playlist not showing all songs

The Album Artist is the name of the artist, group etc. that releases the album. Individual tracks may, for example, credit additional artists who contribute to just one or two tracks on the album; these details can be listed in the Artist field. On any given album, Album Artist should be the same for all tracks, but Artist can vary as required.

It may be that the process of migrating the iPhone's database to the new system didn't go perfectly. Following the iOS 5 upgrade I found problems on my devices with artwork that were only resolved by removing the affected albums manually on the device and then syncing to restore them.

For general tips on organizing things in iTunes and your devices see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

A new feature in iOS 5 makes the Artist list, list only Album Artists which can cut down a lot of clutter, however with the feature enabled the Artists sub-menu for each Artist lists only the albums/tracks where they are the Album Artist. If you want the old school layout use:

Settings > Music > Group By Album Artist : Off

tt2

I don't really know, I used to think that the artist who did the album cover.😊

What I've noticed is those albums I've bought from iTunes, the fields for Artist and Album Artist have the same entries.

I am having this exact problem too and I've switched the "group by album artist:" to OFF as well and I've rebooted the phone and still my playlists are only showing just a few of the many songs I so carefully placed in them. Is there any else that I might be able to do? I still don't understand this whole Album Artist business either. Where might I find some more info on it.

@stlgs & srg186

My article on Grouping tracks into albums gives quite comprehensive advice on ways to structure your library and set the various options to get the best results out of iTunes and your devices. I have tried to pack in a lot of information into as few words as I can get away with so it is likely I've omitted details that seem obvious to me but may not to others.

Please feel free to describe your problems in further detail. Often "exact same problems" have different root causes or even different symptoms when examined more closely.

I thought I'd explained the distinction between Artist & Album Artist reasonably well here:

The Album Artist is the name of the artist, group etc. that releases the album. Individual tracks may, for example, credit additional artists who contribute to just one or two tracks on the album; these details can be listed in the Artist field. On any given album, Album Artist should be the same for all tracks, but Artist can vary as required.

Up until version 7 (IIRC) iTunes had no support for Album Artist and it is only very recently that their newer devices work properly with it, thus negating the need for at least some of the workarounds in my article.

tt2

@Turingtest2:

Here's a detailed description of my problem:

I have been using an iPhone 4 running 4.01 and syncing it with a HP desktop computer running windows 7 and itunes 10.xx. I noticed that the iPhone developed some problem such as a home key that only works some of the time and contacts that can only be accessed from the universal search and not the addressbook. I live in India and there no such thing as Genius Bar here. I was recently in SF and visited the Apple store there, they suggested upgrading to IOS 5 so I did and my problems seemd to be solved, however I had lost all the music from my phone... small price to pay for fixing my phone.

I came home a few weeks later and installed a new Mac Mini that I purchased while in the US and did that whole computer to computer migration that apple has and transfered all my music and data and everything from the pc to the mac smoothly. I then tried to sync my iPhone 4 with the new mac and for some reason most of my contacts were gone (I sorted that out though, it was a settings issue) and most of my playlists were empty or had 5% of their original songs in them. All the songs were on my phone, just not in the playlists that I wanted them to be in. I could be wrong but I think that the songs and playlists that were created by orginisations were ok but the ones created by me and other individuals were the ones that got messed. I'm not exactly sure.

So after much reading and frustration I removed all the album artists from all the songs on my entire music folder and tried to sync again. this time a few more songs appeared but others were greyed out and are unable to be played.

I'm currently at this stage where I have more songs in playlists, but not all of them, and some of they are greyed out.

If you could help in anyway I'd be very greatful.

Thanks and best regards

~SRG

I have a completely untested & unconfirmed hypothesis that "something" changed in the last iOS update with the way iTunes keeps track of which items are on the device. My guess is that it has something to do with being able to identify the same item whether on the device, in your library or in the cloud. Whatever the cause I found I needed to manually delete a bunch of albums on my iPad that were showing as dupes or were without artwork and which didn't get resolved by syncing. Since I deleted them and resynced it has all been fine.

For small numbers of items you can delete directly on the dvice. In the list type views swipe from right to left over the right hand side of an item (but keep away from the alphabet if it is showing down at the edge of the window). A red delete button should appear, tap to remove the item. In grid mode on an iPad holding your finger down on an item for about a second will produce a black & white cross at the top left, touch this to delete. If there are too many problem items for this to be practical then removing all media and replacing it should resolve things, otherwise do a full restore.

I would suggest leaving/restoring Album Artist data where it is relevant. It should help keep things organised together. It won't have any affect on regular playlists as these are a list of track ID numbers and playlist membership should be preserved even if you radically alter the tag information.

With your device conneted make sure that all the playlists that you want on the device are checked in the Playlists section of the Music tab.

tt2

After mucking around with this for several hours myself, this is what worked for me.

Scenario: A playlist of an Album I created was only showing 23 of 90 songs yet the album was showing in my 'Album' list with all 90 songs. This was after I deleted the orginal album and created a new one.

The way I got it to work was this:

Backup your phone first!!

1. Using iTunes I unsynced all the music from my iPhone, effectively deleting all the music from the iPhone. So I thought.

2. However, when I checked the iPhone there were mysteriously 67 songs still in my iPhone. These were the missing songs from my playlist (90 - 67 = 23) and I could see them under 'Songs' or 'Albums'. They don't show up as a 'Playlist' on the iPhone.

3. Delete these songs directly from iPhone using Settings >> General >> Usage >> Music, then using 'Edit' 'Delete' the songs from iPhone. Double check via you iPod on the phone that all the music is now deleted.

4. I then rebooted the phone for good measure - probably wasn't necessary.

5. Backed up again

6 I then used iTunes to resync my albums and Playlist- Voila! all was as it should be. All 90 songs back in my Playlist on my iPhone.

I hope this helps someone out as I spent about 3 or 4 frustrating hours on this today before coming up with a fix that worked for me.

BTW, I had the same problem on 2 iPhones - 4S and 3S. Both running iOS 5.0.1 using iTunes 10.5.3. The above worked both times.

I had my iPhone and iPad synced through iCloud. I had turned that on very early in the transition which was probably my big mistake.

I had tried to manually sync my playlists and failed. I had some success but some songs just failed to sync properly.

Using the suggestions above as a guidline I was able to get all in order. The trick seemed to be to disable iTunes Match syncing, delete ALL music from my device, then re-enable iTunes Match syncing. And all was well.

Thanks!

Okay, your solution rocks! One other thing I noticed: For some reason on the “Sync Music” tab in iTunes, I had many of the problem songs checked—even though my intent was to only sync playlists. So, in addition to your steps, I also unchecked all of those songs.

Thank you for saving my sanity. 🙂

In iTunes using File > Get Info > Info tab, do those songs have Name, Artist, Album, Year and Genre filled?

I have tried this and it isn't working for me. Any other suggestions? Thanks!