Q: Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

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.

Thought I might add some screen captures to show what I have.

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

ellenng wrote:

 

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

The icloud thing could have something to do with it.... I have the iphone 5 (not the 5s), but I have the icloud account set up... I do back up to the computer, not to the cloud... maybe try that if you're interested in using the cloud for other things (it does have its uses like syncing bookmarks)

On the device summary page when you plug it in with USB (I still don't trust wifi sync, and I definitely will never trust a third party to store my media a-la-cloud).

Turning off "Live Updating" in smart playlists settings seem to take away some problems I had with certain smart playlists not updating properly.

I logged off my itunes account from my ipad, then logged back on. Then my ipad would sync the music on my itunes account.

Thank you for this solution to a very frustrating problem. This worked beautifully for me.

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

clevergirl929 - you are BRILLIANT!!!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

It worked exactly as you said, clicked MORE, and SHARED and LIBRARY did it in less than a minute!

<3

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!!!

S8to - I really hope not. But thanks for telling me!!!!

Try it and see, just turn off your wifi on the IPAD and move outside the network??

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