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Smart Playlists not syncing correctly to iPhone/iPad with iTunes Match

My manual playlists are syncing correctly to both devices, but smart playlists are a mess. They don't seem to match any criteria that they are created with, especially song limits. However, smart playlists are syncing correctly in iTunes on multiple computers. This is really frustrating because 99% of my playlists I listen to are smart ones. Anyone know of how to fix this? Apple, do you have any information on this or when it would be fixed?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.10), iPhone

Posted on Nov 15, 2011 12:59 PM

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124 replies

Nov 15, 2011 4:16 PM in response to nmaviano

I have the same problem. For me, it seems that artwork in addition to playlists are not really working with iOS devices. I have 8 items in a modified version of Apple's "Recently Added" smart playlist. While I do have the same playlist on my iPhone, it doesn't have the same items. There's a completely different set of items on my Apple TV. Also playcounts do not seem to be updating at all.

Nov 15, 2011 5:39 PM in response to nmaviano

I have noticed that my smart playlist for Recently Added doesn't match between the computer, iphone and ipad. What's funny is if I donwload from the cloud a song on either the iphone or ipad (a different song on each), that song gets added to the list on the device it was downloaded on. It seems when you first turn on iCloud on each device, it copies entries into the list from the cloud's version of the playlist and then update each list based on changes locally to the device.


The workaround is I will copy the contents from a smart playlist and create a new dumb playlist and copy the contents into it. When you do this on itunes, the playlist automatically shows up on the devices. At least this works...

Dec 20, 2011 1:21 PM in response to nmaviano

Agree. Apple's preconfigured Top 25 Most Played playlist shows up in my iPhone with approximately one kazillion entries, many of them not played once. In general, lists that limit the number of entries by song count, total playing time etc. ignore those contraints in Match, making them largely useless, unless you want to download hundreds of songs at a time.


Also, it's quite obvious that iTunes Match disregards playlist criteria built on comments. I use Comments to mark songs in various ways and then build playlists off those. Every single one of these playlists has zero entries.


As for "dumb" playlists, even many of those show zero entries.


And artwork matching is very poor. I have a playlist of covers of Voodoo Child. The album art for that playlist in cover flow is the Bright Lights, Big City soundtrack. That's just a random example.


I'm also noticing that Genius playlists are empty.


Right now the implementation of iTunes Match leaves a lot to be desired.

Dec 21, 2011 8:13 AM in response to nmaviano

Guys, I might have our "life savior" solution!!! (not 100% sure yet...)


I activated iTunes Match this morning.

Everything worked well apart from my smart playlists which cannot be found on my iphone/ipad anymore.

And yes, they relied on other lists...


BUT


A few smart playlists remained!!! (although they also rely on other lists)

So, after a bit of soul searching, here's my conclusion.

Those smart playlists that remained were actually dependant on "folders" which contain lists!


SO


I havn't tested yet (cause I'm at work), but if you put a list you wish to refer to in a folder, you should then be able to refer the smart list to the folder and not the actual list; and hopefully the smart list should then get synced!!!


Let me know if that works for you! 😉

Smart Playlists not syncing correctly to iPhone/iPad with iTunes Match

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