After turning on iCloud/iTunes match, my playlist was duplicated 2000 times

I stopped by an Apple Store last weekend to see if the "geniuses" could help me. They weren't familiar with the problem. However, they hinted that I should give it a few days and see what happens . The hint pertains to this week's Apple conference where its rumored the iPad 3 will be released. There will probably be an iOS update and or an iTunes update with a setting added that will resolve the duplicate playlist issue. Perhaps there will be a reset button or an option to sync or overwrite play lists.

What worked for me what to just simply the following:

I opened up iTunes on my computer. Then I connected and sycned my iPhone (and iTunes match I believe).

Then clicked on the applicable blank playlist locally on my computer, and deleted it. I deleted all the blank local playlists simply by holding the delete button (so it would delete them more quickly).

10 minutes or so, once my iTunes match updated, all the blank playlists were gone!

I managed to delete the thousand's of empty playlists, but they returned within 10 minutes. I did this with iTunes match turned off and then turn it back on and I also did this while match was turned on. Either way, same result. Today's the day of the iPad 3 announcement, hopefully an iOS and/or iTunes update is released that fixes this. I've been without this service for a month now and I expect some kind of reimbursement.

Apple Support Technical finally realized they couldn't help me and gave me a refund for iTunes Match. I'm thouroughly disillusioned about the wonders of Apple. Cleary there is a problem in the Community yet there is abosoutlely no fix in sight.

Read the email exchange with Apple Support that ensued.

Hello Victor,

Thank you for being so patient. I am happy to inform you that I can now resolve this issue for you today.

After reviewing the circumstances of your case, we've determined that a full refund for your iTunes Match subscription is an appropriate exception to the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions, which state that all sales are final. In five to seven business days, a credit of 24.99 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the latest receipt for the subscription.

Have a nice day Victor!

Sincerely,

Amber

Senior Advisor

iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please note that on Jan 29th-Feb 4th I am working:

Sunday 12:30 PM-4:30 PM (EST)

Monday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Tuesday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Wednesday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Thursday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Friday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Saturday OFF (EST)

Amber, if Apple ever figures out a fix to the community problem, pls send me an email and I'll rejoin Match.

Thanks

Byebye

Victor

On Feb 12, 2012, at 9:29 PM, iTunes Store wrote:

Hello Victor,

As mentioned, Please keep in mind that if you cancel your iTunes Match subscription, you will no longer have access to your matched or uploaded songs in your iCloud library. So Yes, the information would be 'deleted' though not your iTunes account.

Victor, please reply to this email with the billing address and the last four digits of the credit card on the account. Upon receiving your response, Apple will verify your information, cancel your iTunes Match subscription and issue you a partial refund as they are prorated. You will receive an email confirmation in regards to any refund.

Sincerely,

Amber

Senior Advisor

iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please note that on Jan 29th-Feb 4th I am working:

Sunday 12:30 PM-4:30 PM (EST)

Monday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Tuesday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Wednesday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Thursday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Friday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Saturday OFF (EST)

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

Amber

Thank you for the follow-up.

pls process my request to refund my Match account.

Once my Match account is "closed", will all information on the account be deleted? If so, I may rejoin Match at a later date and start anew without the thousands of duplicate, empty playlists corrupting my devices.

Thanks and regards

Victor

On Feb 12, 2012, at 7:05 PM, iTunes Store wrote:

Hi Victor

First let me clarify that it is not simply possible to 'delete your iCloud account'. The option I can offer you is a refund of iTunes Match since it is Match that is causing the issue not iCloud.

Furthermore our Engineers are already researching as this only happens with some customers, not all. While I appreciate the link you gave, you can rest assured that I have already reviewed many of these discussion forums and the details they offer which is why I provided steps to you.

If you wish to cancel iTunes Match:

Please keep in mind that if you cancel your iTunes Match subscription, you will no longer have access to your matched or uploaded songs in your iCloud library.

If you would still like to cancel, just reply to this email with the billing address and the last four digits of the credit card on the account. If you do not have a credit card associated with your account, you will need to provide the phone number listed on your account. Upon receiving your response, Apple will verify your information, cancel your iTunes Match subscription and issue you a partial refund as they are prorated. You will receive an email confirmation in regards to any refund.

Sincerely,

Amber

Senior Advisor

iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please note that on Jan 29th-Feb 4th I am working:

Sunday 12:30 PM-4:30 PM (EST)

Monday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Tuesday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Wednesday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Thursday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Friday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Saturday OFF (EST)

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

My dear Amber

I am very reluctant to turn on my imatch and/or icloud capabilities. I fixed my problem by resetting my itunes on my mac. I used my ipod to restore my library. since it wasn't infected with thousands of empty playlists I now have everything in order but dreadfuly fear using your fix, as if it doesn't work, I will have the thousands of playlists back on my computer. You just have to go into my cloud, and delete my account so I can start anew!!

Does this problem get submitted by you to Apple software engineers? I would hope so as the apple community is still trying to remedy this problem.

here is the link you can visit in the apple support community to read more horror stories.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3505359?answerId=16820845022#16820845022

Sincerely

Victor

On Feb 6, 2012, at 8:35 PM, iTunes Store wrote:

Hello Victor,

Victor, could you please confirm whether you tried the suggestions I advised? They are relatively non-technical and ones that have worked for other customers.

Also while I appreciate the information you have been including from discussion forums, I would prefer if you would provide the link instead of the actual discussion as this is much easier to review.

As mentioned in my last email: I found the below possible resolutions at:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3505359?tstart=0

1)Turn off iTunes Match on all devices

2)Creating Playlist on computer instead of devices resolved the issue for some customers

3) 1. Turned off Match on iPhone and iPad

2. Deleted 1000s of the Playlist in iTunes, but left one!

3. Put 2 songs in the 1 remaining problem playlist in iTunes on my Mac

(the 2 songs i chose were songs that were ON my iPhone already)

4. in iTunes I chose "Update iTunes Match" in the "Store" menu.

(let it finish, shouldn't take long)

5. Restart iTunes.

6. Turned on Match on iPhone

7. Created a playlist on iPhone with 1 song in it

(before it had a chance to populate any playlists from iCloud/Match)

8. Cold restarted iPhone

(Home and Lock button restart)

9. Opened the Music app on iPhone and waited for the playlists to populate.

Please let me know if you see a difference with any of these troubleshooting methods.

Victor, I also need to mention that methods in the discussion forum are different per customer and though one customer may state that an Apple representative deactivated their iCloud account, that may not be the exact steps that were taken on the representatives end and may also have depended on other factors with regards to that customers iCloud account.

I apologize but for this issue, we do not offer 'live support' or phone, It is our email group that investigates.

Sincerely,

Amber

Senior Advisor

iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please note that on Jan 29th-Feb 4th I am working:

Sunday 12:30 PM-4:30 PM (EST)

Monday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Tuesday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Wednesday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Thursday 8:00AM-4:30PM (EST)

Friday 8:00AM-4:30PM(EST)

Saturday OFF (EST)

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

Amber

I still have the same problem. I have over 7,000 playlists called "20's, 30's, 40's". I am at a lost as to how to clear them out. I need someone to speak to.

One suggestion in the support community was to have an apple representative deactivate my icloud account. This will erase everything held in the icloud. Then, I go back and restore my account.

Another method is to do what has been suggested in the support community below. However, I am not literate enough on a computer to even understand what they are suggesting.

I need some live help with someone who understands my problem and who has worked the problem before.

Victor

Since your account is "deleted", you should be able to sign up again and start with a clean slate.

Thanks for the post. I'll wait for someone else to try it out. Can't risk corrupting my itunes library with thousands of empty, duplicate playlists.

Finally got it fixed... used the http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp site, and used the delete all empty playlists.. and it worked...

Not sure if y'all saw, but I was able to solve my problem by turning off iTunes Match on every device, deleting the multiple playlists, and then turning iTunes match back on (in iTunes on the Mac) while holding the shift key.
Worked wonders for me

I got another response back from Apple. Keep in mind the issue at hand and the issue I complained to them about is duplicate "playlists" NOT "tracks". I responded to this email and since then I can't even turn iTunes match on anymore. I get a dialog box with some jibberish and error code 5002. Maybe they're working on it or maybe they terminated my account.

It's is Mitul again from the iTunes Store Support.

Craig, your request for a refund for "iTunes Match" was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are final. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.

You can review the iTunes Store Terms of Sale for more information:

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/sales.html

However, here is something which might resolve the issue with the iTunes Match.

The ways in which iTunes and iTunes Match identify duplicates is if you have a track appear in two separate albums, iTunes Match will indeed identify it as duplicate tracks.

Here is how to remove the duplicate tracks

1. After enabling iTunes Match, songs that are recognized as duplicates are marked with an icon:

Clicking on this icon brings up a dialog offering to delete the duplicate:

Does "Delete Duplicate" do anything different from simply deleting the file in the usual way? In particular, since this approach does not support deletion of multiple files, can one simply select all files marked as duplicates and delete.

How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2905

FBVrebeto13 thanks I tried the script from dougscripts and itn took days and then they all came back. yours got me fixed up quickly, I did have to run again after reboot of itunes but all seems great now. wow it has taken me 2 weeks to resolve this issue. i hope apple fixes the backend issue causing this soon for the sake of otheres. and for those who havent had it yet, DO NOT CREATE PLAYLISTS ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE if you do the first time you take that device offline when It is trying to sync with match you are going to be in for a big surprise the next time you open itunes on your computer or another device.

btw I stil can not see any playlists on my ipad... I even did a factory reset and reloaded alll my apps. music etc. I have songs and can see my whole match library in the cloud but no playlists. not even the default i.e. recent purchase, most played etc. any suggestions

coconut72 or FBVrebeto13... did the playlists return to your iphone/ipad, etc? FBVrebeto13's script took the playlists off of iTunes on my iMac, but I turned on iTunes Match on my iPhone and all the playlists downloaded.

FBVrebeti13's script did the trick. Not sure why dougscript didn't work. Dougscrips deleted the playlists but they came back. FBCrebeti13's script deleted the playlists and they never came back.

GOOD NEWS!!!!

Apparently this problem has be solved. I got an email from the iTunes Support member who I originally pointed this out to and here is what he said:

This is Vaibhav from iTunes Store Customer Support again. I hope you're having a great day.

Hassan, the issue that you reported has been resolved now. You should now be able to sync your playlists with your iPod and iTunes Match should be working properly. Please reply if there's any issue with iTunes Match.

Take care!

Sincerely,

Vaibhav

iTunes Store Customer Support

I have yet to try it out but hopefully he is correct in saying this.

roybenyoseph wrote:

Oslice wrote:

I have the same problem that developed today. I was trying to get the iphone 4s to see all of the music in Match. I turned Match off and on, and everything seemed fine, until I noticed there were suddenly thousands and thousands of duplicate playlists. Now iTunes can no longer save the library file because it's running out of memory, and my incessant deleting (I can't try the apple script because I'm on a PC) has not seemed to produce any results. This is a disaster bug.

Oslice... there's a Windows script at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp, look for the KillEmptyPlaylists script. I had to let it run for over 36 hours to most everything, then some came back and ran it again, until down to no empty playlists.

I'll also add that after doing this my iphone/ipad wouldn't sync anymore, so had to restore and then all is working since (about a 3 weeks now).

Good Luck.

Ouch, I know iTunes can be slow but 36 hours. 😮

I've not been aware of this issue until now as I've not enrolled into iTunes Match. Good to know my scripts have managed to be a little help, albeit a tad slow. It sounds like things are back under control with a strategy to reset the playlists on iTunes Match, but if there are other housekeeping issues that result from all this I'd be happy to see if there is futher help I can provide via scripting.

tt2

I was hoping this bug would have get solved by the new release of Itunes 10.6.1.7 but .... nop. Cannot believe it.