iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

Well said; good letter. However no one from Apple participates in these forums.

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Nice explanation, vichudson1. Let's all keep posting to this thread, maybe the developers / product manager at Apple will see it.

I did email it to him. Not really holding my breath for a reply though. For good measure I went ahead and threw it up in here and the iTunes feedback page as well. I had hopes the iOS 6.01 would help and was feeling very disappointed when it didn't.

I sent a similar message a number of months ago and never got a reply.

Does anybody know how to cancel my renewal? I went to my account page like it said in the email last November, and I can't find anything about it.

Thanks in advance.

Hey guys,

I called and talked to Apple today. They confirmed that iOS devices are NOT syncing playcounts or dates etc back to PCs. She said something along the lines of "We hope to have this working better in a future update to iTunes Match" but wasn't able to say anything past that. No timeframe, not even a rough one. I'd cross my fingers and hope iTunes 11 will fix a lot of this, but let's not get our hopes up.

But at least we have confirmation for sure that it isn't working. It's only $25, so I am going to stick with it for now and deal with lost playcounts I suppose and hope it gets fixed in the future.

Play counts actually are being syned between devices for me. Last Played dates are not. In fact the server is constantly over writing the last played date on my iPhone with the last played date on the server. So it isn't just that last played isn't being synced between devices.

At least the problem is being acknowledged now. Previously we couldn't even get an acknowledgment there was a problem.

I'm going to keep my Match subscription too, for access to all my old music. However, this issue has already caused me to move on to other platforms (Rdio, for example) for new music. I used to spend way more than $25 per year on music from the iTunes store, but if I can't get the advantages of actually owning songs (metadata, play counts that don't get corrupted, smart playlists, etc), I might as well just stream it for $10 a month. You lost me, Apple.

Michael, I envy you if playcounts sync at least. Nothing syncs for me. It's amazing to me, since new playlists sync almost instantly. I wonder what the problem is, especially since it seems to have worked for a while according to people in this thread, or works partially for you. iMessage and Game Center have been having issues lately, so maybe ... maybe Apple is just having issues. My iTunes Match subscription is only 3 days old, so maybe it's totally turned off for very new users, and working semi-kinda for established users.

Anyway, I don't know. iTunes Match would be absolutely 100% perfect if it weren't for 1) this playcounts issues, 2) the "no smart playlists within smart playlists" thing, and 3) not Apple's fault but Sprint's atrocious 3G. Thankfully I assume all of these problems will be worked out given time. Even if 2 isn't, I already have an automater script set up to copy my complex playlists into flat ones that then sync to my iPhone near-instantly through Match.

Its been having issues for a year. I signed up the first week. I have a ATT iPad, Sprint iPhone 4S, ATT, AppleTV 1G, 2G and Take2. It simply does not work reliably. Playcounts are erratic, Last played never updates and if they do update they are overwritten at some later date. The only thing that works reliably are ratings. Most of the time play counts will be consistent from computer to computer (not from mobile devices). iTunes match is not "just having issues" now. It has been broken from day one. Getting amnesty for all of my old music was worth the $25 and is probably worth another $25 this year. However, since playlists, play counts, ratings and last played are "must have" items for me, I have gone back to manually syncing.

Play counts on my iTunes Match account weren't syncing with my devices either, but after almost 6 months it finally works. As much as I love iTunes Match, apple has been dropping the ball on their services lately, after a whole month of not being able to stream music through cellular connection this issue is finally resolved, but it took me a whole week of just fidgeting around to get it to work. I know this sounds kinda ignorant but, I miss Steve Jobs, I bet he wouldn't have allowed apple services to go down the drain like it is now (granted that their new products are better than before).

I miss Steve too but let's be honest. The service has been janky since before he passed. Lets also not forget mobile me. iTunes Match has been hit or miss throughout its existence. First for me everything worked but smart playlists with a limit to songs or that included nested playlists. But the play dates and counts worked fine. Then they finally fixed it so that limited lists worked. I don't know if there was ever a fix for nested lists or not I found ways to redo my playlists without them. There was a few glorious months where everything seemed to work for me. But since around the time of iOS 6 launch play counts and dates don't work at all.

Well, since iTunes 11 is out in the open... can anyone please share some experiences? Will playcounts / last played data be synchronized correctly now?

Nope. iTunes 11 still doesn't sync play dates or skip dates, however play counts have been syncing for me from iPhone to computer and computer to computer. My smart playlists rely on dates, though, so I'm still pretty unhappy... I am hoping the support person who told me they were working on this wasn't lying to me.

amiantos wrote:

iTunes 11 still doesn't sync play dates or skip dates, however play counts have been syncing for me from iPhone to computer and computer to computer.

I would not expect an update to iTunes to fix what is probably a server-side bug. Play counts have been syncing for me also pretty consistently.