iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

Today's update - play counts all updating twice...

Snap, my play counts are increasing by 2, not the end of the world for me as my play lists are based around last played dates.

But something so basic puzzles me..

I turned off itunes match on my iPhone 5 and Macbook Pro about a month ago. I synced some music the normal way at that time. I just synced again (about a month later) and none of my play counts or last played dates updated. This is the main computer I sync to. The "Recently Played" folder is also empty. Should I try to delete that folder and let it build a new one? I'm running itunes 11. I still have itunes match turned on a third computer, so I'll turn that one off when I get home.

I ditched itunes match so I could start using smart playlists again without worrying about turning match on and off to reset it. I've had it off for almost a month and when I synced with itunes, all of my music that I've been playing for a month didn't show up as being played (shows the last played date as the day I turned off match on the computer and the phone). Does this constitute restoring the phone and rebuilding the itunes library?

Well I had turned iTunes Match off on my iPhone and iPod 4 months ago because I too use Smart Playlists based more so on Last Played than playcount (but some of those too) and I couldn't stand it not updating my master library from any iOS device. It worked fine (I think) when I played music from any of the 3 desktop/laptops and the playcounts and last played even pushed down to the iPhone/iPod/iPad. The reverse was the issue for me. Nothing played from an iOS device would ever sync back, which was a dealbreaker for me.

After catching up on this thread and seeing what is being reported about the 24-hour update and needing to keep playing music to trigger an update, I'm wanting to take the plunge again and try it. I cringe at the idea of having to reset my iPhone if it doesn't work though, as last time turning off Match on my iPhone and iPod did absolutely nothing (it still behaved like Match was on, ever after a reboot) and I had to reset each device to clear it. Oddly, my iPad turned Match on and off by just toggling and restarting.

This whole experience has been quite frustrating and honestly doesn't seem like it should be this hard. Google Music isn't a solution because while they might offer more storage and it's free, there's no such thing as smart playlists at all, so still in the same boat.

I will report back my experience. Going to turn Match off on my iPad (since it's still remaining from the time when no updates ever happened), then turn it on on my iPhone and listen to some music today and tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Well, I'm happy to say playcount and last played synced for me today. I wasn't able to check until just now, which is a little over 24 hours after I started playing music yesterday.

I too am getting 2 playcounts for every one play, so still undesired behaviour, but I don't think that is enough to keep me from using the service now. It irritates me not to have my library be accurate, but I think it irritates me more to have to pick and choose what music to keep on my iphone, and since my Wi-Fi sync never works, it irritates me to add music to my library and then not have it when I want it because I forgot to plug my phone in. Coming from an Android device, I haven't been tethered to a PC in years.

Here's to hoping they will fix the playcount updating and then at least it will "work" albeit with an unnecessary delay.

My last post is inaccurate. On Day 1 it didn't work exactly (except for the duplicate playcount). It missed some songs that were played on the iPhone between Sunday night and Monday evening. Mysteriously, iPhone doesn't show the songs as having been played (in my recently played list), although they may have been there before it "synced" with the cloud at some point Monday evening, but they definitely don't show in it now. It matched the library on my computer as of 8:50 pm. That's why I thought it was "working" save for the 2 playcounts for every one song played.

It's just very eerie. I know I listened to a new album entirely once, yet some of the songs show no plays and others show 2 plays in the library.

Day 2: Yesterday as of 9pm, it added just 2 songs played from the iPhone (although there more played then that, on the order of 10). All of the songs played from my Windows PC at work (which has always worked perfectly) were added the "cloud" and showed on all iTunes libraries and on my iPhone and iPad. When I used CloudScrob to scrobble my iPhone, it found songs played that weren't even reported as played in the playlists (because somehow those plays were lost), but even CloudScrob didn't see all of the song plays from Monday and Tuesday...

Today it hasn't updated...anything...at all played from the iPhone. I listened to some music downloaded from the cloud to the device while not on any data connection, to see what it would do. I also listened to songs while on data. Nothing has updated in my library at all. My SmartPlaylist on my device, however, is accurate for all of the plays today.

I'll be curious to see if it ever does update, and if so, if it misses any songs and if so, if those song plays disappear from my Recently Played smart playlist on my iPhone.

It really annoys me that this doesn't just work, even after 1+ years of existence of the service. I was really hopeful that I would have better success with the service after seeing these most recent posts.

It's really hard to discontinue using the service again when it really does fit my lifestyle much better. My library is just too large to fit on even the largest iPhone (first world problems i know) and to go back to manually managing it every day, and wired at this, is just a chore I'm not willing to put up with. If I go back to an Android device, smart playlists go away completely, so the compromise seems to be to just use it as it is, considering 95% of music is played from my iPhone anyway, so my smart playlists are always "accurate" there. THe last 3 months on an iPhone that I had to manually manage while plugged into iTunes just resulted in me not having the music I wanted to listen to any given time.

What a mess Apple.

I'm seeing the same service as you. I generally get 1 song marked as played which disappears from my smart playlist per day. None of the other plays show up on my device or iTunes

The benefits of match outweigh these issues but I hope this issue gets sorted

When I turn my phone off and on lots, but not all, of my plays appear

I assume apple are protecting their servers from all the play data from iOS devices. Hopefully apple will get some bigger servers soon

It seems that a respring of my device today triggered an update to the cloud. When I opened iTunes at work today, all of the plays from yesterday and last night on the iPhone showed up in my Recently Played smart playlist. All of them, including those downloaded from the cloud to the phone and played while without data service. The plays ended with the song I paused on last night and started playing ont he ride into work this morning. The play date was for this morning. All plays after that today aren't there yet.

None of the plays from Tuesday that it missed ever came back. Some of them still show in the "Recently Played" list on the device though.

I can live with a few playcounts and last played being lost here and there, but I'm just nervous to use the service as it seems very unpredictable. I keep going back and forth. I was determined last night that I would turn match off this evening.

I guess I'll keep trial running for a few more days.

Ok like everyone else now seem to have itunes match updating playcounts and last played after a 24hour time lapse, which also seems to be triggered by accessing my iphone the next day.

the Problem also seems to be that that i get 2 plays counted for one actual play on my iphone. Though if i play it on my apple tv (through itunes match) i get one play count.

I guess this means they are almost there with making this service work proper but still need to tweak it.

One other thing i noticed recently was that some of my playcounts doubled inb itunes, but whn I played them on my iphone, and updated itunes match then some tracks (not all) went back to their proper play count.... very very weird. Anyone else experience this or have any solution to revert the other tracks back to their proper play counts?

Has anyone got an update on the iTunes update yesterday, does it fix the play count issue?ive not got round to updating yet.

Curious on this one too. I can't imagine it would fix it, as the problem seems to be coming from the server side, but perhaps it is actually happening in iTunes. I know it isn't on the device itself because my device library is intact with the correct number of plays until it pushes. I use LastScrob and if I scrobble before the iTunesMatch push, all my playcounts are correct. If I scrobble after a push, then all my playcounts are doubled and messed up (and I have to fix these--one by one--in the scrobbling app before submitting).

I've installed the update only on my MacBook Pro, but my Windows PC is my "master" library where all my music is stored and I haven't updated that one yet. I will install the update tomorrow and see if the problem goes away.

I just added a new album to my iTunes Library and played the first song all the way through - it showed up the newest update of itunes (11.0.2) with a playcount of 2.

Not fixed -- must be a cloud issue...

And it just gets more interesting. I just checked my "Recently Played" smart playlist on my iPhone after listening to music all morning. It has "forgotten" a good bit of songs that I listened to all morning.

I decided to use CloudScrob before I ended up with duplicate song plays thanks to iTunesMatch and when it scrobbled, it was missing quite a few songs. Looked at the smart playlist and low and behold a bunch of songs are missing from the library on the phone itself. My "cloud" library hasn't updated yet either, it still shows the last played song as the first song I played at 8:01 this morning (consistent with what others have said is what happens when it syncs).

So yeah, it looks like when some plays don't get synced back to the cloud, it's because the device itself forgets them. I don't know if that is coming from some cloud sync that is overwriting the library on the phone or if the library itself on the phone is just losing the song plays. I can just say that it hasn't synced any song plays back to the cloud yet (as they don't show on my PC yet), but my device already shows that those songs were never played.

Before, when I would see songs not show up on my PC after a sync, I just thought they weren't getting synced from the device, and then the "library" from the PC would get synced back to the device (making the device library match and also making it wrong). Now I see that the device itself is actually losing the song plays somehow.

Fine line to play between having all your music accessible all of the time versus having your library be accurrate. I've been listening to a bunch of songs today from a playlists "Never Played" so you can imagine how annoying it is that those plays have now been lost...

Just to note, I haven't yet decided if I will keep using the service or not, I'm just trial running it right now I guess to see all of the different ways it is broken so I can make a decision. If I'm coming off as being a nitpicky complainer (well I am I can't deny it) but I'm more reporting my experience for others who might be as anal as I am and also to see if anyone else can help make rhyme or reason to it.

EDIT:

Updated to add that I just soft reset the device hoping that would resolve the missing songs. Instead, it just it just caused a few more songs to go missing (they were showing as played before I reset). There are potentially other reasons why this particular disappearance may have happened (perhaps a delayed write to flash???) but it seems more likely something to do with iTunesMatch.

Ok well I turned iTunes Match off again on my iPhone. I will revisit this thread again in the future. Since my desktop computers seem to be ok, I will still leave it enabled on them, but my iOS devices will once again be disconnected.

While I am an anal analytics person, I could live with a few missed songs here and there, and even the 2 for every 1 playcount problem, but the fact that there is nothing predictable about how this service will work or malfunction, I just can't take the headache. The benefit of having all my music at my disposal doesn't mean a whole lot if I can't reliably choose how to listen to it based on my listening habits using tools Apple has already given me for years that I am now addicted to.

I have seen some scary posts about folks' main library being corrupted by iTunes Match. That *scares* me, as I will be leaving match on for my desktop computers. Maybe I will turn it off there too.