Apple Music Recently Played Not Updating

Ok I've had this issue for years, but I've never tried to fix it. I just browsed around Apple music on my Macbook and got it fixed. Maybe this will work for you too.

Steps:

1. On your Macbook or iMac ope the Apple Music app
2. Go to File> Library> Update Cloud Library

After going back to my recently played playlist, all of my recently played songs were up to date. Hope this works for you!

The same happened to me.

I was connected with this one person on apple support. I explained about all my issues and spoke with him for 2 weeks regarding this. Sent him screen recording of the issue as he asked. He told me that he has escalated this issue to engineering department for some reason. And asked me couple weeks of time.

and then after 2 weeks, a random person was connected who knew nothing about this issue and I had to explain it all over again.

That was really frustrating.

Unfortunately Apple support wasn't able to help me, but I did get it working. I had the same issue as described above. Mine started after I got back from a trip outside my country (similar to what the author of the original post linked above conveyed). I tried toggling all the relevant settings under "music" including the library sync toggle followed by force reset as indicated in the prior thread. Nothing worked. I spent an hour with apple support and they walked me through the same steps again, but got nowhere with them. I tried logging out of icloud altogether and logging back in. Nothing. I finally just backed up to icloud, wiped my device and started over from the backup. that worked :) It works perfectly now and recently played is updating as expected. Pretty annoying, but most of the restore process runs in the background, so as long as you don't need your phone for a few hours, it's not too bad. but still. ugh.

Same deal here. Recently played stopped syncing around October 25th on my systems -- that's the last time all three devices (iPad, iPhone and iMac) show a common last played song. Syncing other metadata (like rating or likes) still works fine.

It's certainly making a mess of my smart playlists since each device now seems to be working off an inconsistent selection of data from iCloud.

I fixed this as follows:

1. opening apple music on my computer
2. clicking the recently played playlist
3. On the main screen, under the playlist title, clicking 'edit rules'
4. Changing the number in the third column to a positive number (it was, for some reason, set to -xxxxxx days)

Doing this instantly fixed the problem on my phone as well (presumably because sync is switched on)

Hope that helps somebody else.

Reposting this since it was deleted earlier.

I don't really expect support to be of much help based on other responses I've seen. But

I'm gathering all my facts and then my strength to deal with them next week.

For the life of me, I can't understand why after years of complaints and requests, they

just couldn't add a "sync now" button!?!?!?!?!

My Apple Music subscription ends next month.

How much time does Apple take to reset everything in Apple Music after the subscription ends? Like everything deleted and reset so after a new subscription, everything would be new.

and hopefully this problem would be resolved.

does anyone know how long does it take after a subscription ends for Apple Music would reset?

Thanks

That is pretty much how it seems to work. Can you imagine someone coming up with that bizarre scheme and thinking it made sense? I mean if you are trying to reduce bandwidth or something wait until some down time after the last play or something but to leave potentially hours of playback hanging indefinitely until the device plays something again makes absolutely no sense.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon with a very helpful support agent. While she was not able to resolve the issue, she was convinced that it was indeed a generalized iOS/iPadOS 17.x issue.

I made clear that it was an issue with ONLY the specific metadata items, last played timestamp and play count, that weren't being updated. All other Music sync actions (e.g. star ratings, playlist edits, adding new music from the Apple Music store) are working correctly bi-directionally. Also, I'm experiencing the exact same symptoms on both my iPhone and iPad. While my MacBook and Windows iTunes continue to work properly. We patiently went through all the troubleshooting steps she asked (even though I had done them all before).

She acknowledged that she sees a number of other similar reports and that the iOS/iPadOS Music app has seen a number of significant changes in 17.x. She opened a case for me and while not providing any real assurance or timeframe, she implied I should see this resolved with a future update.

We'll see.

So the latest on my end is that it still seems to be working after updating to iOS 17.2, except all of those plays not in the 24 hours before it first got fixed still haven't updated. I also applied that update on my iPad, and it resolved the issue there, too. Although I don't play nearly as many songs on that device, so I don't really know whether it only did the last 24 hours or not.

I also spoke with Apple support again and let them know what was happening. They said something about a possible pending fix on the MacOS side. I'm a little skeptical of that; it seems like the problem was with the mobile devices updating to the cloud. It seems unlikely that the iPhone is pushing data to the cloud and then it just isn't showing up on my MacBook. More likely, the iPhone just wasn't sending anything. When I played songs on my MacBook, those would show up in Recently Played on my iPhone. Anyway, it looks like there's now a 17.2.1 available for my iPhone, I'll see what happens with that.

Also, a while back when I was working with a very helpful Apple Support person over a period of a couple of weeks, who really understood this issue, she suggested posting on Applefeedback/ about the 12-hour update cycle, which she had confirmed from "the engineers" was working as designed. Perhaps if a lot of people post a suggestion to make those updates happen automatically, or at least more frequently, maybe they'd do something about it.

Finally it’s working now. The Last Played meta is a bit messed up but the play counts did update. Hopefully this wouldn’t happen again.

I have been having this same problem for about a year or so now and I've tried everything. Just yesterday, I noticed a pattern. For some reason when I got home from work in the evenings and checked recently played, it was always showing the first song I was listening to as I was driving to work, but nothing after that until I got back home from work the next day. So I had an idea... I started playing a song while still at home on my network, went for a walk far enough to get out of network range and listened to a couple more songs. When I got home, same thing happened. It showed the one song I was listening to when I left the network range but not the other two. So I tried it again and it happened again. For whatever reason, starting a song on my home network and leaving while it was playing forced the recently played songs to show up. Don't ask me why, it makes no sense to me either. But now if I want to force my recently played songs through whatever black hole they're stuck in, I just start a song and leave network range long enough for it to finish and all the days other songs appear. I don't know if this will work for you but it did for me. Hope this helps.

Smart playlist?

I think you are in the wrong thread.

You might find these links more helpful.

https://www.viwizard.com/apple-music-tips/apple-music-smart-playlists-not-syncing.html#:~:text=Method%201%3A%20Reset%20All%20Settings,back%20on%20to%20try%20again.

https://www.viwizard.com/apple-music-tips/apple-music-smart-playlists-not-syncing.html#:~:text=Method%201%3A%20Reset%20All%20Settings,back%20on%20to%20try%20again.

Yea. I am. I’m using iPhone and iTunes with my Apple Music. That’s why I recognized that my recently played is not updating. The meta in iTunes (play counts, last played, etc) were not updating after updating to iOS 17.1

Indeed seems that I'm recently facing the same issue. I used a lot the section "last played" on apple music Mac to get music history from all my devices. Since 2 weeks, only my listens on Mac are being updated. All my iPhone streams (music from my libraries) don't update anymore. Very frustrating especially when you have smart playlist.

This issue happens from 1 day to another without any chance in settings (might be an update?) I have "used my listening history" activated and shared across all devices.

What I have tried without solving the issue: log out from Apple Music, disactivating/activating shared history... nothing is changing... very sad