iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

"The update to the cloud appears to be triggered by completely playing a song through after a 24 hour period has ended."

I can confirm that this is the case -- i played over 30 songs in the last 24 hours since i restablished the songs in the cloud (via iTunes) and reloaded the iTunes Match listing on my iPhone. Approximately 24 hours later, the songs I played appeared in iTunes as played with updated play counts and date played time.

I played The Beatles "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" twice, and it updated the play counts +2

One other thing i noticed is that a song I played after the 24 hour period updated almost instantly in iTunes, but only the first song shows up -- this happened yesterday as well. The first song of a new 24 hour period will show up first -- then there seems to be a hold for 24 hours until the period ends and all tracks are written - its as if the first song of the 24 hour period is the marker it basis the period on....

Day 2 Report: Play Count and Date Last Played is still syncing

Looks like the start of my 24-hour cycle is around 5:42pm EST. Functionality was the same as yesterday -- the first track of the period marks the time period and then nothing for 24 hours -- once the period is over all tracks played from that period show up as played with new time stamps and +1 playcounts.

Once you play a new set of songs in the new 24-hour period, the first track will appear in your recently played - the rest of the tracks you play in that time period will not show up for 24 hours.

The Smart Playlists on the phone are still nothing like what is in iTunes, which is annoying, but at least were making progress...

so after trying it for a few days im definetly getting syncing of playcounts and date played consistently, not right away but definelty 24 hrs later just like people are saying it seems to be triggered by playing more music

I can now confirm after restoring my iphone that smart playlists are now 100% working, I played music all day long yesterday and the play times are now showing in itunes.

Thank god that I have my smart playlists back!!

And all of my music in Match is available in my car when plugged in as an accessory.

Are your smart playlist tracks matching up and updating? It's great that playcounts and date played are syncing up, but my smart playlists aren't updating accordingly.

I have a Smart playlist called "not recently played" which lists tracks that have not been played in 6 months. The tracks seem correct in iTunes and update as tracks are played, but there are totally different tracks listed on my phone that don't go away once played - even after 24 hours.

FYI: "Not Recently Played" Smart Playlist:

The smart playlist in iTunes is limited to 5gb of tracks (825 Songs)

The iphone version of the playlist has 5519 songs

is anyone else seeing these discrepancies in their Smart Playlists?

My itunes smart playlists and ios have never really matched 100%, although they do seem to be following the rules as from today but its going to take a while to to get enough last played data to establish if they are following all of my rules correctly seeing that it has not worked for the last 6 months or so and I have a lot of music.

They do seem to follow the song limit that I have set in itunes, which is a total number of tracks as opposed to the memory size.

I was successful in limiting the list I mentioned above to 500 songs in itunes AND on the phone....the problem still remains where the list in itunes is different from what is on the phone -- not a big deal (the criteria is still correct)

I'll be interested to see if the songs get pulled out of the cloud playlist once the 24 period has completed...

Day 3 Update.

I played a lot of songs on my iPhone yesterday, and was dismayed to see that the tracks didn't update around 5:45 as they did the day before. Then they showed up this morning - not sure what prompted it -- i did restart iTunes, and also physically dock my iPhone (which i did not do on the previous days.

The great thing is that all tracks that i played on my iPhone yesterday when synched to iTunes were removed from the smartplaylist and subsequently removed from the same playlist on the iPhone.

I now have a working smarytplaylist that lets me play songs that i have not listened to in over 6 months and is constantly refreshed.

Sweet.

I'm still confused about how and when it updates, struggling to get a pattern, I'm still missing an album from Thursday morning but have got Wednesday nights so I guess that one may have gone. Fridays haven't updated at all yet.

The one thing I'm still not sure about is when I'm playing music in a poor Internet reception area and how the I-phone keeps and transmits the information, my drive into work involves a long period without data connection whilst I'm playing music. Does it cache it until it gets a wi-fi reception? I get te little data connection thing after playing music ina connection area so assume its doing something.

Yes, it caches and the pattern is quite simple: iOS devices transfer their play count and last played info only once every 24 hours to the cloud. If you have completely played a track, it checks if info was transferred during the last 24 hours, if no it transfers all the cached not yet synched information, if there was a transfer less than 24 hours ago it does nothing. This of course means that you will only get updates if you play songs on your iOS device. If you stop playing songs less than 24 hours after the last transfer, everything played after the sync until then will not be transferred until you play another song after the 24 hour timeout.

That's also the reason why you will always see one song that was played recently before the sync occurred.

This algorithm is so crappy, I can't believe it took them so long to get this "fixed". Looks like they are trying to reduce the number of requests to the iTunes Match backend. But why a 24 hour timeout and why doesn't it sync the not yet transferred info if you don't play music for more than 24 hours. If it is just to avoid cellular data usage, why don't they use a much shorter timeout when is devices are on Wifi?

I am very disappointed to see such an badly elaborate approach in Apple software. That's not the kind of user experience I expect of an Apple product.

I've been trying to get the last played updates to happen since iOS 6.1 came out.

No success, except I would get 1 update per day then nothing else. Not even after 24hrs or 25 hrs or whichever random timescale anyone would wish to choose

Until... I turned iTunes Match off in settings-music then turned the iPhone off and on, turned iTunes Match back on and it now actually works!

My playlists are actually updating, as I would expect. As soon as I play a song it disappears off my smart playlist (songs not played for last 30 days+5 star rating) just like it does in iTunes on the mac

Finally!!!

Dear John,

I guess your playcount is synced by the cable ? 😟

Fai

No, the play count is not updated on cable or wifi sync when using iTunes Match

No, it's done over the the network -- Docking the phone is not a required state to sync playcounts

Good morning,

After turning iTunes Match off on my laptop, and then turning it back on, it has begun to update every 24 hours, with the initiating event seeming to be completing play of any song (device doesn't seem to matter, but I played on my iphone) after the end of the latest 24 hour period. Thus starts a new 24 hour period.

Very unusual that it doesn't update every 24 hours, ONLY after you complete playing a song after the 24 hour start period.

The last played date does seem to work in this way, and has now for several days of testing.

What does not work, and I would like to know if others are having the same issue and know how to resolve, is that while the last played date and time updates correctly, the Playcount is increased by 2 for each song that was played in the last day. Go figure.

The other thing that is disappointing to me is that we are trying to figure out what works, when Apple should just put out documentation as to how it works. Then I would know if my system is operating out of line with the way it is intended to operate, instead of us trying one thing at a time, daily, and trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

So far, I haven't seen enough improvement to get me to renew my iTunes Match subscription, which renews in a couple of weeks.