Q: iTunes won't sync my music, movies, ringtones... Anything!

This has been the most infuriating experience I've ever had with Apple.  This is my 5th iPhone and I can't even  count how many iPods I've owned.  This is by far THE WORST music device ever.  After getting sick of the inadequacies of iTunes Match, I figured I would just keep all my music on the machine.  This is the ONLY reason why I got a 64gb iPhone.  I've restored this phone 3x over the last 24hours.  I've Re-installed iTunes.  I've deleted and redownloaded my entire music library and it STILL won't sync all my songs.  I've tried manually syncing, I've tried selecting specific playlists, I've tried syncing all music.  I've tried a fresh itunes library.  I've selected every friggin' option available.  Now I'm reloading the iPhone for the umpteenth time and I can already see that it's only loading 2940 files out of the 4151 songs. 

The worst thing is when I turn iTunes match back on, it won't sync my playlists now (though the songs are available)

This ***** and needs to be fixed. 

Okay I got mine to work.  I selected all the view options while lookng at the iPhone music list and noticedthat all the greyed out files (that wouldn't sync) had a file size of "stream".  The corresponding file in the iTunes library and in the Finder were normal sized.

Searching the web and I found someone who mentioned corrupt plist files in the Purchases section of the iPhone. /var/mobile/Media/Purchases.

So I downloaded iFunbox and mounted my iPhone and looked in the Purchases folder.  Lo and behold there were a little over 1200 plist files in the folder.  I copied the folder to my Mac (for back up) and deleted ALL the plist files except for the one named "StorePurchasesInfo.plist".  It took sometime for iTunes to recognize the phone again, but once it did it synced most of the files but the playlists didn't sync.

I then un-checked sync all music, erased all the music from the iphone, and then checked it again.  It's currently syncing all but 20 files and the playlists have re-appeared.   VERY un-Apple like. 

Sooo I was having this problem with my mini and all i did was made sure i had "sync only checked songs and videos" checked, i unchecked every item in my library, hit sync, once it finished i went back, checked everything back, hit sync, and now its syncing as I type.  Hope this helps.

Thanks bracamones88, this was one of the 1st things I tried.  Glad that it worked for you.  Since my last post and iOS 6.1 (which contained a number of iTunes fixes), I've switched back to iTunes match.  Seems to be working as billed.   Downloaded songs appear to stay on the iPhone when I have available space. 

I had the same problem, how many times i synced it wouldnt work. I also tried to restore it, didnt work either. But then I removed all songs from Itunes, synced the empty library with iphone, disconeccted Iphone, Then putted all of my music in itunes again and connected, synced. Worked

Same issue. I've unchecked and rechecked every setting, even deleted all my songs from the library and tried to re-sync. Nothing will remove the existing tracks from the phone and nothing will allow me to change what's on it. Haven't tried backup/restore yet, but that's a pain in the butt and other people here say that it doesn't work. ***??

We have same error here, i already try several option but still didnt transfer any my music to my Iphone 5 in IoS 6.1.2

Option 1 :

Uncheck my music file or delete my music from library, then uncheck "Sync only checked checked songs and video" after that i try to input my music to the library n try to sync it to my Iphone, the result ZERO!! it didnt work

Option 2:

Try to restore my IoS, hopefully it will reset all data n setting. the result another ZERO!! ....

Option 3:

Try to sync with other computer, n with regular methode to transfer music n option 1 n 2 still ZERO!!!

Now its frustating for me, looks like ill try to claim my insurance so i can get brand new device....

I finally upgraded iPhone 4S to iOS 6.x.x via iTunes and discovered that iTunes is buggy, because it messed up the media files sync state.

Long story short, despite having "sync all" checked, you must select every file individually or it will not sync. I had to first turn the sync off and remove the files and phantom files that it thought were there but weren't from the iPhone, and the turn sync back on and return them from iTunes.

This worked for me, Good Luck out there...

Hi I'm also having problems just bought a mini and it won't put any music on I've synced everything else .tried checking different things and it just says " waiting for changes to be applied ". But no music is going on the mini . Can someone please do a step by step to help . Want to throw the devices through the window argh

GUYS I DID IT!!!

I had exactly the same problem as all of you - I had about six songs that I had just added to the library and wouldn't sync, no matter what I did.

I tried everything people recommeded, like downloading the latest version of iTunes and iOS 6, ticking/unticking all the songs, etc.

I got so frustrated and it took me about three hours to work it out, but here's how you do it (it worked for me anyway):

1. Click on your device (should say iPod/iPhone etc) in top right corner
2. Click on the 'music' tab
3. Tick the box that says 'sync music'  (next to the header)
4. At this point it warns you that it will delete all the music off your iPod/iPhone, SO BACK ALL YOUR FILES UP ONTO A MEMORY STICK OR YOUR COMPUTER OR YOU'LL LOSE THEM
5. Go ahead with the sync - it will delete all the stuff that's not in the library off of your iPod but you can put this back later as long as you backed it up
6. It should now sync everything in your library. Then you can go back and add all the files you had to back up, and sync again.

I hope this helps!

Just go to summary then go down to options anmake sure "manualy manage music and videos" and "Sync only checked songs and videos" buttons are not checked if they are go and uncheck them them try the sync again.

I have tried everything in this damned forum and NOTHING WORKS.  Most of the songs I have simply will not sync to my iPhone.  I am ****** beyond words that all of the money I've sunk into the music I've gotten from iTunes can't be put on my iPhone and there is no simple fix. 

This is complete ********.  I did not have this issue a few weeks ago when I was adding these playlists to my iPhone in the first place.  I am about to dump this crap and move on to Samsung.

I was experiencing the same problem and tried all sorts of stuff, including items in this thread with no luck, this is what ultimately worked for me.

1.  Download iFunBox (or other utility that gives you access to the filesystem)

2.  Delete the _iTunes_Control folder

3.  Delete everything in the Purchases folder

4.  Force a sync in itunes

5.  Profit.

So far I haven't seen any weird problems, other than my songs now sync. 

I've been having the same problem for a while now. My iPhone4's music app just won't get updated with new music added to iTunes. It syncs photos to iPhoto fine, and with music it

I've tried everthing here, including using iFunBox.

Now besides not updating my newly added music files, my entire iPhone's music is empty.

And when I tried syncing again, the music folder just remains empty.

Please help!

Wow, Apple sure could do a better job with error messaging on this issue.  Sure is frustrating a bunch of folks.

For what its worth, we had the same symptoms on our iPhone 5 which is connected to a macbook pro running the latest versions of iTunes and IOS.

We have multiple users with multiple apple IDs logging in and out of iTunes and syncing multiple devices.  The iPhone 5 would not sync because the wrong apple ID was logged in at the time.  I logged out, logged in with the Apple ID that is associated to the iPhone 5 device and it syncd just fine.

Jeff