Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

I posted about this issue in another thread. Wow great to see so many people voicing their opinion about this. I think we need to find a way to make this louder. Perhaps we should send a letter to a major blog like engadget, macrumors or something like that. This really is a big that lots of people are having trouble with. I'm super frustrated. I have 64gb iPhone 5 that I can't use because of this.

It's ridiculous, really, that one should have to devote so much time to this. Why stay in the Apple ecosystem if you can't load new music onto your phone without having to search through forums to find time-consuming solutions that don't even work? I just bought this **** iPhone 5s and now I'm going to have to go back to buying CDs whenever I want to hear new music. There are far worse things in life, I know, but it's unbelievable what these technology companies get away with. 62 pages worth of consumers wrestling with this problem...

i sync with my iphone 5c just fine... and i have a library of over 5k. only about 300 of those songs are itunes purchased. i am able to get any of the music that i want synced onto my iphone without problems and im using a windows 7 computer.

my point is, when it works its awesome. and its designed to work. 99% of issues are due to user error or user not knowing how to fix problems that come up. technology comes with problems. the more complicated the technology the more problems that can pop up. the only way to avoid those problems are to not use technology. barring living under a rock, it is advisable to learn how to deal with those problems when they pop up.

and thats why there are 62 pages of conversation over this issue. "not able to sync" can be caused by a giant range of different causes.

my advise to most people that dont want to go back to their cd player:

- delete ur library out of itunes. when it gives u the option to move files to recycle bin or keep on computer, choose to keep. then use the option that pops up in ur empty itunes library to "scan for media". this will fix any issues that are caused by broken links with ur music library files.

- uninstall itunes and components and reinstall. the proper method for this can be found easily by searching the apple website. follow suggested procedures! this will fix software related issues that are in the program files of itunes.

- restore iphone. also something u can easily find out how to do using apple website search. just make sure to serach that phrase exactly. u can do a back up and then restore back up onto the phone after the restore iphone phase if u want to keep ur information but be warned, any problem ur trying to fix with this solution may travel with the back up. i would advise setting the phone up as new instead. this solution will fix any software related problems u may have on the phone itself. that goes for any apple device, not just iphones.

if none of those solutions fixed ur issue then the problem is with the computer u are using, or the mobile device's hardware (mobile device hardware being the cause of this issue is extremely rare).

zelous wrote:

yes, these suggestions that mr zelous previously described in greater detail usually fixes the sync problem:

- delete & re-create itunes library.

usually this first step fixed the issue without having to go through the next 2 steps (thank God!)

- uninstall itunes and components and reinstall.

- restore iphone.

99% of issues are due to user error or user not knowing how to fix problems that come up.

technology comes with problems. the more complicated the technology the more problems that can pop up. the only way to avoid those problems are to not use technology.

it is advisable to learn how to deal with those problems when they pop up.

on a separate note, i still think Apple needs to focus on making its products much more robust, because:

(1) iphone and itunes user interfaces are designed really for dumb people like me. there is not much ways to "customize" the install and use of them. there's no "work-around" commands/short-cuts that 99.99999% of the users knew about. Typical install and use are just based on automated install and available GUI commands. so, the chances for the dumb users like to screw up due to installation and/or usage issue is extremely low.

(2) consequently, if there're still 62 pages of these problem posts on a simple (but frequent) sync task, then there's a need to make it more robust.

(3) even if a dumb user like me manages to screw up the links, all we ask for is "inform us explicitly that a specific list of music files were not sync-ed due to broken links" and gives us a kind big-brother advice on how to fix it without having to elaborately recreate the library's and playlists. that's all.

NOTE: we understand that links can easily be broken by moving the actual files from the itunes media file from within the computer's user interface. sometimes dumb user do this dumb thing out of realization of what will happen. Well, we are dumb after all.

the library is easy to recreate but the playlists are much more elaborate (at least to me) and dumb people like me don't have the time to tinkering for a solution to the damage we created.

Those are my dumb user wishes.

Cheers!

a note to Apple engineers:

I noticed that the last time this sync issue appeared on me is when the memory on m iphone is down to 75 MB. the issue went away after I did the following steps:

(1) unchecked most of the playlists.

(2) sync'ed up the iphone to the reduced playlists. this freed up a lot of memory space.

(3) went out of itunes completely.

(4) restarted itunes.

(5) attached the device.

(6) re-added the playlists that i previously unchecked.

(7) sync'ed up the device.

So it seems like itunes had some problem with controlling the situation when the memory level on the device is too low. hope this helps you guys helps us in the future.

Zealous,

I agree to a point. I've used ever ipod generation since the 3rd generation iPod. I've been syncing for years with no problem. I've done everything you mentioned and still have not had my problem solved. I've even tried syncing with an entirely different laptop and it still did not work. I've erased my iPhone and iPad (which both exhibit the problem), erased each device started from scratch, rebuilt the library from scratch and still I have this problem.

This is clearly something else. Apple really needs to address this issue and I'm not sure why this hasn't made it to a few blogs yet because this is insane. I've seen multiple threads of this issue and I have friends that are seeing this problem as well.

Just for the record, I never moved any files from their old locations. And I have over 5 GB of empty space ont he phone. I've been using different iPhones for about five years and never had this sort of problem. So I don't think this is about anything "dumb" I did, sorry; it seems to me what's really stupid is to assume that someone else has done something wrong with his iPhone when you have no basis for making that assumption.

I "solved" the issue twice already by restoring the iPhone, and then the new music I had purchased successfully synced. But then, whenever I've purchased new music, the new songs wouldn't sync, regardless of what playlist they were in or what box I checked. To try to solve the problem, I tried purchasing and downloading the songs directly to the phone--which worked fine until I synced with the computer, at which point the sync *erases* the songs from the iPhone. That's not my fault; that's buggy software. I will try the "Zelous" suggestion of deleting the library out of iTunes without deleting the files from the computer, etc., and hope that that's a permanent solution to the issue and not just something that fixes the issue until I make the audacious decision to buy a song from the iTunes store. I still say that these are problems that are time-consuming to fix, they're apparently faced by a significant number of users (this discussion has almost 350,000 views, I see at the top of the page), and for something that costs as much as an iPhone, we shouldn't really have to be doing this much work to get the thing to work properly.

I can only offer this suggestion, which worked for me, multiple times: Restore your device as a new device and sync. Syncing music must be the FIRST thing you do: don't even connect it to the internet. Also, iCloud must not be activated, I noticed it interferes with the sync. I have synced successfully my library three times, and I'm talkin' about a huge library, 46 GB and 23.000 songs. It generally takes 5-6 hours to complete the process, on a USB 3.0 plug. I must say that my library is very orderly, for example I deleted all album covers to gain more storage space for apps and such.

If you happen to load new songs and you want to listen to it on the iDevice but you have problems syncing, I suggest a free app which is called FileMaster. I store new music on it in between syncs and it works really well. I know, it's not a really neat solution, but it works.

Still, it would be nice if Apple fixed these issues. I'm into the iOS music scene and I really can't see myself going over to Android.

Simply use the iTunes alternative iPhone PC suite. It can sync all the music on your computer or in your iTunes library to your iPhone, iPad or iPod and backup all the music from iDevices to computer or iTunes library without even opening the iTunes.

I went on a rant on Twitter recently about the issue and nobody seemed to care except one person responded saying he's had this same problem since 7-8 months ago. I'm surprised not more people are complaining about this issue that seems to be widespread. Funny how apple released 2 updates since iOS 7 came out and none address this syncing issue. It's weird how I can manually add songs to my library but hooky phone up to the computer via USB cable and those songs will not transfer for nothing like something is blocking the transfer process. I'm curious to find out if this is just an isolated issue with music only. Will other things sync on your devices like photos or your contacts, videos, movies?

itunes says that I have 181 songs, but only 86 would sync to my iphone after updating to ios 7.

I discovered the reason: Only songs with existing mp3 files on the computer will sync after upgrading to ios 7. Somehow, the mp3 files for several songs were deleted from my computer -- I must have deleted them at some point.

I discovered this after going through the various methods of recovering songs suggested here, including copying all 181 songs to a new playlist and then syncing; checking all songs and then syncing; unchecking songs, playlists, re-syncing, re-re-syncing, etc.

Turns out it was my fault for deleting those mp3s from my computer.

It is ridiculous that there are so many posts and views RE this issue! Apple come on!! After upgrading to ios7 I started having the same syncing issues. I've made sure the file links in iTunes are ok, reinstalled iTunes, restored my phone as new and it still isn't syncing the majority of my songs! Only the songs too, no other issues and I've never had this problem until ios7. The only thing that works for me is to tell iTunes to convert my music to lower bit rates, ***! I don't want lower quality mo3s but if this is the only way I can sync music I'll do it. Please fix this apple!!

Since this thread is so long, I will repeat one solution. Malformed playlists can cause this issue. Find the bad playlist (for me it was a single list that had all my music videos in it) and remove it--or remove all of them.

[I am sure many folks in this thread have other causes of their grief.)

Hwy6AandM0 wrote:

itunes says that I have 181 songs, but only 86 would sync to my iphone after updating to ios 7.

I discovered the reason: Only songs with existing mp3 files on the computer will sync after upgrading to ios 7. Somehow, the mp3 files for several songs were deleted from my computer -- I must have deleted them at some point.

I discovered this after going through the various methods of recovering songs suggested here, including copying all 181 songs to a new playlist and then syncing; checking all songs and then syncing; unchecking songs, playlists, re-syncing, re-re-syncing, etc.

Turns out it was my fault for deleting those mp3s from my computer.

u could have easily solved this problem by deleting ur library and then telling itunes to scan for media. this would have updated any changes u made to the mp3 files and would have only taken a couple of minutes.

After trying to take Zelous' advice and making matters worse, I forked out the $19 and got help from Apple Support. It took a while, but things seem okay, now. I would recommend that others with this type of problem also contact Apple Support, as similar problems may have different causes. In my case, I somehow ended up with two iTunes Media folders, along with doubles of all the subfolders. I had to get all the contents into the correct folders/subfolders, then go to iTunes-->Preferences-->Advanced and make sure that the iTunes Media Folder location was correct. I backed up all my files from the iPhone to the computer and then did not just a restore but an "erase and delete" all content from the iPhone's Settings-->General-->Reset section, and then I restored from the backup. In the middle of that, I also took some steps to add missing files and correct some instances where the songs listed in iTunes were pointing to folders that didn't have the songs and thus had an exclamation point by them.

The whole process took hours, but I think it's okay, now. The Support person was excellent--reminded me of Dell in Dell's heyday. The screenshare program they have helped a lot; I can't imagine having gone through the whole process without it.

Anyway, good luck to you all. Hope your situations can get solved faster than mine. The Support person theorized that my problems may have been caused by allowing the phone and ipad to sync and do automatic downloads over wifi; she said that if you go out of wifi range while a sync is happening, it's the same as unplugging the phone (or whatever peripheral) during a sync, and file corruption and other weirdness can result. Who knows? I've stopped doing wifi syncs and downloads and am hoping the problem is gone for good.