Why do my play counts reset to zero randomly?

talios wrote:

Is anyone else using smart playlists seeing this?

Yes, I use smart playlists. With nested rules too. That's why this playcount glitch is giving me so much frustration because it's key to the way I use iTunes.

I've got a modest library in comparison to yours, 20GB, 2603 songs.

RabbM wrote:

I still stand behind my original theory. Anytime something in your iTunes library is changed (that was purchased or received from iTunes) a defect in the iTunes app/server causes this problem. iTunes seems to be keeping a Nazi like hold on anything they delivered. When to goes through appending to your library it glitches and misses writing the play count data back to the file (leaving it blank). In the case of a movie or TV show, 0 play count but a last play date equals the little half moon like you started to play but didn't finish. The more Apple delivered content on your system the more you have the problem.

Yes, I agree with your theory.

i don't have any "info-changers" but of course listening to music does change the playcount making it a de facto "info-changer".

I thought I'd try it so I've just changed a song genre and synced my iPhone but the bug didn't appear. However, I can no longer get the bug to appear with a purchase anymore since I played with the preferences - even though my preferences are back where they were at the start.

I've just upgraded to 11.0.1. I'll let you know when it happens to me again.

I did the same thing with preferences that you did but no luck here. It's still doing it to me. But I may have missed something in particular that you did. Not only that but I've been screwing around with this so much who knows what else I broke.

Garry,

Thanks for invite and insight.. I have noticed that the songs that have a zero play count do have something in common, they're all iTunes purchases and seem to be ones where I have modified the genre. I have a lot Blues songs and categorize them into various sub-genres eg: Blues/Traditional or Blues/Rock. I also change them when I don't agree with the iTunes default category. eg; R&B for a blues artist. After reading these posts I checked and found I had new genres that I know I did not build. I have now turned off "sync across devices", "show cloud purchases" and of course crossfade on my imac and ios devices. I have purchased an album tonight, modified its genre. I'll watch to see what happens after restarting tomorrow morning. I have also updated to 11.0.1 As an aside this genre thing might expalin why the store sometimes has mutliple versions of the same album.

Thanks all for the above posts....Mark

I think they are changing genres and stuff because they are prepping to a subscription based service where everything is in the cloud (online), everyone's music collection looks the same (Apart from what albums are in it), and you need to stream most of your music (i.e. it's stored on their servers and you play it through the Internet). You want to listen to something obscure or arrange things your way and keep your collection physically all on your computer and a high capacity storage device with the cloud only as backup or for occasional use? You want to buy your music once and own it instead of paying every month to access it or have it no longer player? Apple is preparing to say "Too bad". That's my guess.

It would fit in with why they don't have a modern high-capacity music player and don't keep increasing storage on new models of their music players. The ipod classic is the only true high-capacity storage device in their line, and it's not as high-capacity as it could be, and doesn't grow with people's collections. Plus, they've left the design of it left in five years ago territory, don't promote it, and rumor has it are on the verge of discontinuing it.

They want everyone to own expensive little devices with mininal internal storage that stream only what the itunes store sells the way they sell it from a server for a monthly fee in the long run. It's taken ownership and control of our music away from us, so they can maximize their profits.

It makes me wish I'd stuck with music on CDs, because I wonder if my downloads will even be supported by anything in a few years. There are few strong alternatives to Apple out there when it comes to a music ecosystem, and they seem to be rushing to the cloud too. I want to own my music, keep local copies of it, have it all at my finger tips, and do what I want with it. No low capacity players, no music all in the cloud, no making my music like everyone else's, no subscription fees, etc.. I'm not some generic mind-numbed robot that's going to do whatever Apple tells me to and like it.

The cloud is great as a backup or for occasional use, but what I want my main thing to be is all of my music on my computer organized how I want it, that syncs with a non-Internet focused portable music player with a high capacity that can also hold all of my music. The cloud shouldn't be option A, it should be for use to redownload things in case of hard drive crashes, or to stream things online when you're using a friend's computer or a phone or a tablet or something. It shouldn't surplant real ownership and physical possession of files in local storage. But I think it's going to. The hub is going to be on a server Apple owns somewhere, and you'll put a little on various devices or computers and stream the rest. And it's going to look like how Apple wants it to look.

I really hope they reverse course or someone offers what I'm looking for and Apple traditionally has offered and is moving away from offering. There is room for a "Organize your music your way/Keep all your music on your computer and player locally" type of company that has no cloud or uses cloud as a backup or for using other people's equipment type of situations. I hope some company fills that void- either Apple or somebody else.

Thanks - glad I found this thread and will try some of the suggestions here, but nothing seems to work for me either.

I did note that the issue is affecting only iTunes purchases. Let me just say I'm glad I've been buying music lately from Amazon.

Does anyone know how, exactly, we can contact Apple on this? Squeeky wheels and grease and all that.

Noticed something else today. I was playing some media that got set back to zero play count. I have a sound effects album with several very little files (1 sec to less than 30 sec). When I attempted to play anything that was 10 seconds or less in length the play count would not update. It remained at zero. I even looped (repeated) them but they never updated. Sound effects album was purchased from iTunes.

Same thing is happening to me. It's resetting play counts and genres about 400 songs at a time.

I also am kind of obsessive about my play counts, and my genres. All the songs changed were "Drum & Bass" songs (not an iTunes default) and iTunes reset them to "Dance".

I looked in the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file, and I can confirm that it is just straight removing the "Play Count" line.

I've sent an angry (but courteous) feedback note to Apple about this. I could go back to the last .itl file before iTunes 11 and download 10.7 again, but that's another hassle I don't need.

I am experiencing this random reset to 0 play count also - ever since I upgraded to iTunes 11. And the "Last Played" date still shows, so makes it even more bizarre. I also sent a note to Apple and hope they fix this.

I've just submitted some feedback via the link on iTunes. I doubt whether anything will change, I'm sure that Apple don't really care about their customers, just like every other global company.

I've just upgraded to 11.0.1 and so far, by unticking the 4 boxes in the Store page via preferences, I've not had the problem reappear. I've also switched Genius off so as far as I can tell, my PC no longer sends any data to Apple at all.

Apple, I love your hardware, my iPod and iPhone are beautiful objects, but your desire for total control and world domination *****!

After upgrading to 11.0.1 I was still having to play count/genre reset problem, so I went back and restored my newest "iTunes Library.itl" file from the "Previous iTunes Libraries" folder. I believe iTunes places a file in there each time you install a new version of iTunes with at least an increment of 0.X

I had to re-add all the music I'd bought/downloaded since 11 came out (about 150 songs for me, podcasts were a bit of a pain), but since I've done this, I have not had the problem re-occur. I've bought music during two different sessions since then as well.

I am neither using Match nor Genius.

Of the 4 "Store" options we've been discussing, I only have "Sync playback information across devices" checked.

I do also have "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" checked under the Advanced options.

I know this thread is about Music, but I have similar problem with Movies.

I just updated to iTunes 11. Some of my previously viewed videos had their Play Count changed to zero. These are videos that have NOT been purchased.

I am not on iCloud. I do not have iTunes Match.

What is going on?

thank you.

Everyone,

I just finished up a week-long back and forth with Apple regarding this issue. What they had me do was this:

First they had me create a before and after folder with data to send to their engineers. You do not need to do this, but create a folder on your desktop called "Back-up" anyway.

Quit iTunes

Open Finder

Click on user data - this is probably your name

Select Music

Select iTunes

You will see two files in there, one called "iTunes Library.itl" and one called "iTunes Library.xml." Copy both of those files into your "Back-Up" folder on your desktop. This is just for a precausion.

Then,

Delete the iTunes Library.itl. You have a back-up in the back-up folder if you need it again.

Then,

Select Previous iTunes Libraries

This folder will have several files that are previous versions of your iTunes library. I'm not sure how often they update, but it might be with each upgrade of iTunes. Anyway, you need to find the most recent one. Mine was from 12-4-12.

Then,

Take your most recent Previous iTunes Library, which will read "iTunes Library (DATE).itl"

Move that file into the iTunes folder, where the previous iTunes Library.itl was.

Delete the date from the name of the file. So it now reads "iTunes Library.itl"

Close Finder

Open iTunes

This restored my play counts that were missing, and so far it has fixed the issue of them dissapearing. I have updated both my iPod and iPhone (which were seemingly triggering the error) and all my play counts remain.

There are a few issues, though. This will reset your library to how it looked on that previous date. So a couple albums I bought from iTunes between 12-4-12 and 12-22-12 were missing and needed to be re-downloaded. That was no problem, because you can re-download everything that you have purchased from the iTunes store.

Also gone were a few songs that I uploaded from CDs (the old fashioned way). I'll have to put those back on manually.

Also gone were any additional plays between 12-4-12 and 12-22-12.

If you have songs that you manually uploaded, or purchased from another site, I recommend backing those up before doing this. If you are super into your play counts (which most of us probably are since we freaked out about this in the first place), and you don't want to lose what has been played since your last "Previous iTunes Library" file was created, I recommend selecting all of your songs before doing the steps above, hitting "Command C" to copy them, and then pasting them into an Excel spreadsheet. It will keep all of your data in one spot, and you can manually edit the songs that need the additional plays if you want.

It would be a time consuming process, but at least it would be accurate.

I feel relieved now that this issue has been put to bed for me. I hope everyone can follow the steps above and fix the issue on your computers.

+1

As an additional step to this - before quitting iTunes I also did the following:

1) Create a new Smart Playlist for songs added since 11-30-2012 ( the date of the itunes file I was going to restore )

2) Export this playlist as an M3U playlist file

3) Proceed as jet9football says

4) Open iTunes and import the M3U playlist - this now automatically reattaches any manually added song ( or iTunes purchased song ) back into your library.

Now I'm 98% back to normal, and just have to relisten to stuff I purchased recently ( oh woe is me - listening to music I purchased! ) 🙂

I only just discovered this problem, was freaked out about it, and am now very grateful to those of you who persevered in finding solutions. I've just now implemented them -- unchecked the four boxes, deleted my current library and replaced it with the last backup from a month ago, even saved and reimported a list of everything added since then, which seems to have saved me a lot of labor. So thanks! (Hope it works...)

This is the second massive headache I've had to deal with on iTunes in the past few months. The last one was when I tried to solve a longstanding problem with my smartlists that are built upon other smartlists not updating properly. After considerable research I found that there is no solution, because Apple evidently isn't interested in supporting the smartlist feature anymore.

Although I'm infuriated by the huge waste of time and the lost functionality (and who knows what next), I suppose I am ultimately unsurprised. I never liked Apple in their early cult heyday -- just seemed like turning a computer into a sleek and shiny black box that nobody could really access the inside of. I never asked for an iPod, but I did need a way to mix my own music after my small town's NPR station killed off its evening jazz programs (that small town being Chicago...), so someone gave me one for xmas five years ago. Hated the thing at first for all of its counterintuitive restrictions and parameters, but once I figured out how to use the smartlists I admit I got to love it. With careful handling it has held up well, and it's good enough to plug into my mid-range component stereo system without noticing any lost fidelity.

But awhile back my wife inherited a MacBook or some such -- in good working order, technically, but my god that thing has wasted my time trying to get it set up right! Reminded me that what Apple is really about is shiny black boxes that nobody (except them) can get inside of. You can't even f***ing replace the battery on an iPod!

My conclusion is that smartlists were an abberation. Many thanks (and I mean it) to whoever you were at Apple that created them -- they were great while they lasted. After these recent episodes, I don't expect they will last much longer, and like CharmCityCrab I have no idea how I will replace them. Any route I choose will involve countless hours of labor. But I will now be looking for something other than an iPod for when mine finally gives up the ghost. (And I sure as **** won't be buying anything from iTunes after it wreaked havock with my music collection, vaporizing all my customized artist and album info and such until I figured out how to reverse the whole mess.)

By the way, a question, being new to this forum. Most companies have tech folk attending to these sorts of discussions and issues. Does Apple just let the customers do all the work? Makes sense, I guess, being the inscrutable wizard of Oz, inaccessible to mere mortals...?