iPhone playing random songs instead of what I select!

Thanks guys. Tried this (on both my iphone and ipod touch - having the same issue on both devices) and no luck. Any other ideas?

OK, thanks for taking the time. I did this and it did nothing to solve the issue. Not only that, but the behavior is even stranger. For good measure, I made a new smart playlist on my Mac based on rating, last played and limited to 100 songs. The playlist came up by name on the iPhone, but with almost entirely different songs. At first they seemed to be playing ok (meaning, the song I selected actually played), but soon the same problem started happening. Almost all the songs I select will briefly show in the "now playing window" but then almost immediately it moves on to some other song. What's stranger is that while most of the time that other song moves to the bottom of the playlist, sometimes it just disappears entirely from the playlist. As in, it will still be playing but it is nowhere to be found on the list.

I should mention that as part of my troubleshooting today I tried all this on my ipod touch, on which I hadn't even activated iTunes Match before, and had the same problem.

Upon further testing, it seems like whatever song itunes decides to play in lieu of the one I want it to, that song either moves to the bottom of the playlist or just disappears.

If I play songs by going to the artist->album route, they play fine. That kinda defeats the purpose of having a smart playlist automatically shuffle what's on my phone.

Also, it seems to have nothing to do with whether the songs are matched or uploaded.

Getting pretty annoyed. I mean, being able to play the song I select isn't too much to ask, is it?

Tried it. I was hopefull, but it didn't solve anything.

Seems like the problem lay outside of the iphone, since my ipod touch was exhibiting the same behavior.

I have 12mbs cable going through airport base stations.

I just tested by turning off wi-fi, wiping the music from the phone, signing out and turning off Match, hard restarting, making a new smart playlist on my Mac, turning Match back on and waiting for it to sync, then downloading the contents of the new smart playlist. Not only was it doing the same thing, it was even worse. Tried to play one song and it skipped ahead not just one, but four songs from the list. Then all of those songs disappeared from the smart playlist.

Oh, and of course the songs on the phone's list were not the same as the ones on the computer's list.

What a fiasco.

OK, in my tinkering around I finally discovered a pattern here...

Today I was able to recreate the problem on a non-smart playlist. The pattern I have noticed is that when I select songs that have not yet downloaded to the phone, they play fine. Most (not all) times I play for the first time a song that is already downloaded, it will skip to a non-downloaded song (or another 'ok' song - see the next sentence). Any song I first played before it was downloaded (or was skipped to) will then play fine after it has downloaded. Any song that has been designated as a 'skipper' by the phone will not play from its artist/album list either.

Also, I just tested and when playing the same songs from the same playlist from iTunes on my second Mac (at a different location) there is no issue.

This completely negates the idea of downloading a playlist while I am at home on wi-fi before I head out and would start chewing through cellular data.

Almost completely unusable! Rgh! 😠

I would have a little more faith in that maybe working if I weren't having exactly the same problem on my ipod touch, which until yesterday had been completely turned off during my transition to Match.