Q: Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

This past Saturday I tried to sync *1* song to my iPod. It got stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" again. This had happened before and I had to restore as a new iPod. I tried every suggestion I could find, but it was so screwed up and everything I tried just made it worse. I finally had to restore again, but I restored from a backup. I still had to resync all my 11,000+ songs, which took all day, all night, and part of another day. Last night I took some songs off and added some new songs, maybe 50-60 songs in each direction. I left it syncing all night but this morning it was still "waiting for changes to be applied". I finally canceled the sync so I could at least have music today. It had taken all of the songs off that I wanted off, plus a few additional songs, and it had synced six new songs and stopped. I have no idea why. Last time I thought the problem was caused by a photo. I had about 10 photos being synced, and because I was having so many problems I stopped syncing photos. For some reason one photo was left behind, and it looked like my iPod was stuck trying to sync this photo that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Now I am not syncing photos, and I don't see any on my iPod that should not be there. I have no idea what caused the problem or how to fix it other than restoring my iPod AGAIN. I am to the point of sobbing uncontrollably. I can't take this anymore. The iPod is no longer able to perform its basic function. How difficult is it to go back to iOS 6?

StrayKatt wrote:

 

This past Saturday I tried to sync *1* song to my iPod. It got stuck on "waiting for changes to be applied" again. This had happened before and I had to restore as a new iPod. I tried every suggestion I could find, but it was so screwed up and everything I tried just made it worse. I finally had to restore again, but I restored from a backup. I still had to resync all my 11,000+ songs, which took all day, all night, and part of another day. Last night I took some songs off and added some new songs, maybe 50-60 songs in each direction. I left it syncing all night but this morning it was still "waiting for changes to be applied". I finally canceled the sync so I could at least have music today. It had taken all of the songs off that I wanted off, plus a few additional songs, and it had synced six new songs and stopped. I have no idea why. Last time I thought the problem was caused by a photo. I had about 10 photos being synced, and because I was having so many problems I stopped syncing photos. For some reason one photo was left behind, and it looked like my iPod was stuck trying to sync this photo that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Now I am not syncing photos, and I don't see any on my iPod that should not be there. I have no idea what caused the problem or how to fix it other than restoring my iPod AGAIN. I am to the point of sobbing uncontrollably. I can't take this anymore. The iPod is no longer able to perform its basic function. How difficult is it to go back to iOS 6?

The answer to your problem may be in your third sentence. As I've posted three times in this thread alone, the only thing that got my Touch syncing music correctly again after the iOS 7 upgrade was to reinstall iOS 7, NOT restore a backup, and set it up as a new iPod. You can easily do a trial run to see if this works for you; if it doesn't, you still have your backup you can restore. You won't lose everything, as Safari and iBooks bookmarks, contacts, and some other things are stored in iCloud separately from "backups". I was able to email my Converter+ templates to myself so I didn't lose them. My Tapatalk ID preserved my subscribed accounts. I did have to re-enter all my passwords, though.

Having the same problem with my iPhone 5!  Annoying, and non of the mentioned 'solution' works

Can't believe that Apple made this big mistake with iOS7 for such simple task!!! Disappointed!  -.-"

i'm sure i tried this before. i setup as a new phone 1st and then from backup. i'll try it but, have a few questions:

once ios7 is on the phone i'd assume it doesnt re-install?

it also suggests the backup file has issues?

As we say on my country, that's like to kill flies with cannon shots. Better make a

Playlist on the iPhone with all your music on it. Export it to XML with iTunes. Import the XML Playlist on iTunes. Verify that all the music on your iPhone is in the imported Playlist. Delete all the music on the phone. You can do it selecting Manually Manage... and synchronizing. Then select one more time Sync with selected Playlist or, if you want to maintain the manual management, select Fill with the desired Playlist also in the Music Tab of the iTunes iPhone Management (this option is in the low left part of the tab)..

Last night I had the same issue - my iphone 5 with latest ios7 (7.0.2) would not sync all of my music from my computer to iphone.

This worked for me:

1. connected iphone to computer

2.  clicked on iphone (tab/button top button right next to "itunes store")

3.  clicked on music tab

4.  deselected sync music checkbox and selected apply (bottom right)

     - all the music selections on the itunes screen on your computer should go grey (not selectable)

     - This should remove all music from iphone with exception of purchased music list on phone

     - I watched the sync icon on my iphone while this was happening

     - Since i had the music app open on my phone i was able to watch the previously sync'd lists go away

5.  At this point sync was complete and the only list i had on my iphone was the purched music list

6.  Re-selected the sync music checkbox and reselected the playlists that i wanted on my iphone

7.  Clicked apply (bottom right)

     - at this point i saw the music syncing and all was well

I hope this works for someone else as well....

very frustrating workout night yesterday without some of my favorite beast mode songs....

Cheers and good luck

I have done every type of restore there is...through iTunes, erasing content on the iPod, deleting music from the iPod, restoring from backup, setting up as a new iPod, etc.  Restoring works, but only temporarily.  There were only four days between my last restore and the one I just did.  This isn't feasible to be restoring my iPod every few days, especially since I have over 11,000 songs to sync.  I finally realized that I cannot have all of my music on my iPod until Apple comes out with an update that resolves this issue.  Last night I restored again and tried syncing just two smart playlists, one of which referred to the other.  It synced about 135 songs and stopped, so I had to restore again.  This time I synced only one smart playlist and left the one that referred to it off.  This morning the sync had finished and it looked like I had all 365 songs.  The only thing is, even though I only have one playlist on my iPod and it is supposed to contain 365 songs, and there are supposedly 365 songs on my iPod, there are only 363 songs in the playlist on my iPod.  So I'm wondering, could these two songs be the cause of the issue (this time)?  The only way I can think to figure out which songs they are is to compare item by item between the playlist on my computer and the one on my iPod.

managed to fix it

launched itunes (which had all my playlist/music/video present)

i restored it as new phone and saved my contacts using contacts backup app (free app)

opted for 'setup as new phone'

as i had itunes open with playlists shown i re-synced and all worked. all playlists/music/video that were shown in itunes copied over to the phone

then i created a new playlist ('test') and put some songs in. resynced and all ok. added and subtracted content and still syncs ok

just had to restore my personal settings and the contacts file generated and emailed using backup app

it seems ios7 has music & video issues with backup files that were created when previously synced with iphones running ios6 (before the upgrade to ios7)

now it seems to be fixed and syncs faster than before (no long wait for changes/cancelling sync/finishing sync anymore)

Has anyone tried since Itunes 11.1.1.11 came out? Has this changed anything?

Okay, I finally got things syncing normally again, and here's how:

(sorry if this is repeating previous posts)

1. on the iPhone, go to Settings>General>Usage>Music and delete all music data.

2. connect iPhone to iTunes on Mac, in the Music tab uncheck "sync music," then in the general tab check "manually manage music." do a sync on the phone. no music will be synced.

3. now uncheck "manually manage music," then go back and select the playlists you want to sync (in my case, a smart playlist with about 10GB of music). for me, everything worked correctly from this point on.

This is an odd solution, especially given the checking and unchecking of "manually manage music," but perhaps this additional step clears something off of the phone relating to music syncing that was mucking things up. When I got my 5s I did a restore from backup from my iPhone 4, so it wouldn't surprise me if there was some messy data that came over in that process.

Now I just get to wait and see if things continue behaving normally, or if this was a one time fluke.

Good luck everyone!

D

Okay... Now I have found something after numerous wasteful trial and error experiments.

With my current iTune on a 64bit Windows 7.. syncing it with my iPhone 5 on iOS 7 is just a game with luck.... and most of the time luck is not on our side!!!  The luckiest time I was able to sync up to 860 some songs but that's it.  No matter how many times I click "Sync" it just fails!!  So I gave up...

Then, I tried syncing with another computer that I have - a 32bit Windows XP - and it ALWAYS ALWAYS work!  I can easily sync my full library of 17xx songs, again and again!!

Now I just have to stick with this cranky old Windows XP that I haven't turn on for months for syncing my music!! Luckily I rarely add/remove/sync my music... so it can work until Apple finds a solution for me ~.~""  HOPEFULLY!!!  My other things are sync with iCloud

Mind you that if you want to follow my way, you also need to move your ring tones over...  Good luck guys!

this a joke!!!!! not happy!!

Same situation here... none of the suggestions work... and I am not about to setup the phone like a new one.  It is ridiculous to expect people to wipe out their phones to get this working... Apple, fix it!!

I had done a full restore on my Iphone just to be able to move my music back on the phone!  This is totally unsat!  APPLE FIX THIS QUICKLY!  When i try to download from the cloud, it is still not downloading.  I can plug my phone in and move the music by dragging it now.  But this is a serious IOS7 Flaw!  Apple has to address this problem soon! 

Its like deja vu from the IOS 6 launch, I distinctly remember a similar sync bug. sheesh Apple better get its software quality control back no way I'm going to upgrade to Mavricks till at least the first patches.

Anyway thanks nun4db  you post got me trying a few things after spending much of the morning wanting to bang my head against the desk. IOS  7 definitely has this sync memory bug where syncing for music stops after a certain point leaving songs in a greyed out state with no album art and no amount of resetting or rebooting seems to work. My trouble was with a 64gig ipod touch but I suspect its the same for all the devices.

Following the 3 steps

1. on the iPhone, go to Settings>General>Usage>Music and delete all music data.

2. connect iPhone to iTunes on Mac, in the Music tab uncheck "sync music," then in the general tab check "manually manage music." do a sync on the phone. no music will be synced.

3. now uncheck "manually manage music," then go back and select the playlists you want to sync

I would add. after step one check that the music is actually deleted! mine was not. not only the half synced zombie tunes but all the rest even though the ipod claimed it had zero bytes of music data!  I did a soft reset through the menu to no avail then finally a hard reset after which there was really nothing on the pod.

upon plugging it into the computer the content bar lit up with colors so I made sure to uncheck syncing movies, tv shows podcasts whatever. its seems to be working . knock on wood.