Smart Playlist Doesn't Sync Correctly With iPhone

Nothing happens. A few Genius smartlists update, but the smart playlist remains the same.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either. I've tried that several times.

No it doesn't. My rules are as follows:

As well, my music is not stored on iCloud. It is exclusively stored on my computer (and hard drive backups). All of my podcasts and music videos use genres that state such to avoid problems with videos and podcasts.

Ok--I backed up my iPhone today, and then clicked Restore. After a lengthy process, the original smart playlist was still there with all of the original songs.

On a whim, I decided to play it. It did remove all the songs that I played on my iPhone. I synced the iPhone to iTunes. All of the original songs appeared again. Just to be completely clear, I verified that the songs on the iTunes smart playlist were uploaded to my iPhone. Regardless, the original songs and list just refuse to go away.

I made a new smart playlist with identical conditions with a new name--"Lengthy Car Drives." I also synced that smart playlist to my phone in addition to Christian Rock Mix which still exists. Both lists have the exact same songs listed in them in the exact same order on my iPhone even though in iTunes they have completely different songs.

I'm really not sure what to make of all this.

I have since made more smart playlists and synced them to my iPhone. The results are disastrous.

Genre contains Christian Rock, Rating is more than **: Same old playlist

Genre contains Christian Rock, Grouping does not contain Instrumental: Many of the same songs as the original playlist, but has some different ones. However, the iTunes playlist and the iPhone playlist do not match.

Genre contains Christian Rock: The smart playlist on my phone is alphabetized, but my iTunes list is not. Also, although many of the songs are on both lists, they are not identical.

Artist contains Starfield: playlists are identical. This one worked.

Genre contains Alternative: The lists are not identical. Both lists have a few of the same songs. When they do, the songs are played first to last and are sometimes skipped with other songs inbetween. For example: iTunes has A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. iPhone has A, B, X, X, X, D, E, X, H, J; where X is a song that isn't included in the iTunes List.

I think this shows that the problem is somehow related to the Genre field.

It's very sad that the new version 11.0.0.163 does not address this issue. How disappointing. 😟

diesel vdub wrote:

Have you actually reported it to Apple? Posting to these forums does not count as Apple does not monitor them.

Unless and until it is reported, there is not logical expectation that it can be or will be fixed.

In order to get any support from Apple, it seems that I'm required to pay them a minimum $19.00 fee in order for them to listen to me. They obviously think I'm a buffoon and am requesting support for something that is easily fixable.

I finally was able to talk to someone in Tech Support and they graciously gave me a one-time-only free call. After about 1 1/2 hours on the phone, plus restoring my phone as a new phone, nothing worked.

After that, we made a new user account on my computer, imported the songs from my 1st user account into a new library on the 2nd user account in iTunes, and made a new playlist which we synced to the phone. Then we went back to my 1st user account on my computer and resynced my playlists and everything worked as it was intended to work. Apparently my smart playlist was dynamically changing the songs on iTunes on the 1st user account even though I didn't give it an instruction to do that. We think that had something to do with it. Live updating was another factor to this, but it's hazy how. Even the tech guy was just making guesses.

Evidently making this new user account on my computer, a new library, and syncing a new playlist from the new library on a new user account, and then going back to all my old stuff fixed this mess. I'm going to sit on this one for awhile and make sure that it stays fixed, but at this point, I'm pretty hopeful.