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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?


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Posted on Nov 29, 2012 4:22 PM

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75 replies

Feb 13, 2013 8:41 AM in response to The Laughing Imp

For me, the songs that are not updating are extremely short. Like in the Snatch soundtrack, Avi's Declaration and Kuasehfgaiugh are 7 and 5 seconds long, respectively. They are the only songs I have found so far with this problem.


Crossfade is off. I never use it. And I'm in the Music area, not a playlist. I cannot explain it.


Hopefully it's a bug and I'm not an idiot.

Feb 20, 2013 4:30 PM in response to Frédéric Testuz

Fixed for me.. and for short tracks too.. Crossfade is turned back on too (and restarted iTunes for good measure).


However are we sure it ever worked with short tracks? (for some that is).


I ask, as I remember (and memory is faulty) that the play count, and last played fields being updated always seemed to me as trying to be "smart". What I recall (again not a perfect memory) was that if I played a tune, but didn't play it all the way through, or just sampled part of the song, these data fields did not update. I think the feature was trying to ignore accidental plays, and simply "sampling a song" and trying to identify "real" plays. It seems now, through understanding this bug, that this feature was probably based on how long a tune played for as well as playing through to the end. With crossfade on, you don't really quite get all the way to the end before the next song fades in. Which is probably where the bug showed up, with a change somewhere in the code affecting this functionality.

Feb 21, 2013 8:23 AM in response to The Laughing Imp

Yes, I too am a happy man given I use crossfade quite a bit. It appears to be working again. Now I can enjoy my massive collection without fear of repeating a handfull of songs that I've heard in the last few hours, days or weeks. Playcount is an essential feature if you ask me. I hope the folks at Apple do understand the importance of this feature for people such as myself. Lastly, thanks to the folks that fixed the glitch...much appreciated.

Jun 24, 2013 11:06 AM in response to Flying Pelican

Last played was working when I went on vacation May 10. Came back two weeks later, after having used my iPod Touch to listen to songs on the airplane both ways, and the Last Played showed nothing after May 10. I have since listened to my iPod Touch while mowing the lawn and the Last Played count still does not update. However, when I place it in my Bose Sound Dock, the FIRST song played gets updated in the Last Played but no others.

I have Crossfade off and Home Sharing unchecked. My version of iTunes is 11.0.4.4. Very frustrating as I use Last Played to help create Playlists. If anyone else has any other solutions, I'd love to hear them.

Jun 25, 2013 8:12 PM in response to Flying Pelican

Ever since I set up a smart playlist in iTunes to present a short list of songs from my collection to be used on my iPhone based on the length of time the song was last played and whether or not the song had been skipped within a set length of time, ITunes has not updated the "Last Played" or "Last Skipped" date after my iPhone has synced with iTunes. This happens with many, but not all of the songs in the playlist. I have been unable to determine any criteria that causes some songs' metadata to update and others' to not. This has been going on through two generations of iPhones and many genereations of iTunes software of which I am now using 11.0.4. I have never used crossfade, so I don't see what it has to do with it.


I have an iPhone 5 and am running IOS 6.1.4

iTunes 11 "Last Played" and playcount not updating?

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