Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

ON the ipad3, half my songs were grayed out with the red dot and I was unable to play them, after the latest upgrade to itunes. After 2 days of trying all the suggestions mentioned here and VERY frustrated,I called Apple. My songs are now FIXED! First: back up your ipad and assume your itunes are also saved in my music. Then delete itunes:

in Win 7 from control panel, go to uninstall and remove in this order- itunes, apple software, apple mobile device support, bonjour, apple application support. Close and restart computer.

reinstall itunes @ itunes.com

then restore ipad to factory settings, this took about 3/4 hour

Restore from this backup, you can choose an earlier date, but I chose the backup done earlier the same day.

When the backup was done, it synced and copied all apps, books and songs completely. In the summary page for ipad I had none of the choices for syncing checked, they were blank for the restore. Happy again!

Here's my voodoo. In the absence of any useful advice from Apple, everyone seems to have their own recipe to deal with this, but nothing works consistently because it's simply guesswork.

iphone5s with ios 7.0.5 (11B601), itunes 11.1.4 (62) on MacBook Pro 13" (2.3 GHz i5, 4GB 1333 DDR3, 320GB disk with 68 GB free) running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63b). Has never synced media (Music, Podcasts, itunesU, etc) successfully since iphone5s purchased in early Jan.

Initially setup iphone5s by restoring from backup of previous iphone (4). Around half the music loaded, in alphabetical order (i.e. artists from A to M). No amount of changing selections would get it to load the other half. So tried resetting to factory settings and setting phone up as new phone, i.e. not restoring from any backup. Media then wouldn't sync at all, whatever options (playlists, artists, etc) were selected. Tried turning itunes Match off and on, and tried changing iCloud settings. Only minor progress was could download versions of what itunes thought I had (it being a bit rubbish at reading ID3 tags sometimes) from the cloud, which ended up with increasing numbers of duplications and versions of tracks I didn't want (or even completely wrong tracks), as syncing between iphone and itunes led to itunes thinking I'd got two versions of tracks. Increasingly unwealdy, so reset completely again.

Latest effort is to delete all backups in itunes, unmount and restart the phone, change the phone's name, restart itunes, plug the phone back in and hope that itunes thinks it's a new phone. I hadn't de-selected some of the playlists that I wanted to sync, to first sync failed to add any tracks again. However, unticking all playlists, artists, etc, syncing, then ticking a playlist and syncing again led to the phone finally syncing the selected track. And not only that - the podcasts, itunesU content etc that wouldn't sync, also synced with it, even though I hadn't changed anything on their tabs. Thinking it was now working, I selected the other playlists (around 8 of them containing around 1,000 songs) to sync, which duly failed. So I unselected all except the original playlist that had succeeded and synced again, to take it back to just the one synced playlist. I then selected one more playlist to sync (with around 120 tracks), and that worked. I am now going to try selecting them one by one, in case itunes/iphone5s is so useless that it can't cope with syncing more than one playlist or more than a few dozen tracks at one time.

You can tell Steve Jobs is dead. The number of people having this problem says Apple have a significant quality control problem with their latest software, which wouldn't have got past Jobs. Short-selling or spreadbetting against Apple looks like a good way to make money from hereon in. If they can't make their devices talk to each other efficiently, they have destroyed half the reason that people pay over the odds for Apple products. Looks like a death spiral unless they get a new boss.

Thanks for all this info. It agrees with my testing that certain playlists seem to cause the problem. I think this is a problem with smart playlists in general. I don't belive Apple is blind to this issue. I am also a software engineer and there are problems with my system that I have never been able to figure out or reproduce, but that I would love to fix.

That said there is a problem with Apple. They are not here on their own board asking for people to upload their itunes library files, logs or whatever they need to find the problem, or assuring us that they have solved the issue and are working on a fix. I expect it will be fixed in IOS 7.1, but why not be nice about it. The give a **** factor is missing, and never has been Apple's strong point.

The other night I wanted to add new music to my phone (iphone 5 64GB) and tried a few things. My sync was successful and done in under 2 minutes, adding 2 cds worth of music. I have not downloaded the latest updates that just recently came out so I am an update behind on itunes and ios 7. Here is what worked for me...

I turned off wi-fi and disabled find my iphone. I then closed all running apps/settings on the phone. I plugged it in to my PC (Windows 8). I have manually managed music marked in settings, no other strange settings. I pulled up my library and highlighted the songs I wanted to add and dragged (to the right of the screen) and dropped them into my iphone (not a new playlist). Once this was done, I went back to the summary page and clicked sync and it worked like a charm. No music was removed and all songs were on my phone...no greyed out circles on any of the new songs or previous purchased itunes music either. Just to make sure it was working correctly, I synced my ipod touch (4gen). I had previously been having the same issue with it as well so this was a true test. I did the same thing by dragging and dropping the tracks I wanted to my ipod (I had more music to add since I had been afraid to update since my last sync debacle a month ago). Again, it was done in under 2 minutes.

Not sure if this will work for everyone and I'm not sure if it will work again the next time I do it but it's the first time since September last year that things have worked like they should. This might be an option for people who just want to add music here and there (from cds) like I do. It's not the greatest fix but I didn't have to restore my iphone for the billionth time either (that in itself can't be good for the phone). Like most of these suggestions on the forum, hope it works for someone else out there!

Easiest option going, that (for me at least) seemed to work when all other ideas failed:

- Go on to phone settings and turn off find my phone and wifi

- Plug phone into computer and launch itunes

- Highlight and drag music from your library to the device

And voila!

In my case, the sync started automatically after dragging a combined 20-30 tracks onto the phone, and it finally synced the other 1500 i had checked successfully, unlike every thing else I had tried.

So hopefully this helps some of you.

And I thought apple products were meant to be consumer friendly :/

The thing is, we are all trying different things to fix this issue. We are fiddling, messing, hacking, whatever.

The truth is, IOS7 and Apple broke this easy sync and they ought to Man Up and JUST FIX IT.

My wife's Iphone 3GS on IOS6 point something synchs fine. My ancient 2nd Gen Itouch on IOS4 point something synchs fine. My 4S on IOS 6 worked just fine. With IOS 7 it is broken. I am NOT doing another wipe and reload.

My phone contract has ran out and I can get an iphone 5s but I refuse to until this is sorted. In the mean time I am seriously considering walking away from Apple. My son's Nexus 7 synchs better with iTunes than my IPhone.

APPLE. I AM TALKING TO YOU.

FIX THIS ISSUE.

NOW

Potential New Solution To Syncing Problems!

Like so many others my music syncing suddenly stopped working. I tried all of the typical suggestions on these boards. Here is what finally fixed it for me...talk about obscure.

After I had attempted every music-related feature/option I could think of, I decided to just download the music from the iTunes Store app on my iPhone off of my Purchased list. That's when I noticed a red '1' notification on the More... button at the bottom. I had a single incomplete download sitting in the Downloads queue. A very old one...must have been sitting there for the past 2 months. About how long my syncing has been 'broken'. I deleted that song out of the download queue and attempted another sync from iTunes on my Mac. Voila! My 500-song backlog started syncing over.

Maybe this will help someone else.

So hey, just coming back to say that, while I was unable to get the sync feature working, I was able to get all of my music onto the device! I stumbled across, or remembered, a nifty little feature called autofill.

You see, if you turn off music synchronization, and check the box for managing your music manually under the summary tab, you can go to the "on this device" tab within iTunes for the appropriate device, check settings and make sure no space is reserved, and just hit the autofill button. It will start downloading music to fill as much hard drive space as it can (or alternatively how much you allow it to with that settings menu) with songs. It just starts downloading them down the line (iirc its dependant on their order in your library?) from iTunes onto the device. Since I'm a peasant who was just looking to sync a mere 310 songs, this was a very easily method of fixing this issue for me, and will be for a while until my slowly (but surely) expanding music library makes it not so. But I'm just putting this here to let people know that you can at least still get your music onto the device despite the failure of sync, which I was frustrated myself with endlessly until I figured this out.

Guys,

I stupidly did the upgrade today and had the same problem.

The big give away for me was the "download song again from iCloud" symbol next to the few songs I had bought from iTunes using my phone. These were the only songs I could see on my iPhone, the rest were gone after the upgrade.

I deleted my iCloud account on my phone and did another sync on iTunes, all my music copied across to my phone - yay.

I think that iStupid is trying to sync all your music from the cloud. I bought most of my music from iTunes on my computer, not my phone, or I copied it into iTunes from CD, so it was never on the cloud.

Try deleting your iCloud account on your iPhone, sync and if it works, re-create your iCloud account again. Hopefully it won't remove them all again !

Good luck.

What resolved my issues was not having iCloud. Now it syncs flawlessly. I restored and transferred 23000 songs with no problems, obviously it will take some time. It seems like there is an iCloud process which hinders syncing or manual transferring or autofilling. For good measure I disconnect the iPod from the Wi-Fi. I have an iPod touch 5G, 64GB, with iOS 7.0.4, and a brand-new HP ProBook with Windows 7.

And, if you have to transfer audio tracks to the device and iTunes doesn't work, you can also transfer the tracks on an app called File Master, which is a file editor and reader with a folder file system.

David2623 and dmwells, thank you for posting this. I am able to sync my music now that I deleted my iCloud account. However, and maybe this is because I don't know my phone's ins and outs perfectly... I am still able to listen to music that is from my iCloud account. I didn't even know it was there! But, if I try to select a playlist to sync to my phone, it fills up memory. I was hoping that the playlist would access from the iCloud, but maybe that's a different issue.

Anyway, thank you! I hope this issue gets fixed in the long run, because deleting my account every time I want to sync my music is not how this IOS should work. Thank goodness I have my old iPods to use in my dance classes, so I don't have to rely on my phone!

Kristen

I have a fix that works!

So, what I did was pretty simple but it took me a lot of time to figure out. It's one simple step that everyone seems to skip!

1) On your iDevice go to Settings>General>Usage>Music. Hit "Edit" at the top left and click the ➖ sign next to "All Music". Your music should be deleted off your iDevice (double check this by going to your "Music" app, iTunes purchased music should have cloud icons next to them, non-iTunes purchased music should have red circles with a stop symbol next to them.

2) Plug your iDevice into your computer

3) Under your iDevice tab (for example, "Bob's iPhone") make sure no music is being transported from your computer to your iDevice. Do this by selecting "Only checked audio" and uncheck everything.

4) Instead of clicking sync, click REVERT (this is VERY IMPORTANT)

5) Once it has been reverted, select the music you wish to transport between the computer and iDevice.

6) Click SYNC. Your music should sync fully

Let me know if this works for anyone!

I got so frustrated by this thread and the ongoing issues that I finally went through the website, got a call scheduled, they called me and put me through to a very nice Apple dude.

I explained the issue and how frustrated we all are with it. He sympathised. He basically said that I seemed to be as well-informed about this issue as he is. We discussed some of the 'solutions' on here and agreed they are all temporary, unreliable workarounds. I have gone as far as setting up as a new phone three times... It only works until the next time I add music and need to sync (although perhaps unsurprisingly, I buy music through iTunes and bang, it's on my phone).

Long story short... He said they are well aware of it, we all just have to be patient and wait for updates.

Thanks for this.

I did similar. Went to the store. Restored iPhone. Worked first time syncing then not at all.

I made them aware that this is a big issue. Syncing iPhone the PC / mac should be bread and butter. Different to call centre they didn't seem aware .....

I have also provided feedback to apple direct. ( on syncing / and on the debacle that is downloading / syncing podcasts ). Surprisingly no response.

I guess in summation a simple acknoeledgement from Apple on any forum / medium to update on fixes / problems would be basic courtesy and dare I say good customer service..........

Oh well. Hope the update to fix is soon.

This just worked for me after trying EVERYTHING, i even nearly restored my phone. Just go to the itunes store on your computer and log out. Then log in again and (if you have your phone connected to our pc/laptop) it starts syncing auomatically. If not, just click on sync and it should work perfectly. Hope it works for you too!