Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

It's not just parenthesis. Album cover art can also be a problem. Half my library refused to sync due to album cover art that iOS refused to accept. Parenthesis and other small bits in the metadata might be the cause of my other problems.

It seems as if iTunes and iOS 7 refuse to play nicely with metadata that wasn't provided by Apple.

There is one other, MAJOR problem - when music does sync, my iPad mini will occasionally label music files as "other files," and they remain on the device even after I clear off all the music. I went from 1GB of "other files" to 8GB of "other files." I've only owned the iPad for less than 48 hours and I've re-synced the device at least 20 times. Always the same issue, where music files get lost.

I'm having problems with syncing my music too... it is driving me insane!

i have 4 playlists on my phone, and if i add new songs that i just purchased to a playlist, sync my phone, the songs arent there. I can download them from icloud and then add them manually to my phone/playlist but then if I sync again, they're deleted out of the playlist and have to do it over!

i tried getting rid of all my music and syncing it with no music on it (doesnt work)

i tried deleting my playlists off my phone (which ended up deleting them off my computer as well and had to recreate them)

and now, if i sync 1 playlist, all 4 are still there and all my music is still there, but if i try to play songs, it just skips to the next so i can't listen to half the music thats listed on there

so aggravating! i took out my old ipod nano and have been playing that in my car instead because i'm tired of trying

Well I'm back in the "dog house" smh! Yes I got my songs onto my phone that wasn't syncing on its own but now I have a new problem! There are missing songs from playlists on my phone and on my computer! All missing songs were purchased in the iTunes music store too.

Everytime I do a sync, iTunes says it's backing up my phone. Where can I find those backups on my computer? I located the folder with previous iTunes libraries but it's not showing anything from 2014. I'm thinking I need to resort back to an old backup and load that up to get all my songs back in my playlists like I had them. A lot of my missing songs are greyed out with a dotted line circle next to them. Also for only one of my playlists, it automatically created a duplicate playlist but puts a number 1 after it. I have no idea what the heck is going on and I don't think Apple does either.

@melissa82686 try completely closing down iTunes then open it back up and click on Store in your top menu and scroll down to Check for Available Downloads. Sometimes for whatever reason your music won't fully download when you buy them from the iTunes Store. Once you do that you will see them progress bar showing them being downloaded and imported into your library.

My issue is when I select a Playlist, on the Iphone 5 it says No Content. But when the phone is connected to Itunes and select that Playlist, all the songs are there. Again, when I look at the same playlist on the phone, it says No Content, no matter how many times I synch. If I look at the phone and selects songs, then the songs are there,

This is fine but if I have many Playlists, I JUST WANT TO HEAR THE SONGS ON THAT P.LAYLIST,

IOS 7 is the problem.

CMON APPLE! FIX IT!

Also one user stated that if you want to restore from an earlier point it seems you don't have many choices. ****, I would got back to IOS 6 if I could at this point!

Let me give a little more Detail.

I wanted to rate my songs. SO I created a Smart Playlist called 200 Never Rated.

Criterea is Rating is No Stars

Plays is Greater than 4

What happens is in Itunes the songs are there but on the phone the Smart Playlist is there but when you select that Smart Playlist, it says NO CONTENT

The only work around is on Itunes Copy those songs on that smartlist and create a Regular Playlist called say

200 Never Rated Playlist. Then, in the Smartlist add the criterea Playlist is 200 Never Rates Playlist.

This will at least update your ratings and you can view an play through the playlist. Till APPLE FIXES IT of course!

I just looked for where my backup libraries were located. I did find the folder entitled MobileSync which had 2 folders inside that one. One folder had 6,600 files and the other folder had over 13,000 files! I am guessing over the years my phone was backing up just about everything it seems. How do I locate just the backed up iTunes library ONLY? Also I did read somewhere that a restored backup won't work on an older iOS which is stupid. My plan was just to restore a back up from a few weeks ago but I have since upgraded my iPhone to iOS 7.0.6.

I have 42 playlists and one of my playlists on my computer has 55 songs in it. When I look at that same playlist on my phone all of the sudden its saying I only have 21 songs in it!

Has anyone actually taken their device into an Apple store and had them look at it or consult you? If so, what are they saying?

There seem to be A LOT of bugs going on w synching since iOS7. I first noticed, that new playlists won't synch anymore (luckily, older playlists and albums will synch correctly). Then I noticed, that sometimes newly bought albums (on iTunes) won't synch, sometimes they will. If they don't, I can transfer them to the Phone by clicking on the "purchased" playlist (don't know if this is what it's called in english, am using a german version of iTunes on my macbook). Sometimes several of my covers will be jungled up after the sync, solution: rid all music of the phone, restart and try a fresh synch. Sometimes half of the playlists have the same cover. Sometimes iTunes only snychs half of the playlists. Synching is a lot slower than it used to be. .... (I could go on like this).

Cave: don't try creating a playlist you got in iTunes manually on your phone. I tried that, since often, when a list hadn't synched, the songs were on the phone under "title" anyway. After I recreated a list on the phone the original list on iTunes AND the list on the phone would be deleted with the next sync, even though I'd given the list on the phone a different name .... alls since iOS7 and the new iTunes. Support didn't find and answer either. Am thinking about changing to Samsung as well. I'd still use macbooks, I just love em too much, but an iPhone that won't sync correctly is of no use. Will have to buy songs via amazon then, I guess ...

Im wondering if you transfer the backed up files to a external drive that way when you sync the phone it won't change whatever is on the phone and that will become the new backup if that makes any sense. I am going to search the forums to see if anybody tried that.

Hi
I've tried many ways...as i know this problem is associated with album covers
i tried removing album covers using winamp in windows and removed all songs cover one by one then save them without cover
then i made a playlist in my mac and drag and drop them into playlist then surprisingly it transferred all of them into my iphone 5!

hope it helps

I went to an Apple Store and the tech told me that he thought many of the playlist problems could be solved if we bought iTunes Match. He said that Match would sync everything on the desktop to the cloud, and it would then show up on your iDevice.

I told him that most of my music files have special settings, such as volume and EQ settings that iTunes Match wouldn't sync. He said that Apple didn't really think about that. iTunes Match was Apple's solution to people having many different kinds of MP3s and AAC files - Apple would just scan your library, give you Apple-AAC copies of everything you didn't already buy from them, and your music would be cloud managed, forever (for $25 a year).

Obviously, this is unacceptable to me.

We did discuss some workarounds to other problems-

1. Make sure to turn off the "show all music" options on your iDevices. That way, they will only show what is on the device, and not what can be accessed in the cloud. This might also help the sync problem where iTunes will assume you only want the cloud version pushed to your device.

1a. - he also said to turn off wifi while you sync with a cable, just to make double-sure.

2. Metadata. This has been mentioned probably thousands of times on this board. iTunes does not like metadata that it did not create. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It could be bad album cover art, bad symbols (like parenthesis or asterisks) in metadata, or anything. Change or fix the metadata.

3. Drop music in batches to test - this is going to be tedious, but if your sync keeps hanging up, it might be because of bad data in one of your songs. You might have to resort to manually dropping music on in groups to find the offending songs.

Hopefully this will help solve some problems, and alert Apple as well.

1st of all, i must stress i would not be doing this if the ios7 worked as all the previous ios worked. i have owned apple portable devices since the 1st gen ipods.

since ios7 i have spent 100 hours of my time (over two weeks work). i talked to apple senior tech (paul reyes) in california on several occasions. sent sync logs/videos/etc etc, tried all the work arounds, scanned my mp3s with front end, rebuilt libraries, reinstalled itunes and windows 8, reset from backups and clean reset and synced all without the same results. after every update i have had to try resets from backup and sync from factory resets. there is no one thing/pattern to get the phone to finally sync my music & videos.

if it was corrupted media content or files surely it last ios7 update i couldn't sync from the backup and had to try 4-5 times as a factory reset. i can't go through this over and over evrytime there is an update or wait any longer for a fix. this is why have moved away from the iphone.

for what it's worth i have friends that have 4's and 5's and report no sync issues at all.

got the note 3 two days ago so on a steep learning curve.

tried various itunes to android sync apps/software:

mobilego (free): crashed my system

doubletwist (free): slow and un-intuitive

isyncr (free trial version only allows 100 songs transfer): the best of the bunch (paid £2.99 for the full version)

it's been a learning curve for sure but isyncr did the job. it loads and then launches itunes. it scans itunes and then you can select playlists/artists/albums you wish to sync and where you want them saved (phone memory or micro sd memory card). it means i can still use itunes, it just takes a little bit longer to get it all going.

now i have the 6000+ tracks on my note3 and the 125 playlists. i have also simplified the screens on the note to make it feel more like the iphone.

conclusion: all these itunes/android sync programs are good for playlists and music tracks. when it comes to movies and photos they will only copy over all photos and videos in the itunes library. you can't choose which movies/photos as you can do in itunes/iphone sync. i've had to put selected video & photos on the sd card using copy/paste/drag/drop.

the note is just great. very nice screen. lots of free android apps. i have all the apps for free that i had to pay for on my iphone with apple. now i have all my media on my note. it's now the same as my iphone.

the note 3 makes my iphone 4s feel like a nokia 6110.

i will be keeping the note 3 and outing the iphone. if this post gets pulled then you know apple are monitoring (but maybe not listening)

I really hoped that 7.1 would fix the issue. I thought fixing this bug would be one of the reasons the update took so long.

But no avail. Still waiting for changes to be applied.

This is crazy. Over 7 months with this problem.

I tried every solution mentioned in this thread and more (working on a Mac).

An older 4s has it. A brand New ipad air has it.

I live in Europe and paid good money to have large storage devices. A 64GB iPhone, 850€, and a 128 GB ipad air, also 800 € for the ipad. Both are 70 percent empty Because Music just won't sync.

I'm a big Apple user, with 2 MacBook pro's, an iMac, on my 3rd iPhone, my second ipad and An iMac.

But this is crazy. Just crazy.

And to think that An old ipad 1 on iOS 5 syncs all the Music without any problems at all...

@ simplysounds,

thanks for the info about how to transfer to android, since I'm thinking about going for that option as well. Still love my macbook and some of the fantastic apps that only will run on it, but the iOS 7 problems are rediculous. Can't believe apple won't fix this.

Having had issues with my old 4S 64Gb I've just upgraded to a 5S 64Gb, and having backed up the 4 to the computer, the new5S appears to be syncing seemlessly and rather quickly. Having installed apps and tones, it's now syncing music , currently on 92 of 9232 and progressing swiftly :-)

And that's on 7.0.4 on the phone. I haven't upgraded it yet!

Fingers crossed that all the music will be on the ohone when it finishes.