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iTunes 11 "Last Played" and playcount not updating?

I am having a playback issue in iTunes 11 under Snow Leopard, OS 10.6.8. "Last Played" and playcount are not being updated after a track finishes playing. The culprit is "Up Next". Any song played while "Up Next" has a playlist queue will not have its "Last Played" or playcount data updated. But if you clear "Up Next" and let the song finish, then that data will be updated.

What an unfortunate bug. Smart lists rule my world, and they heavily count on "Last Played" and playcount to create constantly evolving playlists for me.

Anybody else having this problem with iTunes11? Got a solution?

Posted on Nov 29, 2012 4:22 PM

75 replies

skellar

Level 1

4 points

Dec 8, 2012 9:19 AM in response to jfheisel

Turning crossfade off worked for me.

tenns

Level 1

0 points

Dec 13, 2012 6:59 AM in response to Al Deaderick

Open your preferences, select "Playback Preferences" and turn off "Crossfade Songs" (the first option in the menu) and itunes will resume counting your playbacks.

Dec 13, 2012 7:07 PM in response to The Laughing Imp

I've updated to iTunes 11.0.1 and I'm still seeing the same behavior. 😟

Play counts are not updated unless Crossfade is turned off.

Dec 14, 2012 7:06 AM in response to Al Deaderick

Even with crossfades selected, it not only doesn't update the play counts and last played info, it doesn't crossfade

kempsl

Level 1

0 points

Dec 14, 2012 3:25 PM in response to Al Deaderick

Same here... It gives you some false hope, as upon turning crossfade on, for the first song in a playlist the "last played" is updated... then it reverts to the broken behaviour. I noticed the same thing happening with the original 11.0 release too.

Giles65

Level 1

0 points

Dec 14, 2012 6:48 PM in response to kempsl

Very disppointing that not fixed by 11.01. Come on Apple sort it out please.

Cenobyte

Level 1

9 points

Dec 15, 2012 10:20 AM in response to The Laughing Imp

It seems they did fix the missing "Show Doubles" feature, but that this problem got skipped in this small update. I guess this will be in 10.0.2 😉

Dec 15, 2012 10:47 AM in response to The Laughing Imp

I'm the original poster and I wanted to give an update since others are still reporting problems.

Definitely turning off crossfade works for the majority of us. I've been running v11.0.1 thru the paces this morning and I can report that yes, it seems this bug survived. However, there have been some improvements. With crossfade turned off I get consistent play count and last played updating even if Up Next is engaged. This means that the iTunes DJ replacement is finally usable to me.

Up Next seems to have two states indicated by a black or blue-highlight status. If black, you can still rearrange the upcoming songs in the Up Next playlist. With crossfade off, play counts and last played dates are now consistently updated. If you click on the encircled > next to a song and select "Play Next", then the Up Next icon is highlighted. In 11.0 this would inconsistently update playcount, etc. even with crossfade turned off. I'm seeing consistent updating now as long as crossfade is turned off. This is inconsistent behavior for Up Next, but for me it is consistently updating that meta data now.

Anybody else seeing this improvement?

Side note: My bug report to Apple about this was closed because it was a dupe. However, the first bug report was also closed. Since it wasn't my bug report, I cannot access it to see why. Obviously, this bug is still present. I regret I have no further info to give you.

Dec 23, 2012 1:23 AM in response to Cenobyte

clearly means that test scenarios aren't being re-used, which clearly indicates poor testing practices at Apple. But hey, testing isn't "cool", is it?

JamesY17

Level 1

4 points

Jan 2, 2013 10:04 AM in response to Mike Reys

I experienced the problem of Last Played & Plays not updating for tracks less than ~10 seconds. I copied such a track to my iPhone (4/6.0.1), played it on the iPhone then synced. This resulted in the Last Played & Plays being updated as expected.

Bronx cheer to those at Apple responsible for this bug-ridden release. For a company with so many resources this shoddy release is a low point. Rewrite is a lame excuse.

Jan 7, 2013 7:00 AM in response to robqesq

That sorted it for me!

Thanks!

i found that going into "edit", "preferences" and then "sharing" and checking the box marked "home sharing computers and devices update play counts" worked for me! 🙂

Feb 2, 2013 10:25 PM in response to The Laughing Imp

I've been having the same problem.

My crossfade was off and the problem didn't go away when I turned it on and off.

What did get the recently played tunes to dissappear from my playlists was closing and restarting itunes.

Feb 4, 2013 9:41 PM in response to The Laughing Imp

None of the above have worked for me. I've tried every permutation of the suggestions everyone has suggested, ... and nothin'. And I never used CrossFade anyway...

One oddity I can't explain, problem seems to happen for files less than 10-20 seconds in duration (I haven't narrowed it down yet), but, audio clips with "empty" stars (not no stars) do seem to get updated just fine (but I don't have many of those, so it's hard to be sure about that).

Also, I wonder if playing files via SmartPlaylists vs must playing them via Music/Songs.

Feb 8, 2013 2:19 PM in response to The Laughing Imp

Play count and last played not working from devices since iTunes 11 upgrade. Had crossfade on; turned off, no help. Homesharing updating count has always been on. Changing a rating on a song post quickly! Have not been able to use smart lists for "least listnened to" music.

The strang thing? I have live-updating turned on, on my smart playlists. My devices will properly remove the song from the playlist after playing; but itunes "last played" date is NOT updated. So, the "smart" list will grab the same songs after a while.

have tried all the following:

Puchased AAC files

ripped MPEG

iphone

ipad

smart lists on device

regular list on device

closing/restarting itunes

rebooting

Julia v

Level 1

0 points

Feb 10, 2013 7:10 PM in response to The Laughing Imp

Thank you so much for posting this solution! It seems to be working for me so far on OSX 10.6.8. This has been driving me insane since I "upgraded" to itunes11.

Here's hoping they fix this bug soon, eh.

iTunes 11 "Last Played" and playcount not updating?