Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

Same problems here: "Other" category now at 27GB, music not syncing, iTunes crashing... Wow!!! I've tried all of the recommendations in this thread and the problem keeps coming back. All the family gadgets are going through similar issues. I used to criticize other plattforms and advocate in favor of Apple all the time, but now it feels as if we're dealinf with a different company. the seamless integration of hardware and software that Steve Jobs used to talk about, I don't see it. I can't play the music I paid for!!! How long will it take Apple to fix this or should we start migrating to Google/Amazon???

If this helps even in the remotest bit...

I'm now "officially" upgraded to itunes 11.1 (held out as long as I could, but finally upgraded to from 10.7 to 11.1... the latest as of about 3 weeks ago) and at the same time, I upgraded the ios to 7.1.4 (new apps require ios 7, ios 7 requires itunes 11.1.... grrrrrrrrr).... So that's my setup.

I have 80Gb of music and a 64Gb iphone (55Gb is dedicated for music).

I have managed over the years to create a number of smart playlists that funnel down to one or two playlists I dub my "radio station"...

One static playlist that is "permanently stored", comprises my core music (about half), and several other playlists that make up what I normally play.

I went in and said "only what I choose" and I only choose the key playlists (not all playlists, not one song, not one artist, not one genre, JUST the specific playlists). The end result is every time I sync, I end up swapping in and out about 20 songs a day, and I am reasonably satisfied the core songs I listen to will stay on my phone.

I also went in and said "do not check for new music/videos/tv shows/whatever you might want..... I'll keep it synced with itunes, thank you very much" in the settings (icloud, I think and music)

It seems to be stable since I upgraded, although the only real problem is the fact that it takes many long minutes to sync the phone every time, stuck at the "waiting for changes to be applied"....

For anybody who has similar problems as Anarion, you might want to create a smart playlist that is "type is music", manually sync your artists/playlists, and do what I did which is to only sync that playlist (and any other playlist you happen to be using)... I think part of that horrifically long sync time is the phone going through deleting songs off the phone that are not in the database.

I think what might be happening with the ever growing "other" category is this:

1) itunes goes through and identifies items in the database to remove (In the case of a playlist only sync mode like mine, it's a lot better at removing old items out of its database than if you say "go ahead, you can manage EVERYTHING and I'll poke at you from time to time with itunes".... That used to work well without the cloud (e.g. ios 6 and itunes 10.7), but now apple wants everybody to use their match and icloud service (and expects that's the only way people use it), so it probably is quite buggy there.... if you say, "no, no, I'll manage it through a playlist", it still makes sure the songs are nice and proper (as opposed to the phone going to the cloud to "sync" itself).

2) itunes then tells the phone to remove old items on the phone that are no longer in the database (this is where, in a perfect icloud world, the phone would just do on its own, but itunes mucked with its database). That's where the phone is now spending all its time looking for things that might need to be deleted.

3) when the phone is done, itunes then adds new entries in the database, and proceeds to copy over the new media.

4) sync is done.

If this is so, that could explain why "just sync everything" causes so many problems (maybe due to allowing ios 7 to "check the cloud for new purchases", etc).... If itunes and the ios are both screwing with the database, orphaned files might get created far too easily which would explain the "other" category.

Good luck to all.

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

After months of fiddling with this and not getting 90% of my tracks to sync, deleting my iCloud account was THE breakthrough in getting it to work.

There is undoubtedly some new iCloud process going on in the way iTunes syncs music under the "sync entire library", and it's a bit broken.

Make sure you're safe to turn off iCloud, delete yout account, and try to sync then. I actually still had some syncing issues, but I deleted and re-added my entire library, and with iCloud off, I eventually got everything over. Hopefully it will behave better when I re-activate my iCloud account. Good luck everyone.

for me this worked...

-go to music on your iphone

-click on 'more' in the bottom right hand corner

-click on shared

-click on 'phil's Library' (or rather whatever your library on the compter for itunes is called)

nothing else had worked

This worked for me....

BUT..

Only while I was in my home network, go out from it and you are back to square one.. Try it?

Fed up with this now already ditched the IPHONE and the IPAD is going next then its bye bye APPLE!!!

Thank you so much for this advice!

I'm not sure if this is what helped me, but the only other thing I've tried in addition to seanmacc's advice was that I did a hard reset of my device. No data is lost when doing this. I simply held down the home button and power button at the top of the phone and waited for the Apple logo to appear.

I really do advise that people try seanmacc's method of organizing your library because the issue does appear to be linked to iTunes and storage of the files. I know that my music synced fine before updating iOS 7 and iTunes to the latest versions and I doubt there is any issue with the actual music files.

I hope this helps someone else struggling with the issue. It's definitely maddening!

I had this problem a few days ago, tried numerous things and eventually called it quits assuming that it was either iOS 7 or iTunes being flawed ..not my phone, any particular song, or specific settings.

Anyways I had this problem on 2 phones, a 64Gb iPhone 5 and my regular 16Gb Iphone 5 ...I was using the 64Gb in hopes of syncing more music but it didn't work, so I just switched back to my 16Gb today (other reasons involved) ..and still the problem was there with one particular 55-song playlist.

So I tried this:

1. I created a new playlist with a new name and put in all the same songs

2. Deleted the original and now empty playlist

3. In the new playlist I selected all the songs, right-clicked and chose "Get Info" & went to the "Info" tab

4. I selected the following boxes:

- Album, Comments, Genre, Artwork

5. I made sure these were all blank/empty (so basically it mass edits all the songs and puts in the same info for those selected songs)

Tried syncing again, and it worked perfectly. Granted I haven't tried this with more playlists/songs but I did not have the canceling sync issue when I went to re-sync. Hope this works for someone.

Oh and I'm on 7.0.4

I have been having problems syncing music for months and have tried various permutations.

We have an iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad Mini and have also just purchased a new iPad Air and iPhone 5S.

Software is up to date on all devices.

Here's what has - finally - worked for me:

(1) Close all open apps on iPad including Music (double click the home button and delete all open apps)

(2) Plug the iPad in via cable (not over wifi)

(3) Go to Music tab

Select the music to sync

(4) Go to Summary tab

Backups - Automatically Back Up

Tick "iCloud" (not This Computer)

Options - tick ONLY the following:

(1) "Open iTunes when this iPad is connected"

(2) "Manually manage music and videos" - this will also mean the Music tab is blank if you click back on it

This method has worked across all my devices. There are still some errors with missing and different artwork but it's now only a few issues - as opposed to before when the majority of music wasn't syncing.

I'm a big advocate of Apple but this episode has been an absolute farce. Hours wasted and no intervention from Apple. Disgraceful.

Jerry Dammers wrote:

I'm a big advocate of Apple but this episode has been an absolute farce. Hours wasted and no intervention from Apple. Disgraceful.

these forums are for apple users to try and help others. if u would like to get help from apple itself u should call them at 1-800-apl-care (1-800-275-2273)

This is dumb, but...

Had a HD failure, and replaced the HD and restored from Time Machine earlier tonight. After that, I had an issue where I couldn't sync music to my iPhone 5s with iTunes 11.1. It seemed like it was just skipping the step altogether. Was driving me crazy.

Frustrated, I sat looking at the iTunes -> Music -> Songs screen and noticed all the checkboxes next to the songs were un-checked. Out of desperation, I selected all and clicked "check selection" in the right-click menu, went back to iPhone -> Music, selected my playlists and albums, pressed "Sync," and presto. Everything synced.

To test, I went back and unchecked a few songs and re-synced. Sure enough, the unchecked songs disappeared from the phone.

So, I guess apparently the checkboxes under Music -> Songs need to be checked before the songs will sync. So, there's that.

Of course, I'm probably the only one who didn't know that.

Thats only going to work in your wifi network=( Oh and those posting about how you need to check "manually manage music" get this I check that box and then I click apply... or then go to music once its checked and then check the sync music box and sync a playlist I made and it won't sync. And when I go back to where the manually manage music option is it is back to being unchecked... I tried doing these things in varying order of operations but it will revert to doing nothing. And I have tried to do all the reinstalling bs and restoring and whatever but to no avail. Apple we don't need any more updates when you finally get it right. So please don't give me any more.

Thank you clevergirl929! You made me realize that my iPhone and iTunes (on my Mac) were signed in under different Apple IDs/email addresses. As soon as I changed my iPhone back to the correct one, the "Shared" option showed up, I selected my full library and I'm back in business. Very much appreciated!

Thank you Jnp9. Thank you!!!

I too had tried everything, restoring as a new phone on a completely different Mac, tried to sync music, still didn't work. I always got about 5 GB of songs from random albums. After reading your post, I selected all songs, right-clicked to choose "Get Info", checked the box next to Artwork, and clicked OK. This effectively erased all album artwork I had for all iTunes songs. Now my sync works perfectly, even with my old backup, so I don't have to lose any settings!

I plan to select all songs and choose "Get Album Artwork" to restore the missing artwork.

Thank you so much! I was afraid to listen to the posts that said to restore the phone or iTunes because the last time I tried that, I lost 300+ pictures off my device that I will never get back.. I simply clicked the "Manually manage music" button and iTunes did the rest for me. All of the music, that wasn't syncing, copied to my iPhone 4s and now everything is working perfectly. Only took 2 hours for me to find a good solution...