Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

I was looking to buy an iPad mini to replace my wife's recently deceased kindle reader.
Nope. Nexus 7.

My phone contract is due in January and I was looking forward to a 5S.

Nope. I'll be getting a Nexus 5 if I can..

I sent this to Tim Cook:

"Dear Tim Cook and Apple,

I'm sending this to your email-adress because

1. The feedback site of Apple went a bit weird when I tried to paste a longer explanation into the comment field.

2. This bug has not been resolved after nearly 2 months or so of iOS 7, and I would like to get some feedback if this issue is being handled.

I have some information in this mail that can help the developers.

The problem is iOS 7 not syncing big playlists of music. It stalls on Waiting for Changes to be applied. Small playlists work, big ones don't.

I have an older 80GB iPod Classic, a 64GB iPhone 4S and now even a new 128GB iPad Air. I also had an older iPad 1 running iOS 5.

Neither of these devices had problems syncing the same music except the 4S and the iPad Air, running on iOS 7.0.3 (I had the problem starting with 7.0 or 7.0.1)

I have this brand new iPad Air that I just completely set up as a new iPad, and even that one refuses to sync, it just stalls when I click on big playlists. It's a new device out of the box, and considering I'm having the same for over 1.5 month, I'm sure this is an iOS 7 bug.

This is everything I already tried on my iPhone 4S before I bought the iPad to get this fixed:

- I had a completely manually managed iTunes Library. I made a completely new library, that I let iTunes automatically manage (copy to iTunes Media + put it in the right folders). I use to do this all myself, being a bit neurotic about organisation, but I noticed that I could save time by letting iTunes do this for me, especially since I already checked 99 percent of the meta data of my music collection. So it's a completely new library, but with the same playlists etc. (I re-made them manually again)

- Removed all the voice memos on my iPhone, because I heard that sometimes could give problems.

- Restored from an iCloud backup. Many many times. Then syncing again starting from zero. Did not help.

- Changed the name of the MediaLibrary.sqlitedb file on the iPhone (I don't have a jailbreak, I did it trough the OSX program Phoneview). This should have iTunes make a new Library on the iPhone. It was still stuck on the same steps with the same playlists.

- I updated to Mavericks, with iTunes 11.1.3 and to iOS 7.0.3, thinking this 'updated' setup would relieve me of the problem. Again, I was wrong.

- I dragged all the 48.000 music files in a utility called MP3 Scan and Repair. It gave me small errors on about 8000 of my files, some of which are never noticeable, or it would cause a song to prematurely stop or skip. I let it fix all those 8000 files, and lost about 75 percent of the artwork of those files in the process. I spent a day fixing that problem by checking which files had their artwork removed, and looking up new artwork on the internet, updating it manually again.

So as you've seen, I already tried *a lot* of measures to getting this problem fixed.

One thing that I DID NOT try yet, is setting up my phone as a completely new iPhone. Reason being that I'm not going to loose 4 years of text messages because Apple has a bug in their software. But, as I explained earlier, I bought a completely new 128GB iPad Air, set it up as a new iPad, and still it happens again.

At this point, I have spent a LOT of money to buy high capacity Apple devices to get a lot of media on them. Your discussion forums have been full with this problem. Everyone sometimes finds another fix for it, I have tried them all, and as a lot of others, this is not fixed yet. I have my new iPad and iPhone almost completely empty, despite paying a lot of money to get the capacity and spending a LOT of time trying to fix or work around these issues.

As a customer who waited for 2 iOS 7 updates already, and 2 iTunes updates, I am loosing my patience. I also sent feedback already in the past about this problem. I would like to get some feedback from Apple if they are aware of this issue, and if there will be a fix soon because if not I can just go and return that expensive iPad and be disappointed.

Thank you for your time,

Best regards,"

Having lost about half my music when I last did a sync a few days ago, I felt brave last night, and thought I'd try converting higher quality songs to 192kbps rather than 256 which I normally use. iTiunes showed it was syncing some changes to Apps and then sat at Step 8 of 8 from about midoight until 1am when I went to bed.

When I checked this morning it was still on Step 8 of 8, but on checking the iPhone General>About, the number of songs is very slowly increasing, although we're not even half way there (currfently 4147 or nearly 10000!). Glad I'm not going out anywhere today to have to disconnect the phone!

I'm not sure about the memory usage though: 'About' and 'Usage' currently showing 17.7Gb available but iTunes says 11.33Gb. With 'Usage' saying 18.1 Gb used and just over 40% of songs on the remaining 17.7 won't be enough. I'd have thought the iTunes figure should be the free space once all songs are transferred, but 11.33 seems a litle on the high side. Maybe the fact that there were *some* songs already on the phone might be affecting the reporting of space.

I'm curious. Has anyone tried just syncing via Wi-fi WITHOUT being physically connected to the computer? I was getting some kind of (error -50) and my Sync would quit on the second step. After a few tries I gave up, and on a whim started the sync via the iPhone. It went fine. Just like normal.

If you've never done a wi-fi sync, then you have to connect your device physically first. Select it in the Source list on the left which will show you the summary pane. Scroll down to options and check box called "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi". It may be best to then quit iTunes to save that setting. Disconnect your device, then restart iTunes. If all goes as iTunes promises your device should still be in Source column. A lot of times it's not but just go with next step and see what happens. Then, on your phone or ipad choose Settings>General>iTunes Wi-Fi Sync. Tap that- then tap Sync Now. If it's greyed out or says Cancel Sync, tap it anyway. Won't hurt it. Sometimes I wake it up that way. It should show if it's in the Source List.

iTunes can be real persnickety. Some days it ALWAYS sees my devices, some days, it shows my devices till I try to sync them then it drops them. Just keep wacking it on the side of the head, metaphorically speaking, with connecting or not connecting, or try to sync from iTunes, then the iPhone alternately. Sometimes repeating the request to sync will eventually wake it up. I have noticed this update is very slow to respond. Maybe we're just spoiled for speed now and need to wait till they get the glitches out. I do wish that Apple would do their field tests on volunteers before releasing a new version instead of the general public while they work out the glitches, for crying out loud.

Yes, I'm exactly the same as you. I have both iPhone 4S and iPad3 (the last new iPad). The iPad will more regularly sync over wifi but the iPhone won't. As you say the devices often appear in the left panel of iTunes on the desktop, but can't be found when you request a sync!

A different problem altogether, but maybe connected: I simply cannot connect my devices to the computer's full library of uncompressed songs. The vast majority of times the devices don't even see the host computer when I go to 'More' in Music (yet they are both visible in iTunes). That problem has existed forever though, not just since recent updates to the software.

Great letter be interesting to see if you get a reply.

My iPhone 4S won't sync my music since the iOS & iTunes updates,with all the same msg's ( waiting for changes to be applied ect )but my iPad 3 is fine !! Very odd.

OK, after 30-odd hours I now have a fully stnc'ed iPhone 4S (bar two songs, which I can live with!). It stalled at about 6pm yesterday (after 18 hours), but I started it again and it finished overnight.

I would urge anyone who says their sync hanging at the final step 'waiting for changes tro be applied' to double check on their device Settings>General>About to see the number of songs it shows up, and revisit that tab a few minuets later bto see if it changes. My iTunes appeared to be hanging at the final hurdle but it WAS transferring the music... very slowly: songs were being transferred at the rate of about 300 per hour at 192kbps.

The reporting of memory usage appears to be broken though, and Usage/About were initially showing totally different figures from iTunes, and the eventual free space now showing on iTunes is 6.2Gb compared to the 13.1Gb it was showing yesterday when I started the sync!

Guys,

I finally fixed mine without reverting back to the old version.

I tried every permutation of clicking and unclicking the sync box, different cables, different versions, removing playlists, certain songs, etc...

Eventually I figured out the problem was my purchased music from multiple different iphones. Once i fully downloaded ALL songs to my phone that I had purchased, and then transferred all of those to itunes (not via sync) and then un synced all music and then reloaded everything it FINALLY worked.

Let me know if you have any questions

Well, 7.0.4 is out and it hasn't improved anything for syncing music on my 4s with iTunes 11.1.3.

I seems to be happy syncing anything under 100 songs - and does it quite quickly, but when I try to sync over 100 songs iTunes gets stuck at "Waiting for changes to be applied".

Maybe a new version of iTunes will help?

Well, it's been a couple of hours now and it's still "Waiting" - that's as good as stuck to me. If fact, none of the songs from this sync batch have showed up on the phone (yet).

The last batch (85 songs) synced in about a minute so I really would expect that the 10 albums I put in this batch (somewhere around 130 songs) wouldn't take that much longer.

And I've discovered that (at least) one of the songs that did look like it synced before has been truncated to 1 second long - It might be good for a "name that tune" game but not much else.

It's too bad - this process used to be flawless.

The following worked for me after installing the just released iOS 7.0.4 (on iPhone 5 while running iTunes 11.1.3 OSX 10.9 on an older MacPro).

1. Backup iPhone

2. Restore iPhone

3. Restore last iPhone backup

Another symptom for me - I had a unusually large amount of space on my phone that was attributed to the notorious "Other" (yellow) category when looking at the data useage bar at the bottom of the iPhone Summary screen in iTunes. After restoring from backup this collapsed to a more typical and much smaller size. (iTunes then showed the phone as having 8.95GB free when only reporting ~3.9GB free prior to restoring.)

Note that this was after much unsuccessful fiddling per the other posts in this thread (e.g., clicking auto-sync, switching b/w Wifi synch on/off, yada yada yada). Also, I don't know if updating iOS to 7.0.4 was related/necessary - I first tried updating iOS without restoring and that did not work.

Also, for completeness, the iTunes/iPhone music synch issue affected me after upgrading to Maverics.

FINALLY working for me!

After a few days of extreme frustration, trying a bit of everything, even visited apple in store which they were 0 helpful! You all had way better advice than anyone in store did!

So after restoring and blah blah blah trying a bit of everything here is what worked for me

So I have 2300 something songs, and everytime I tried syncing my music it would onlue 200 something songs..

Eventually I tried downloading my purchases from icloud, downloaded super fast too,

and after I did that, I syncec my phone and the rest of my music finally started to sync too!

At first it showed downloading 1 of 200 songs downloading, but once my purchases were downloaded it switched to 1 of 2100! So I guess they are now 2 different processes

Be patient!

I had been really frustrated with this as well but finally got things syncing up again today. Originally after upgrading to iOS 7 I didn't have enough room (maybe) and only a fraction of my songs loaded up. iTunes would sync normally, but would never pickup the remaining songs no matter what I checked or unchecked.

Previously I had tried:

- Checking / unchecking sync music

- Clearing all music data from phone

- Restarting + hard reset of iPhone

- Updating to latest iOS and iTunes (7.03 and 7.0.4, iTunes 11.1.3)

- Enabling iTunes Match and downloading directly through the phone

- Force Music App on phone to quit and sync

Nothing worked. Each time iTunes would represent a change in the Sync Bar, but never would sync any of the changes. Here's what I did today, though not sure which thing(s) broke the spell:

- Updated to iOS 7.0.4

- Backed up and then restored device from iCloud

- Synced with Computer (at this point iTunes had loaded a handful of songs on. I had unchecked my playlists but there was still a lot of songs listed to be loaded (that weren't). iTunes had secretly checked all of the albums in my playlists as well. I went through and unchecked all albums so there were 0 songs to be loaded up).

- Made sure the Music app in device was closed

- Synced to 0 songs / audio

- Synced a Playlist and VOILA!

i've also been talking to a senior advisor at apple for the last 4 weeks now. sent screenshots, videos, diagnostic logs, lots of emails and 6 phone calls.

reset my phone at least 12 times, tried various work arounds......recreating all playlists, editing xml's, resets etc....

still no solution........still hit and miss syncing. sometimes it wipes half my songs off my phone if i modify a playlist. sometimes it's ok. today tried 4 restore syncs from backup and 3 setup as new phone. the last sync worked so far but i dare not do anything as i'm tired of doing it all again.

if i add up the hours, i've spent over 5 whole days trying to resolve this (lot's of time, stress, anger)

roll on 7.05 (with a message saying all sync bugs fixed along with an apology and)

So, you know how you get mad at something for not working only to realize that it's becuase it's not plugged in?

Everyone that's having trouble syncing music has the option box "Sync only checked songs and videos" marked and the "Manually manage music and videos" unmarked, right?

If you have the "manually manage music and videos" box checked... no music will sync unless you put it there. Just one of those things that might have been overlooked as it was staring you in the face. (:

If that's not the case then this is a serious issue.