iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

pmafighter wrote:

I spoke with Apple Support today and they told me that with the latest update of iTunes, the Play Count feature has been removed!!! I find this very hard to believe, and asked them if they were sure and they confirmed it. :-( Has anyone else heard about this?

Their support is notoriously inaccurate, I wouldn't put much stock in anything they say. It's there in the current version of iTunes, possible they're dumping it in the next version but very unlikely and if that were the case the support people wouldn't be aware of that.

Same thing here

i hop this is getting fixed soon

Same here. I'm using Smart Playlists as well that need to know when a song was played the last time or how many play counts it has. I hope this gets fixed soon, I just filed the bug via the feedback form. Hope it helps.

I installed the latest Apple TV update, 4.4.4, and that had no effect. After playing songs from iCloud on Apple TV, the play counts and dates did not update on iTUnes.

I did go to Apple's feedback site and mentioned a concern for iTunes Match not incrementing playcounts and maybe even song rating as well.

Has anyone else also noticed that you cannot rate songs that you play on mobile devices and rate?

For what it's worth:

I created a playlist called "Played" containing every sone that had a play count > 0. I thien reset my play counts in iTunes and waited for the changes to filter thru iTunes Match. After about an hour, my iPhone and iPad all showed and empty "Played" playlist.

I wi-fi synced my iPhone and everything went pear-shaped. The "Played" playlist was no longer empty on my iPhone. I reset play counts again and tried the same exercise with my iPad with the same results.

I pluged both devices into iTunes and disabled wi-fi syncing. I cleared play counts again and waited for Match to sync.

I played a song on my iPhone. While not immediate, the play count updated correctly to iTunes and my iPad.

I tried the same experiment on my iPad with the same results. I also played a song in iTunes and the song shoed up on all three devices in the "Played" playlist. Good.

I ran some errands in the car, playing songs on my iPhone the whole time. At the end, 24 songs showed as "Played" on my iPhone. Unfortunatly, only 10 songs showed as played in iTunes and on my iPad. Very sad.

I checked all the playlists the next day and the were still out of sync. 24 iPhone, 10 iTunes, 10 iPad.

But now the good news. This morning all three playlists match perfectly.

So it appears Match is doing play counts correctly ON IT'S OWN. It's not immediate or even timely, but it did eventually work for me.

Last Played Date is still broken.

I hope this helps someone.

If I listen to an album or playlist on my iPhone or iPad iTunes only updates the play count for the first song played & it multiplies the play count x 2. The other play counts aren't usually updated even though I can see that the song was played on the phone. Every once in a while play counts will show up in iTunes for the other songs, but they're also multipled by 2.

I don't have this issue when I listen to my jams on multiple computers. Most of the time play counts work. Sometimes they show up on 1 computer & after I sign on to another computer they disappear, but that's pretty rare. I've given up on this working. I was using a top 200 played playlist for my shuffle, but now everything is so screwed up.

This is such a basic functionality of iTunes that I think has been part of it since the beginning. You'd think they would have something so basic working. Even Microsoft did this with the Zune 5 years ago. You could stream a song to the Zune & the play count would get updated. If Microsoft can get this working surely Apply can too?

Match is slowly getting there on my MacBook Pro, it suddenly announced itself to me Saturday so I grabbed the chance, subscribed and it's been doing its thang, slowly but surely, since. Including digging out for download stuff I'd forgotten I'd bought or have deleted and forgotten about.

Playcount is updating when I've played a track on the MacBook Pro. However, nothing I played yesterday on my iPad2 or iPhone has appeared on the Last Played list today when sync was done, nor have the playcounts updated on the computer.

Chiming in. Updated to 10.5.2.11 hoping that would help. Play count and last played are still updated in iMatch when played from iTunes on a computer (Windows/Mac) but not when played on any of my devices (iPhone 4,4s; iPad 1g, 2g, ATV 1G).

done

Just to reiterate on a post I made a few days ago:

Last Played Date is NOT updating accross devices. Smart playlists with Last Played Date are just broken.

Play Counts are working for me between iTunes, iPhone 4 (x2), iPad 2G. But there are two major problems.

1) There is a delay in syncing between devices. The delay has been up to 48 hours long, but the sync does eventually come and it is correct. I tested this by reseting play counts in iTunes (multiple times) and then forcing a sync with iMatch on each device (turning iMatch off and on). I then created two playlists: Played and Unplayed. I'm playing songs from the Unplayed list and watching them show in the Played list immediatly on the device where the song was played. They will show in the Played list on the other devices sooner or later.

2) Syncing my devices with iTunes messes everything up. Play Counts get duplicated on the device synced. I turned off wi-fi sync and have not attached via cable to keep Play Counts correct.

Apple TV does NOT update Play Counts even though iMatch is syncing every other device correctly.

This is a dealbreaker for me. If it isn't fixed soon, I'm going to ask for a refund on Match, then rely on the old-school method of syncing (which has worked fine for a decade, so you'd think it would continue working in the cloud).

Thanks mrunner for the careful testing. I'm glad to know it eventually syncs up, but a 48 hour delay is completely unacceptable.

I'm fine with being a beta tester, but I'm not going to pay to do it.

Yeah, I can confirm that the playcounts seem to be updating pretty consistently - I've noticed them updating pretty quickly but there have definitely been times when it is taking up to around the 48 hour range. However, like everyone else is saying, the Last Played date is still not updating which is incredibly annoying. And just as annoying, the smart playlists are an absolute mess and unusable on my iPhone and iPad. I really hope there is a fix for this.

I received a new itunes survey from itunes panel and linked to this thread and explained the issue in as much detail as possible in hopes that the right person reads it and can get this working how it should. Or else I'll probably just turn Match off completely and consider it a waste of $25...

Dealbreaker. I listen to a lot of music on my iPhone, and I rely on playcounts being updated to then update music charts in last.fm. Can I turn this off and go back to how things were before?

I have even seen playcounts DECREASE and last played dates RETURN TO THE PAST after using the command in iTunes to update iTunes Match.

Like many, I rely on last played date for many playlists and this just completely ruins them.

I might be slightly more forgiving if this only impacted iOS devices, but this is actually corrupting the original master iTunes library on the computer.

Completely unacceptable.

Apple needs to (1) acknowledge, and (2) fix.

I am leaving more feedback on this.