Why does my iphone have duplicate songs with an icon?

Question

Level 1

7 points

Why does my iphone have duplicate songs with an icon?

Recently I've noticed something on my iPhone. Maybe it's been there all along, who knows. But here's the deal: if I buy an album on iTunes for Mac, and sync my iPhone, the album on he phone looks bizarre:

As you can see, there's a duplicate of each track, with a circle icon. If I try and play this circle icon, it tells me I need to be connected to WiFi or something.

Points of note:

1. Under "Store" in the iPhone settings, I've turned off automatic downloads of everything. I found that if this was enabled, my iPhone would download new music and would get a second copy sync'd by iTunes. Fail for iTunes/iPhone recognising the same album I guess..?

2. Every so often, my iPhone is now asking me for my Apple ID password - no special reason I can see,it just pops up and asks me. This might be related.

3. I haven't purchased/turned on iTunes Match anywhere (iCloud).

I'm wondering if it's got spectacularly confused somewhere, if it thinks maybe it should be streaming this album from my Mac, or downloading it from the Store, even if it's already got a copy.

How can I make it stop? It's annoying in the extreme. Sure, it's not as bad as not having food on the table, pretty much a first world problem,but not what I'd expect from the thing. I'm happy to blow the device away and restart it as a fresh iPhone, not quite sure how to do that, but I'm open to all suggestions that might show how to fix the problem.

Thanks 🙂

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 15" 2.2GHz

Posted on Mar 5, 2012 3:16 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

trdupont

Level 1

11 points

Mar 6, 2012 5:40 AM in response to Morbific

I had the same problem after purchasing an album through iTunes. The only thing I found that worked was a complete iPhone Restore.

This is done through iTunes on the device summary tab. There's a button just below the "Check for Update" button that is titled: "Restore". MAKE SURE YOU SYNC FIRST so that everything is backed up. After the restore is complete iTunes will automatically re-install all your info (contacts, calendars, apps, etc...) from your last backup.

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Answer 2

Morbific Author

Level 1

7 points

Mar 6, 2012 11:37 AM in response to trdupont

Genius - thanks very much, that worked. Even without the music sync'd to the phone, those mystery tracks that couldn't be played were still there and couldn't be deleted (what the heck does that circle icon mean, anyway?!).

Restoring the phone and those songs are gone. I don't know if they'll come back, but it's fixed it for now - thanks very much for your help 🙂

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Answer 3

Philsong

Level 1

5 points

Mar 29, 2012 6:02 PM in response to Morbific

i wondered the same thing.

You have to go to the "Restrictions" page of your device's Settings and make sure "iTunes" is turned on.

This is why it only happened on my children's iPods and not on mine.

The reason a full restore works is that it resets all your passwords and allows everything automatically until you reset the restrictions again.

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Answer 4

Morbific Author

Level 1

7 points

Mar 29, 2012 11:17 PM in response to Philsong

How curious :)

I can't test this anymore because - ah hah - I'd done the full restore job. I don't know why restrictions would have been enabled on my phone, I hadn't turned them on - but good to know for next time.

(I'm guessing you're referring to the Restrictions page that's about parental controls... Which makes sense as you're talking about your kids' devices).

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