Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

• Start iTunes on your computer
• Connect your iPhone and let it Sync
• Select your phone among the devices in iTunes
• Select the tab for Music
• Uncheck the "Sync Music" and then hit "Apply" (down at bottom of page). NOTE: this will remove all the music from your phone but it will not affect your iTunes library. Don't panic. It's necessary medicine.
• After the phone has synced and removed all the music, Go back to the same Music tab for your phone in iTunes and re-check "Sync Music". Then sync your phone again with iTunes. It will now reload all the music in your library back on to your phone.

This FINALLY worked for me. I have been following a couple of threads on this topic (including this one: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5322748?start=0&tstart=0) and I had tried most of the solutions I'd found in the last week or so (except for Resetting/Restoring phone). None of them worked--INCLUDING this one. I had tried this more than once, in fact. But for some reason I did the above again today and finally my Playlists got in sync on my iPhone 4. Not sure if it will keep syncing once I add new music in future, but for now it has worked. Note: the only thing I had checked in the Summary area of my iPhone in iTunes was Sync over Wifi--just in case that affects anything.

A few days after updating to 7.0.4 and buying some songs from iTunes and then trying to add songs by manually managing my music in iTunes on my Win7 pc, a song that I didn't select but was in the cloud would play. I deleted all the songs on the iphone, synced, added them manually back to the iphone via the pc, and one song that I didn't add but I had bought through iTunes would keep playing, regardless of the song I chose.

What finally fixed it for me (as far as I can tell) was deleting all of my music on the iphone and then deleting the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb off of the iphone. I used the procedure described by GeekDad3 in the following post. However I have a PC and used iFunBox instead to access the file on the iphone.It works with jailed iphones.

iFunbox: http://www.i-funbox.com/

In iFunBox you can find the file by

1. going to the iFunbox Classic tab
2. Connected Devices\<your device>\Raw File System\iTunes_Control\iTunes\

Procedure by GeekDad3: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940

I'm guessing the music database file got corrupted and this procedure rebuilt it. Hope this helps someone else.

No need for match, I do not use the service either. Screen shots attached ... navigate to the 'More' tab here:

Then select the 'shared' option as pictured below. There should be an option to select your entire library as the 'iPhone' library is defaulted to. Hope this helps.

After resetting all settings on my iPod Touch, turning off sharing, deleted off all music from the iPod's setting interface and ensured it showed the connect to iTunes interface, I proceeded to select Do Not Sync Music, podcasts and books in iTunes. I never had iTunes Match. After that, I only proceeded to sync Apps, Music listed under playlists and Movies to the iPod. iOS Version 7.0.2

The sync started to push songs onto the iPod after being stuck at the Waiting To Apply Changes status for about 30 secs. It has already synced over 1300 songs and still continuing fine.

However, I find it strange that all the song titles have already appeared in my iPod, without the graying out status to show it is waiting to be synced. In addition, it showed this weird status message, as shown above. Downloading song # of 0...

PS: Does anybody have a buggy app arrangement display in iTunes for choosing which apps to sync over?

I just attempted to sync a playlist of 1331 songs to my phone. As always, it failed part of the way through. (For me it appears as if the sync has completed, but obviously way too quickly for the number of songs.)

On the phone I opened the music app and went into song view, scrolled all the way to the bottom to see how many songs were there, and this is what I saw:

iTunes had completed its sync at this point and no more songs were being downloaded to the phone.

This is so terrible. It's been 10 years since I bought my first iPod, and this is the first time I have ever had a problem syncing songs to an Apple device from iTunes. Third gen iPod, 1st gen Shuffle, iPod Classic, iPhone 3G, iPhone 4—all of them worked flawlessly. And now, a $399 ($849 retail) iPhone 5s with all the latest software is not capable of this basic function?

Pathetic.

ellenng wrote:

I have the same problem with my iphone 5s and iOS7.0.4 which cannot sync music properly, after reading all the suggestions which I found some of the them very complicated, all i did was to delete the icloud account and reconnect with itune, then everything works fine, all music sync properly into my iphone. hope this help

The icloud thing could have something to do with it.... I have the iphone 5 (not the 5s), but I have the icloud account set up... I do back up to the computer, not to the cloud... maybe try that if you're interested in using the cloud for other things (it does have its uses like syncing bookmarks)

On the device summary page when you plug it in with USB (I still don't trust wifi sync, and I definitely will never trust a third party to store my media a-la-cloud).

I think those of us that still have issues should all leave feedback with Apple. I have left several feedback messages. I still have not heard from anyone at Apple and when I went to the Genius Bar; they also could not figure the syncing issue. Brilliant.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Let's all leave tons of feedback and maybe Apple will push a real update.

Good idea. Just posted this:

Dear Apple,

it is not possible to sync my music to my iPhone 5s. I bought the most expensive phone for 899 EUR and this main feature does not work. I tried all the possible solutions on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5324398?tstart=0 but it just does not work. I'm a pro user using many smart playlists and never experienced any problems. This is really annoying since the problem exists for weeks and hundreds of users are talking about it in the forums.

Please fix this bug soon.

Best, Patrick Hammer

Reported it alos like this:

I can not get any music in my iPhone 4S since upgrading to iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1.1

All the music on my iPhone is now gone. Also a number of songs that I bought thru my iPhone and is not in my iTunes lib.

Basically I am experiencing the same problems as all the people posting here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5324398?start=285&tstart=0

Are you working on a solution?

Will I get a refund for the songs lost?

This super stupid bug renders one of the most important feature of my iPhone useless. Now it is just a communication device and a phone.

I did what this person did, and it worked for me

AAGonz

I unchecked the Sync Music box under Music tab, then clicked apply (this might remove every song from phone so be aware), then I checked the Sync Music box again (I never check entire library, just selected playlists) and chose the playlists I wanted on the phone. It worked for me. Good luck!

Here is the fix I used on my 4s and was finally able to sync all music and audio-books. Hope this helps; I feel your pain...

SkylerDaniels

So I just chatted online with an Apple employee and I may have a simple solution.

If you are still having a problem syncing music from your itunes to your iphone then try this. When your phone is plugged into your computer uncheck the sync music box in itunes and apply the change. Once it finishes syncing you should only have music that you purchased from itunes on your phone.

Now recheck the sync music box. During the syncing you will see the usual waiting for changes step last, but this time it should follow with all the music you chose to sync and it should start adding it all.

I know this sounds too simple to work, but it worked for me and I have tried a few suggestions in this thread unsuccessfully. Try it out and let us know if it works for you. It worked for me, thank the heavens! The best part is that I didn't need to uninstall iOS7 or restore my phone or any drastic actions.

Good luck!

Finally Fixed!!

Having been on this discussion since the iOS 7.0 and itunes 11 release with broken devices I am very thankful to PhatLu for posting the fix that has Finally resolved this issue!

Recreating the iTunes Library database and playlist .xml files seems to have resolved the issue. This also explains why it was broken across all devices. Something had happened that corrupted the iTunes Library database (.itl file).

Following the instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451 was pretty painless and actually took as much time as they way we [lately] have been syncing playlist changes by recopying the entire music list.

After rebuilding the iTunes Library database and playlist (xml file) the initial syncs take a while as you need to sync and remove all songs, then copy the itunes songs back on to the device as the device sees it as a new itunes connection, but after that is done, changes to playlists take just a very short time as expected.

Thank you all for your efforts and congrats on finding the fix here. This was an epic FAIL for apple and their lack of response to the pleas for help from this forum.

You can at least submit feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

No idea if anyone actually reads it.

paulfratelli wrote:

This is so annoying.

Can't sync music on both iPad and iPhone 4s (both on iOS 7.0.3, iTunes is 11.1.3). Syncing always gets stuck at 'Waiting for changes to be applied'. Unsyncing music stops there too. Tried everything mentioned before, but nothing worked so far. I am afraid that restoring as a new device is no option for me. Yesterday I restored the iPhone from backup - music sync worked fine after that. But today I am facing the same issue again. I don't have the time to restore my devices everytime I want to sync some music..

Would really like to write to Apple Support directly, but it seems like this is not possible. So please, do something, Apple Support!

I posted the following in this thread today:

You'll all be glad to know that a Senior Support Advisor at Apple is currently helping me and has acknowledged that this issue a serious problem and is communicating the issue to the Apple engineering team.

In the meantime, the Advisor is continuing to troubleshoot the issue with me. He is having me send him screenshots and diagnostic information for the engineering team to use.

According to the Advisor, this issue (or a similar one) was spotted by Apple at some point and the engineering team thought they fixed it with the released of iTunes 11.1.2. That is obviously not the case. I informed the Advisor of this ongoing support thread and the many others that have popped up, showing that this is a widespread problem. I'll continue to update this thread with any new info I learn. Fingers crossed.

My story is similar to others here. I have been experiencing the issue since the upgrade to iOS7 and iTunes 11.1 (and carrying through all updates since). I've experienced the issue across multiple devices - an iPhone 4 and a brand new iPhone 5S - always running the latest versions of the software. iTunes to iPhone syncing gets stuck indefinitely on "Waiting for changes to be applied," erasing audio content, creating large blocks of "Other" data, and generally behaving erratically. The best workaround I've found is erasing all audio content and then re-syncing it all back onto the phone, but that fix is only temporary and obviously time-consuming. Other unsuccessful troubleshooting: restore iPhone from backup, restore from factory settings, rebuild iTunes library .itl file, reinstall iTunes, reinstall OS X, weed through iTunes library for possible corrupt audio files, etc etc. Some of these methods cause the sync to work temporarily, only for the problem to return.

P.S. The Speed of your Computer probably effect the Speed of Syncing Music too.

Here is my Mac & iOS Set Up:

MacBook Pro 17', Late 2011, AntiGlare Screen

2.5 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD HD

Mac OS 10.8.5 Supplemental

iPhone 4S

64 GB - iOS 7.0.4

To play it safe, I am plugging my iPhone 4S directly into my MacBook Pro, unlike in the past, under iOS 6.1.3, where I used to plug it into Thunderbolt Display and never worry about it.

I have Re-Installed my iTunes, Version 11.1.4, and that didn't help!

To say that it's only iOS 7 that is causing this Slow Sync might not be totally fair. It's how iOS is "co-operating" with iTunes, and maybe with Mac OS itself!

I wish I had another iPhone 4S, just like mine, 64 GB, but running the Previous iOS 6.1.3. Then it would be possible to Isolate this Slow Sync Problem to just iOS 7.

Another "Suspect" could have been this:

I had a Particular Podcast in my iTunes on Mac, and it was Syncing to 2 Occurrences of that very Podcast on both my iPhone 4S (running iOS 7.0.4) and iPad 3 ( running iOS 6.1.3). It is possible that there was a "Confusion" somewhere in the iCloud Sync part of my Entire iOS Sync, where as the iCloud could decided which of the 2 Occurrences of the same Podcast on my iOS Devices to Sync with?

So I Deleted that Podcast from my iTunes and on iOS Devices, and then Re-Subscribed to it again! That seems to have helped! But only Time will tell if THAT alone was The Cause of my Sync "House Of Cards" Falling Apart, or if it was one of several other reasons for my Sync Instability! What I can say for sure is this:

After I Deleted every instance of that Podcast and Re-Subscribed to it, I did not see any Improvement in the Sync Speed! That Speed became Slower as the Number of Songs already Synced to my iPhone 4S Increased! The Greater Number of Songs on my iPhone 4S, the Slower the Sync!

So, with all those Time Estimates Formulas, at least you will have Some Predictability before you start your Sync and go to bed!

When Apple finally fixes this Slow Sync Issue, I'd be able to add Songs, or Text To Speech Articles ANYTIME to my iPhone! After 1-4 Minutes Sync I'd be able to Go Out and Have a Life, instead of starring at iTunes, and not even know when it will say:

• Waiting for changes to be applied

• Waiting for items to copy

And iTunes is NOT Telling me How Long it will take BEFORE for the Entire Sync to Finishe before I Click on Sync or Apply Button!!! Seeing such Estimate would have been very helpful!!!!

It would also be great if Apple allowed us to Pause in the Middle of the Sync and Resume it Later, when we have more Time!!!! But right now, one can either Eject iPhone, or Disconnect it, or Cancel the Sync!

Disconnect is NOT a Pause! It creates a Corruption, where the Other Space Size in iTunes Status Bar can icrease several times, or Disappeare completely! Eventually, after Re-Syncing, that Other Space might get corrrected or not! If not, the only other way to fix it is to do Yet Another Restore As New, then Restore from Backup! That means another bunch of Overnight Syncs, basincally starting from the begnning!

Cancel Sync = Undo that Entire Sync, and possibly More! Then it's like doingYet Another Restore As New, then Restore from Backup! That means another bunch of Overnight Syncs, basincally starting from the begnning!

Another Suggestion - it'd be great if the iOS Sync is having a Problem with iTunes Library, it would be great if there was a Log, so that we could See The Errors, with Suggested Fixes!

I have already provided some of this Feedback via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Adding to the FRUSTRATION on that Feedback Page is the fact that I had to Split this Previous Feedback into 6 Parts, because there is a Number Of Characters Limits on the Comments Field at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

According to http://www.lettercount.com it's 782 Characters, which is not as bad as 140 Characters Limit in Twitter…

It would be GREAT, if Apple Feedback had a LIVE UPDATE CHARACTER COUNTER, so that a Person Posting would know how close to the Character Limit they are!!!! Hey, if Twitter knows how to do Count Characters, then we should expect no less from Apple, right:)?!

Other than this Sad Issue with this Slow Music Sync to iOS Devices - I LOVE Apple, and I can't wait for them to Fix this finally!!!