why does itunes not show all the songs that are on my ipad?

jerry253 wrote:

I have iTunes 10.7 and it is set to manually manage music. Any ideas why this isn't showing me accurate information?

Yes. Because you're using Manually Manage Music.

When you manually manage the music, you have to do all the work of putting songs onto your device. Sync will do that work for you, and although you say you use Sync, all that iTunes is doing is Syncing everything else apart from the music, because you've told it not to.

My preference (which you're free to not use) is to use Sync Music and also Sync Entire Music library. For some reason, on my iTunes, this morning, the option to manually manage has disappeared, along with Sync only ticked songs and videos. If these options are still on your iTunes, use Sync Music and Sync only ticked songs and videos, instead of Manually Manage. Then - I control which songs are on my device by turning the tick-in-the-box next to each song, on or off. So if I decide I no longer want a particular song on my iPod, I un-tick the song. At the next Sync, that song is removed from the iPod, but remains in my Library so that I can simply put the tick back on if/when I want the song back on my iPod.

By clever use of Smart Playlists, it is possible to automatically remove songs from the iPod and then to automatically put them back on. I haven't yet got to this stage, but I'm working on it. This will involve using Sync Selected Playlists instead of Sync Entire Music Library.

jerry253 wrote:

Unfortunately, I have WAY too many books and songs to let itunes automatically sync.

Ah! well, I may have an idea for you then, at least as far as the music is concerned.

You could try using Smart Playlists, have you looked at them yet? (Oh yes! I did mention them already...) A Smart Playlist has rules, and songs that meet the rules are in the list, songs that don't meet the rules are not in the list. Better still, a Smart Playlist's rules can be set so that a song can be in the list 'til it's played, automatically taken out after it has been played and only put back again (automatically) once a set period of time has passed. I believe one regular contributor to these discussions uses Playlists almost exclusively.

Here's an example of what you could do, using a Smart Playlist or "three".

1. One Smart Playlist, named (for example) Top Rated, would only include - for example, 3, 4 & 5 star rated songs if they haven't been played for a certain amount of time (e.g. 14 weeks).
2. A second Smart Playlist, named 2 star rated, would include songs rated as 2 stars, but only if they hadn't been played (for example) for 12 months. You like them less, so they should not come back into the list for a longer period of time.
3. Then set up a third Smart Playlist, named Compilation, to include only what is in the other two lists.
4. Tell iTunes to Sync only selected Playlists to your iPad. The Playlist you select would be the Compilation list.

(I'm still experimenting with Smart Playlists embedded in to other Smart Playlists, and have some set up this way. I haven't yet got to the stage of Syncing only the Playlists, but I'm close to it.) The effect in your case should be that your iPad would have a selection of your music (from your Library) on it that changes as you play the songs. As you listen to some of those songs, each subsequent Sync with iTunes would remove them from the lists and the iPad. As dates passed, the songs that now meet the rules and get put back into your lists are then Synced to the iPad once more. So your selection of music would change automatically, and if you play your music at random, you would probably be pleasantly surprised at each change of songs. You can still browse through the albums, artists and songs menus but, obviously, only songs still on the iPad will be listed, so an album may have some songs missing if they don't currently meet the rules of the Smart Playlist.

Such lists can be restricted in the number of songs they contain - and, you can even see how much storage any Playlist uses so that you can check if it's small enough to go onto your iPad. If not, strengthen the rules to reduce the list.

If you need any assistance with setting up a Smart Playlist, let me know and I can give you step-by-step instructions.

By the way, my "Compilation" Smart Playlist not only has the two sets of songs I mentioned above, but it also has a deliberately limited number of songs that I've played, but not in the last 12 months - and they're ones I haven't rated. It also include 75 songs that I've never ever played on my iPod. (I have a large library of music!) That's four separate Smart Playlists nested into a further Smart Playlist!

And if a song plays that I really don't like, I give it 1 star. One star songs are removed from my iPod, not yet automatically, but I'm nearly there.