtracks putting soundtracks at the end of my collection where I wanted them to be.
What you suggested about tagging has crossed my mind. I do go in and edit some of my tags for various reasons sometimes (like deleting "The" from "The Cars" for instance). I also use an older program called iCoverArt to embed album art when I add a lot of CD's at once. When Apple cant find the albums artwork I will embed from the Amazon website CD cover pic.
Please let me know if you discover anything...
I add music to my library by ripping purchased physical CD's thru iTunes. Then I sync my apple devices to that PC via iTunes to transfer music to devices (XS Max, iPad, Touch, iPod)...
The album to playlist worked for me too...
Does Apple know about the "Watch wont play album" situation?
Just adding some reference details to this topic in case someone has access to viewing the logs or tracing Music Player functionality directly at the watchOS layer. I'm not currently setup to run XCODE as an Apple Developer.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/
Quick update ... iOS 13.4/watchOS 6.2.0 ... problem playing items on iPhone as covered throughout this thread remain present.
Although I suspect this isn't the issue, I'm attaching the .MP3 header meta-data (ID3v2 UTF-16) detailing the information that appears in each of my audio files.
I'm aware Apple doesn't actively monitor (they should imho) these communities; it's likely someone from the community, who has access to the Apple diagnostic logging info, will isolate the root cause.
Still waiting on resolutions for the fifty (or so) tickets I've opened with them over the past two decades; needless to say I've given up on that approach. Besides, I suspect there's little motivation to address the issue by engineering; else it would have been resolved by now.
I'd be willing to sift through the logs of someone who has uploaded them to Apple and kept a copy for archival purposes. From what I gather though, folks are directly uploading from their devices to Apple Support.
:)
*EDIT*
I've also tested ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 (destroys the album art) and ID3v2.4 UTF-8; same behaviour.
I have the same issue this morning after updating to version 6.1, restartnof both decices didn’t help
*UPDATE*
Applied watchOS 6.1.1 and the problem persist - cannot play this item and/or plays the wrong album/track.
watchOS 6.1: Music on iPhone “Cannot Play This Item”
