How can I sync playlist changes FROM iPhone TO iTunes?

Thank you for that overview, it certainly explains why I (and others) are continually frustrated by this FLAW in iTunes.

.."by design to prevent you from screwing something up..."

That's a window into the soul! I have a portable device designed for listening to music and a laptop on which I store music. When listening, I add, edit and create then iTunes automatically wipes out all changes and current updates because the "Master" library on the laptop thinks it knows what I want more than the portable device I carry around with me all day?? Stupid. Who the **** sits around at a laptop and creates playlists anymore!!?? That's just stupid, playlists are for ipods, iphones and listening devices and should be created, edited and controlled by the listening device, not the storage device!

Did you every get this resolved? I am having this problem and it urks me to no end.

Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes and iOS. When I make a playlist on my iPhone, then sync it, it updates those changes to iTunes. I believe this is how it is suppose to work now. Like I said, check to make sure you have the latest versions. I will keep looking.

Edit: Also, while your iPhone is connected to your computer, click on it, then click on the music tab and make sure you have sync entire library. I imagine you already do, but just check.

I am having the same problem! I purchased new music on my iPhone,added it to a playlist and a day later synced my iPhone to my iTunes on my computer. The purchased music transferred into some new folder (Purchased on Kendrah's iPhone), all my new apps synced to my computer, however the playlist changes did not sync over and I had to re-do my new playlists on my iTunes in order to sync it with the phone.

I have all iTunes updates and my entire library is set to sync - are thereany other suggestions to try and fix this?

iTunes Match is not required to address this, you just need to learn how playlist editing works:

If you create a brand new playlist directly on the iPhone, the playlist will transfer to your iTunes library on your next sync. However, if you buy music directly to your device and put it into a new playlist without syncing these songs back to iTunes first, then such changes may not "stick" when you finally get around to re-syncing. Music you buy directly to your device are kept in sort of a limbo state until you re-sync, so I'm not surprised that it fails if you add such purchases to a playlist before transferring them to your library.

If you want to edit an existing playlist directly on the iPhone, the changes you make will not be saved next time you re-sync to iTunes. I suppose this is by design to prevent you from screwing something up. Instead, if you want to edit an existing playlist, first create a new (empty) one and add the desired playlist into the new one. Then edit the new playlist as desired, and when you sync back to iTunes replace the original version with the edited copy, or keep both copies.

Apple has apparently fixed the flaw.

I learned that after going through figuring out how to "add" the playlist on the iPhone I wanted to preserve to a new playlist I created just for that purpose, so the latter would sync to iTunes on my MacBook (at the same time the MacBook version of the playlist I wanted to preserve would purportedly "overwrite" the improved version on the iPhone. But when I went ahead and synced finally, iTunes updated the MacBook version so it mirrored the one on the iPhone -- did NOT overwrite it.

At least as of May, 2017, for iTunes 12.6 on a fully-up-to-date OS syncing with an iPhone 6S with a fully-up-to-date iOS, the problem has been corrected.

YaAAAAAAASSSSSSS^^^^^^