iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

Here's what I've noticed:

Every time I play music on my iPhone, the first track played is immediately sync'd, but nothing after that is. I don't know what exactly has to happen for this to work, but it seems like when the next session of the music player is launched, after playing 1 track all the way through, it and everything that hasn't already been sync'd is sync'd at that time.

I think simply killing the app, waiting a bit to make sure it's been cleared out of the device memory, then re-launching it and playing one track all the way though will trigger a sync. If killing the app DOESN'T work, restarting the device does for sure (if it's really that important that you get it sync'd right now).

Usually what I do is when I sit down at my desktop, if I notice that things haven't been sync'd that I know should have, I just play a song on my phone and then everything shows up in iTunes.

I had the very same issue and it was the reason for my cancellation. My play counts rarely sync any more even on devices where I did not have iTunes Match turned on. Very annoying and no fix in site.

Hello all. Like all of you, I've had significant issues with Itunes Match. I noticed last year that Itunes Match and my large library was slowing down my PC so I turned it off. When I cleaned up my computer, I turned Itunes match back on, and it elected to reset most the last played and play counts. Being on the OCD side, I got away from using Itunes match.

Fast forward to now, I bought a new Mac Airbook and decided to keep all of my music on the cloud instead of locally. Once again, Itunes bug struck, randomly selecting and resetting play-counts and last played .

Is there anyway to get this data back? I tired a system restore but that didn't work.

Thanks,

Andy Z

I've been following this issue for a long time, my play counts are important to me. I'm hesitant to try Apple music because I have no faith Apple has finally fixed this issue. Can anybody share their experience?

Same here; but to keep things separated, I've created a new thread for iTunes Music play count questions: Does iTunes Music keep track of playcounts (smart playlists)

elzee13 wrote:

I've been following this issue for a long time, my play counts are important to me. I'm hesitant to try Apple music because I have no faith Apple has finally fixed this issue. Can anybody share their experience?

I've had zero issues with playcount syncing and iTunes Match since iOS 7 update. I don't know when they fixed it but sometime after iOS 7 is when I turned Match back on and tried again and found that it was finally working correctly. My playcounts and last played update. It'sa convoluted process though. It's not instant. Basically what looks like happens is you completely play through a song the first time and it initiates a cloud sync of the play history and last played. From that point on, everything is local to the device as far as playcounts go. Ratings update instantly, but play history does not. After enough time has elapsed--it looks like 12 hours--the next time you play and complete a song, it will do another sync and pull in everything from cloud from other devices and send that device's play history to the cloud. Then you start the next 12 hour window where everything you play is local until 12 hours elapses and you play and complete a song.

I don't understand why they do it this way, but I can confirm for me for the over a year now it has been working flawlessly, albeit stupidly.

It's still working that way for me in this 1 day of using Apple Music. What I am waiting to see is what it logs with respect to Apple Music concerning music that you listen to in the cloud that you don't actually save to your library. For example, if I rate a song that I listen to, but don't add it to my library, will any playlists that I have that match that rating still include the song? My guess is no, but we will see. It would be nice if the play history was just that, an entire play history, regardless of whether the song is in the library or not. I might listen to a song and forget to add it to library right away, but want to go back and add it later but can't remember the name. Other services do this and it will be a shame for me if Apple Music isn't the same.

Stay far away. It completely deleted much of my local music and replaced it with different songs. Everything I tried to play was not the song it said it was. I restored from my Sunday backup and am not truing that again on my main library. I’m experimenting with my ipad mini and my work computer now.

Half of my play counts have been reset....Apple say it's because I signed up to Apple music, and it then matched songs at random, thought to itself that they are new songs, even though they were not, and reset the play count....destroying many "smart" playlists!! Six years listening wiped out by Apple - useless!!!

pharmacyboy wrote:

Half of my play counts have been reset....Apple say it's because I signed up to Apple music, and it then matched songs at random, thought to itself that they are new songs, even though they were not, and reset the play count....destroying many "smart" playlists!! Six years listening wiped out by Apple - useless!!!

Mac or WIndows? It is possible to connect to an older version of your database (while offline so as not to import the current playcounts) export the data, reconnect to the current library, and import the save data. I have an existing script for this for Windows.

tt2