iTunes keeps deleting my playlists

Question

Level 1

0 points

iTunes keeps deleting my playlists

iTunes keeps deleting a number of playlists from my computer, which leaves me having to roll back to an older back up of my library (not a problem, just an inconvenience). All of my music remains, only the playlists vanish. It doesn't delete them all, but it deletes the same ones every time. Also, I have many of my playlists organized into playlist folders, and it seems as those are what is getting deleted. It seems like 4 or 5 of my folders get deleted, deleting all of the playlists under them, while 4 folders remain, as do all playlists under those folders. All playlists not under a folder also remain. I have backups saved so I can get my playlists back, but it seems that as soon as I sync over wifi, everything gets deleted.

The problem first started when I got my iPhone 4S on the 14th. Im pretty sure its not an iOS 5 or iCloud problem specifically because I had iOS 5 running on my 3GS before my 4S got here, and everything was fine. But when I restored my iPhone 4S for the first time using an iCloud backup from my 3GS, everything came back except my songs. I synced those via USB, and thats when I first noticed my playlists were missing. I rolled back to an earlier library and synced via USB to get those playlists on my 4S. Ever since, it seems when syncing via wifi, even without changing any of my songs, it deletes the same playlists over and over again. Its done this about 4 times now, so I'm obviously not finding a successful solution, aside from syncing via USB. I'd like to fix this though. Does anyone know what's wrong?

Thanks in advance.

iTunes-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2), iPhone 4S, iOS 5, iCloud Sync

Posted on Oct 24, 2011 1:44 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 28, 2011 8:36 PM in response to amgarrety

I have pretty much the same problem here with my iPhone 4s and syncing with the cloud. All my playlists are listen on my computer, but there are no songs attached with them. On my iPhone 4s, none of my playlists are listed.

Reply

Answer 2

amgarrety Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 28, 2011 9:10 PM in response to jondelgado

Hey jondelgado, when you got your iPhone, did you first restore from an iCloud backup?

I have a feeling that is probably part of the issue. I think tomorrow I am going to restore all my playlists (again), backup to my computer via USB, then do a totally clean restore from the backup that is on my computer. And then i'll back up to iCloud. I'll report back what I find after a few days to give it a chance to fail if it is going to.

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 28, 2011 9:48 PM in response to amgarrety

I'm also having the same issue. Recently upgraded to iPhone 4s from 4.

Reply

Answer 4

EvdZ

Level 1

0 points

Oct 28, 2011 11:52 PM in response to amgarrety

Same issue here. I'll eagerly await your findings, amgarrety!

Reply

Answer 5

EvdZ

Level 1

0 points

Oct 29, 2011 10:28 AM in response to amgarrety

I managed to get my playlists back and on the 4S. First I restored the iTunes Library file through Time Machine as amgarrety suggested. Next step is to make an iPhone back-up *via usb* (not on iCloud). And finally restore your iPhone completely from the back-up that is on your computer (not iCloud). The lesson here: don't put your stuff on your new 4S via iCloud. I reckon you could put back-ups to iCloud on again once everything is as it should have been the first time around, but I have to admit I'm a bit hesistant now.

Reply

Answer 6

Oct 29, 2011 10:48 AM in response to amgarrety

Yesterday I had to (at Sprint's behest) reset my iPhone to get a new phone number attached to it. I have an iPhone 4S. When I went to sync my playlists today before going to the gym, my playlists were completely blank.

These were the only two playlists I had syncing with iTunes wirelessly, so the problem definitely lies with the wireless iTunes sync. They were both manual playlists, not smart playlists—I wonder if the same problem would happen with smart playlists...

At any rate, I don't have a recent backup, so I'm stuck trying to figure out the songs I had in the playlists, in order to recreate them. To clarify, the playlists aren't there, but the music still is.

This needs to be fixed.

Reply

Answer 7

amgarrety Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 29, 2011 11:22 AM in response to byrannewell

It deleted all the smart playlists that I had under a playlist folder, but as with other playlists, any smart playlists not under a folder remained.

I have a power outage due to snow right now, and it'll likely last awhile, so I'll let you know if this problem is fixed when I have internet back. Because I can't sync over wifi without wifi. Go figure.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem.

Reply

Answer 8

amgarrety Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2011 7:16 PM in response to amgarrety

No success after backing up via USB, restoring, deleting all iCloud backups and remaking them. However, I changed the name of one of my playlists during this time and it stayed. So i'll play with it some more.

Reply

Answer 9

Dec 17, 2011 6:51 AM in response to amgarrety

the same problem is with my ipod touch also guys... i dont think its the problem just with the iphone4.

Some one raised the doubt that this is due to restoring playerlist or something like that. even i restored a playerlist and from then, this problem is occuring with me. any ideas of kicking this problem out?

Reply

Answer 10

amgarrety Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 17, 2011 8:05 AM in response to chaitanyahnk

As painful as it sounds, the only way I could find to fix it was to restore my phone from scratch. Nope, restoring from a recent backup doesn't work. You have to restore to factory settings and re-load everything many again. It worked fine for me and I haven't had a problem since. If you're going to do this, I'll warn you that you will lose everything. If you want to keep your pictures, movies, music, ect, sync it all to your computer so you can reload it manually. Also link your notes, contacts, and calendars to an email address so you can retrieve them later. Things like your texts and App data will be completely gone. So any apps that dont save app data on their own servers will be completely reset from the beginning. Game center doesn't restore data.

Other than that, reset your phone, link it to your Apple ID, setup as new iPhone, and manually load the music, movies, apps, pictures, and all that fun stuff that you'd like to have back on your phone. Tweak the settings back to how they were, and with the exception of some missing texts and constant music library that doesn't delete itself, you shouldn't really notice a difference. Believe me, as long as you're ok with losing the texts and some app data, restoring the phone is completely worth not having to hassle with restoring the music a few times a week.

Reply

Answer 11

Jul 7, 2015 8:15 AM in response to amgarrety

I had this happen yesterday:

I deleted a playlist from my iPhone (using the phone) and then when I tried to sync with the playlists in my computer that same playlist was deleted from my computer! It took me hours of wasted time to try to restore that playlist which was unsuccessful

I recreated the playlist, gave it a new name, sync with the iPhone and guess what?...the playlist will NOT copy to the phone no matter what! I am perplexed and hope this is not because the new version of iTunes is so quirky and complex now that I can't do a simple task...please tell me I'm wrong...

Thanx!

Bern

Reply