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

I have the same issue after creating a playlist on my iPhone 4. A blank version of the playlist has duplicated itself several hundred times across all of my iTunes Match computers and devices.

same here - created a playlist on my iPhone 4S, and now I have around 2400 playlists of the same name - has populated onto my iPad and MacBook Air -

I've turned off iTunes match on all devices, and then turned it back on on my Air, and the playlists came back - I stopped it after over 1000 were created. Yikes. Anyone have any ideas? I have iTunes matched currently turned off on all of my devices -

I had this same issue, also with a Christmas playlist. I deleted all dups from my Macbook Pro but this still didn't help on my iPad and iPhone. The music apps load really slow now, and I'm gussing its because of the thousands of duplicated playlists. Hmm.

I have got the same problem and its driving me totally insane! I managed to delete them all from iTunes, but they are still on my iPad and iPhone. Makes the music app insanely slow when trying to do anything with playlists.

Same problem here. When I finally counted, I have 32,230 copies of the same playlist. iTunes on my Macs as well as my iPad has become unusable.

I'm wondering if we all have the same cause - creating a playlist on our devices instead of on a mac? I created the playlist that is causing the problem on my iPad. I was able to manually delete all 3000 blank duplicated playlists on my mac book air, and I turned off iTunes match on my phone - then turned it back on and that fixed it for iTunes and the iPhone, but the iPad still has the thousands of playlists. I am trying to find a way to delete the playlists off of the iPad in any other way than one by one. When I now try to sync my iPad with my MacBookAir, both wirelessly and via cable, the sync times out waiing on step one. ugh. Any ideas?

Same problems, sync is messed up for me too. The playlist that is doing this for me was created on my iphone while it was in airplane mode. I managed to get them all out of iTunes, but they have returned today.

I thought i was going crazy because of the sync issue, i wasnt sure if they were related, but it certainly seems that way.

My magically duplicating playlist was created on my iPhone while in Airplane Mode as well.

Ok, i seem to have maybe fixed it after several hours of deleting the same playlist over and over again. I will try to explain what i did..

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, shouldnt 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.

I am not sure how many of those steps are necessary, but it worked for me! Well, on my iphone at least. I am afraid to turn Match on for my iPad. I will try that later.

Other notes: The single song playlist i created prior to Match populating the iPhone vanished. Also, i still seem to be having trouble with syncing my devices. It just sits at "Waiting for sync to start" and fails eventually.

Hope this helps somebody!!

UPDATE:

Turned on my iPad and it also seems to be rid of the Super Propagating Playlist as well!

Thanks jrollans! Here's a shorter list that worked for me:

1. Turned off Match on iPhone and iPad
2. Used "Remove Empty Playlist" workflow in Automator to remove all of the blank playlists in iTunes on my MacBook.
3. Ran "Update iTunes Match" in the iTunes "Store" menu.
4. Restarted iTunes.
5. Turned on Match on iPhone
6. Opened the Music app on iPhone and waited for the playlists to populate.

Awesome! Glad it worked for you!

I cant believe i didnt think about using Automator to remove the playlists...

I had over 32,000 copies of the same playlist, so Automator was definitely the way to go. However, Automator would not work for me until my number of playlist copies was down below around 25,000 (didn't want to stop to get an exact number). I have tried the suggestions above several times, but I'm still getting duplicate lists. Each time, however, I get fewer and fewer lists. This time I'm going to clear the duplicate lists on my MacBook Pro and then wait several hours or so before I turn iTunes Match back on on the iPad. We will see if that helps.

Who knew iTunes Match would be so much fun?

gdemet Sounds like a great plan using Automator, but I'm not sure it would have solved my problem. I was able to delete the offending playlist from my MBA, and when I turned off iTunes match on my 4s, the playlists went away. However, the problem was with the iPad2. When I turned off iTunes match on the iPad2, which is the device that created the playlist in the first place, the playlists didn't go away. Are you saying that by choosing to update iTunes match, it updated iTM with the playlists from the Mac, and when you turned it on on the devices it cleared out the playlists? My mind can put together that iTM would delete playlists from the device that created them.

I had already decided and executed a complete restore of the iPad from iCloud, which worked great, but your plan would have been quicker, and less "worry-time" as I watched the restore happen. Can you help me understand how iTM would delete the playlists from the iPad since that device created the lists?

thanks,

Now that we have some solutions, I'm still trying to figure out what caused the problem. I think we all agree that creating the playlist on an iPhone or iPad caused the problem, but there must be more to it, or surely more than just us would be complaining? I'm wondering if we all added songs that weren't actually on the device yet, that were stored in the cloud as part of the playlist? For me, I created the playlist and listened to it for over an hour, while on a wifi network, so it's still a curiousity.. my phone was nearby and not on a wifi network, and my MBA was asleep, and didn't wake up until I was on another wifi network.