iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

Guys,

Just confirmed with a senior adviser at Apple Care that the syncing of last played dates from iDevices/Apple TV is not supported on iTunes Match. This makes it unusable for me because I use smart playlists with last played dates. He, therefore, also assisted me in getting a refund on my account. This is not related to the Crossfade bug but is instead an issue of using an iDevice in conjunction with iTunes Match, play a song on the iDevice, and it does not update the server side with this last played date.

Just as a side note I was able to get play counts to update but I don't use play counts. If this is a deal breaker for you, and you recently signed up, or are going to renew, I would ask for a refund or not renew until this feature is added. Whether or not the feature 'worked' before it doesn't sound like they want to 'support' the feature now.

Hope this helps.

Last Played Date seems to have worked (at least for me) until around the time of the iOS 6 update. The feature going away was the main reason I didn't renew when my time came up. As soon as they restore the feature, I'm back in a heartbeat.

I am noticing that my star ratings are NOT updating and I am using 6.0.2 so is it a setting or some other problem. Trying to sync between iPhone 5 and ITM. Any help appreciated.

Sorry I meant ITM 11.0.1.

It's a crappy service. I cant even say its a bug because that implies it will be fixed at some point. Some people have had luck by just waiting a few days and eventually it might or might not sync over from iOS device. Star ratings do sync reliably between iTunes desktop applications. If you want reliable syncing of ratings, play count and last played you need to turn off iTunes Match (ask for a refund) and sync devices the old fashioned way with USB or WiFi. I have the service a year to get these issues fixed, they never did, I didn't renew my iTunes Match subscription. Best wishes.

OtisB, thanks for the reply. However, I never signed up for iTunes Match and do not have it turned on my iPhone. Any other ideas?

Just wanted to jump back in and say that syncing Play and Skip Counts has been working for for me for a while now. Plays and skips from my home and work computers (OS X and Windows respectively) and my iPhone all sync together. It's pretty cool, because I can run CloudScrob on my iPhone every once in a while and it'll pick up all 400+ plays I made on my work or home computers and send them to Last.FM.

Also I can say that, in some cases, for some reason, Last Played dates seem to occasionally sync from my iPhone back to my computers. It's working here and there. I don't know why. It wasn't before. So, I'm sticking with the idea that they will be fixing it eventually.

Now if only I could purposefully tell iTunes to NOT MATCH certain tracks and just upload them.

If I play something on my MBP, or in my iPod classic and sync to iTunes, play countd and last played dates get updated and even pushed out to my devices. But the process doesn't work in the opposite direction. The only thing that even sometimes gets updated is play counts.

Today is my last day on iTunes Match. I even turned it off on my iPhone, iPad and Mac long before it expires today at midnight. The lack of synchronization between devices and my iTunes library was the deal breaker, but I must add…

1. Album cover mess: You want to change that lowsy album cover you got first for a better artwork. The first pain is delete one by one the old artwork from every song in the album. Then you add the improved artwork and your album looks great for… a day or two. Next time you open it, the old, pixelated, low-res artwork is back, because iTunes Match decided that the one your songs in the cloud have is better than the one you got. No more! From now on, I'm in full control of what album artwork I want in my library!
2. Playcounts mess: Apple tried to fix this a couple of times in the past 18 months or so, and all they did was ending us duplicating the playcounts on selected songs. It is ridiculous that iTunes thinks I played dozens of times songs that I know I haven't listened more than a few times.
3. Why 128kbps? I have great spoken conferences that I prefer to keep as 64kbps, but the arbitrary decision of just upload files that are 128kbps is simply stupid.
4. Partial albums: It is non-sense that iTunes matches 10 out of 11 songs of certain albums for no particular reason. The missing song has the exact name, tagging, length, etc. than the one in the store, but iTunes match… simply refuses to match it! So you are forced to have 10 songs at beautiful 256kbps and one lowsy 128k MP3, or... purchase the missing song, which I guess is the actual catch. No audiophile will tolerate have mixed qualities in one album or collection!
5. Slow response to playback: Having your whole collection on the go is a great idea… when it works. I have an enviable fast connection everywhere either by wifi or 3G. But getting iTunes to play a song, just when I want to means a wait of several seconds, even a whole minute before the first tunes are heard. No more! My new iPhone 5 is a 32Gb that will hold at least the best of my music collection, to play instantly wherever and whenever I want, even on an airplane at 30,000 feet high away from any free wifi or 3G connection. Some day music streaming will work the way it's supposed to work, even at 30k fee high, but for now…

NO THANK YOU, ITUNES MATCH! IT IS WELL WITHOUT YOU FOR ANOTHER YEAR! THANK YOU FOR THE 10,800 high quality songs I WAS ABLE TO DOWNLOAD TO REPLACE MY LOWSY 128kbps versions. It was worth $29.99 but after today, NO MORE OF YOU UNTIL YOU PUT TOGETHER YOUR ACT.

fix it apple

I've got the same issue!

Even with Album Covers and Slow Playback.

I just ditched iTunes Match a couple of days ago, and mine expires in May. It feels so liberating!

I've created a special Smart Playlist whish populates by songs which have a last played date, but no play counts. It was populated by iTunes Match's stuff ups by deleting my play counts.

I manually changed the play counts of all these tracks to '1'.

A few weeks have gone by, and tonight the list is populated again by over 100 tracks because iTunes Match has, in its wisdom, decided to delete all these play counts to zero. This is despite all tracks having a last played date! They actually got played at some stage!

Frustrating!

I've manually changed all the playcounts again to '1' (despite the playcounts they actually might have had).

Now I wait again to see this list populate when iTunes Match suddenly decides that I haven't actually listened to any of another batch of tracks, and resets the playcounts to none.

Fix it, Apple!

Thanks man... keep us updated! Hopefully Apple will finally see this thread and do something about this nasty bug.

Any news on whether iOS 6.1 fixes our problems?