Playlists on iPhone 5 and iOS 6 devices not in alphabetical order
I posted the following in March of 2012:
One of the most frustrating things for me about iTunes Match is the fact that the smart playlists in iTunes (version 10.6) do not sync in alphabetical order on my iPad/iPhone running iOS 5.1.
Even though I click on the Name column and the songs in iTunes appear in alphabetical order, the songs appear in a random order on the iPad. I spent hours trying to fix this by turning iTunes Match off on my iPad, turning it on etc all to no avail. I created new smart playlists thinking that maybe the original smart playlists were corrupted in some way by the upgrade to the latest version of iTunes. This did not work either.
Then, I had an idea. I created a new playlist (not a smart one), called it Test Alpha, copied the songs from the smart playlist into it and waited for my iPad to update.
Voila! The songs in this new, non-smart playlist are in alphabetical order.
I do hope that this problem is fixed. It is a pain to do this for the 15 odd smart playlist I have. Hope this helps someone else.
Now, I have my brand new iPhone 5 that I set up as a new phone, not restored from my iPhone 4. I thought that surely, with iOS6 and nine months down the track, this issue would be resolved.
WRONG!
I have smart playlists in my iTunes library like everyone else. For example, I have a Smart Playlist that simply has the criteria: Artist is Bob Dylan, Rating is 5 Star. Live updating.
When I turn on iTunes Match on my phone (and iPad), the playlist does not follow the order of the playlist in iTunes. In iTunes, I have the Name column sorted in descending order but the phone shows the songs in a random order that I cannot understand the basis of.
Sorting the playlist in iTunes via the Data Added, or Last Played column does NOT change the order of the songs on the iPhone. However, if I change the name of a song, the changed name almost instantly appears on my phone.
I read somewhere else that I should right click and select 'Copy to Play Order'. This does not help. Someone else suggested that I add 'Playlist is Music'. But as soon as I do this I get the following:
iCloud smart playlist cannot reference other smart playlists. If you add this item to the matching criteria … will only be avilable on this computer.
Can someone please tell me how the smart playlist I listed above references another playlist? I don't understand what this means.
Does anyone else have this issue with the playlists not sorting on the phone as they are sorted in iTunes? Normal playlists behave correctly, but not Smart Playlists.
I don't think I will be renewing my membership to iTunes Match when my current subscription expires. This is very, very poor service by Apple.
I look forward to any advice. Thank you.
