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

Correction: Logan Logs On 's solution did not work, although it seemed to at first glance. In fact this procedure connects you to the shared library of iTunes over Wifi, but once you close iTunes, your smart list content is gone too.

On the other hand, lodrunima's solution seems to work 🙂

When I try lodrunima's solution, I get an ineligible icon next to the new playlist. When I click on that, a window pops up with the following message:

This playlist is not eligible for iCloud.

Smart playlists that reference other playlists are not supported by iCloud, and will not be uploaded.

Any thoughts?

I have finally figured out that by turning off Home Sharing on both my iPad Air & iPhone 5s running iOS7, all my smart playlists are syncing correctly now. I still have home sharing turned on in iTunes on my PC.

I also had the same problems after 'upgrading' to IOS7. I fixed it by 'unchecking' "SYNC MUSIC" under the Music tab with the iPad connected to iTunes. I then synced the iPad - and then checked SYNC MUSIC again, and then selected sync again in the lower right screen. Took a little time to wipe out all the music on the iPad, and then reinstall it all - but it seems to have worked. Cheers

I've figured it out. Perhaps, it's only been available since iOS 8?

iPhone Instructions:

1. open Music

2. select More (bottom right-hand)

3. select Shared

4. select Library you want to pair with

tyapples, that simply connects to your shared library, i.e. if you are on the same WiFi network as your iTunes library, then you will simply connect to that. If you go out of WiFi range or disconnect from the network then you will no longer have access to your Smart Playlists.

I recently purchased an iTunes Match subscription as I got tired of iTunes/iOS updates wiping my iPhone's music library (10,000 songs, converted to 128kbps as they are synced, takes approx. 48hrs continuously syncing), but that's a topic for another day!

I was shocked to see that the majority of my Smart Playlists had not synced to my iPhone/iPad using iTunes Match, and after several days of fiddling (and searching the web, scrawling through threads like this), I have isolated the reason why they have not appeared, and managed to sort it.

It was simply because one of the rules in the Smart Playlists was "Playlist is Music" or "Media Kind is Music".

I don't know why this was a problem, but removing that from all my Smart Playlists made them appear on my iDevices immediately!

I wish iTunes Match came with an instruction manual, could have saved me a lot of hassle.. But hopefully this advice/input helps someone else in the same boat! 🙂

macca2, where did you find the rules at issue in Smart Playlists. I'm having similar problems and would like to look into your offered solution. This is incredibly frustrating.

It was just trial & error for me, I had a few Smart Playlists that had synchronised via iTunes Match but the majority hadn't. I just compared the rule differences between the ones that did & the ones that didn't sync, and managed to isolate my issue to "Playlist is Music" etc.

Understood, but where in iTunes do you find those rules?

Oh right, my bad.

If you right-click the Smart Playlist and click on "Edit Smart Playlist", then it should come up with a list of rules that you stipulated when you created the Smart Playlist.

It may be a different process for Mac, as I'm on Windows.

I wanted to say that the dummy playlist solution and the solution of adding the criteria of "Playlist is Music" to the playlist criteria does get the song lists between the iOS device and iTunes to match for the playlists after syncing. However, for me it breaks live updating the smart playlists. The only way I could get live updating working again on my device was to remove the "Playlist is Music" criteria. So it looks like I have to choose whether or not I want my song lists to match iTunes or whether I want live updating working on my device.

Has anyone else experienced this? I am not an iTunes Match subscriber.

For me, I break up all music: Hip Hop, Indie, Rock, Electronic, etc. and categorize into specific genres that I create. I don’t mind this as renaming the genre is for my own use. It is my music library after all (I don’t care what category they are imported as, I change them first thing). After every song is in its proper (Genre) category, I make Smart Playlists per Genre. Now I have each Genre in my library being called out in its own smart list. Then the next step is to rate songs as you wish. Make a another Smart Playlist of the Genre + Ratings and you have your favorite rated songs per Genre. Make another Smart Playlist to combine certain Genre’s/Ratings/etc together. Sounds complicated, but it’s not. I really don’t know of any other way?

Good luck

Tmdorsey and macca2oo7 <https://discussions.apple.com/profile/macca2oo7?ac_cid=tw123456> are right.

For me, I break up all music: Hip Hop, Indie, Rock, Electronic, etc. and categorize into specific genres that I create. I don’t mind this as renaming the genre is for my own use. It is my music library after all (I don’t care what category they are imported as, I change them first thing). After every song is in its proper (Genre) category, I make Smart Playlists per Genre. Now I have each Genre in my library being called out in its own smart list. Then the next step is to rate songs as you wish. Make a another Smart Playlist of the Genre + Ratings and you have your favorite rated songs per Genre. Make another Smart Playlist to combine certain Genre’s/Ratings/etc together. Sounds complicated, but it’s not. I really don’t know of any other way?

Good luck

Smart Playlists work well with iTunes Match and IOS devices if when you create your smart playlist you DO NOT use the option to select songs on RANDOM. Choose anything other than random and it works fine.

That worked. Thanks tmksnyder. I had 1,201 song in "My Jams" smart playlist. But, on iPod 7 gen only 112 songs would show in that playlist. Created the dummy smart that included playlist> "My Jams" smart playlist and now all 1,201 songs show on dummy playlist for mi iPod. . Very strange.