Q: Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

everyone that gets angry and bad mouths apple because they dont have a magic fix it button

I like this guy.

Him and his funny pictures.

I know this isn't a fix, but this is what I have to do to MAKE my iPhone update its music:

I use smart playlists to update my iPhone to keep my most recently played, top 300 songs, etc on my phone.  On the MUSIC tab of iTunes, I deselect all of my playlists and sync.  This should erase all the songs on the phone.  After that sync, then I go back and select all the playlists that I want on my iPhone.  This causes my phone to update the 800+ songs on it.  It isn't a sexy fix, but it's working for me until this madness is resolved.  Hopefully this helps someone else.

...and yes, I seem to have to do this everytime I want to add new music to my phone.

I have been wrestling with this for quite some time as well. I was getting ready to call Apple Support but thought I'd try one more thing, similar to yours. And it WORKED!

In itunes, Device > Music > Sync Music  I chose "Selected Playlists ..." and checked almost everything. Then, I went to Device > Summary > Manually manage Music and videos and did a Synch. This  wiped out almost all of the music on my iPod Touch 5G, leaving only the few tunes that I had Purchased (those in the "iTunes Media" foler). Lastly, I changed the Summary to "Sync only checked songs and videos" and redid the Sync. Miraculously, everything showed up on my iPod.

It now remains to be seen whether I can add anything new.

Further to my previous post ...

I added another Album to the library, "checked" it on the "Selected Playlists ..." (added to those already there) and clicked "Apply". This cause a sync and everything worked as it should have. The album was added to my iPod and nothing else got changed. HURRAY!

This was infuriating me for months.  So frustrating not being able to get new music on phone!  I have a bog-standard iPhone 4 and thought all this nonsense was a way of Apple forcing you to upgrade to a 5.  My iPhone 4 has really struggled with IOS7.  However.... tried this 2 days ago and so far, so good.

Turned off both Genius and iTunes Match

Backed up phone

Did full factory restoration on phone

Restored phone from back up

I've added new music to phone on 3 separate occasions and everything seems to be working as it should.

Massive ballache doing it but it was worth it!

Good luck.

Initially, I had thought clevergirls method had worked for me since a playlist that didn't show up previously after syncing finally did, but strangely the contents of the playlist wouldn't actually play. Ultimately, I did what Pires07 did and it worked.

Genius and iTunes Match were already off.

1. Backup to iTunes (I back up locally on my Mac), I also right-clicked on my iPhone in iTunes and chose Transfer Purchases. The reason I did that is because even though I had just backed up, I got a warning after trying step 2 that some purchases had not been transferred. Just to be safe, I also made sure all of my photos were imported into iPhoto.

2. On my iPhone 5 I went to Settings->General->Reset->Erase All Content and Settings which is a full factory reset.

3. Restore from the iTunes backup.

4. Sync.

Everything seems to be working so far.

I've had the same problem and after spending more than an hour trying to get my iPod to sync, I found that one of my songs was corrupted which led to cancellation of the sync. I suggest you try to sync the albums a few at a time to pinpoint the corrupted song.

easy solution for everyone to use that will most likely help 90% of the people here. delete ur entire music library.

i know it sounds scary, but if u do it will then give u the option to "scan for media". that will tell ur itunes to scan ur entire computer for the music on it and it will re-add all of the music back into the itunes. the reason u want to do this is because ur music is not stored in itunes. it is stored in files on ur computer and ur itunes only shows links to those files. if, for whatever reason, ur music file(s) move, change name, or is deleted, that will break the link in ur itunes but ur itunes wont know it until u try to play that particular song.

my method of just deleting the entire music library, keeping files on computer (do not "move to recycle bin" when it prompts u), and then scanning for media will refresh the entire library without the hassle of individually tracking down the broken music. u will have to redo ur playlists but that is the only drawback to this method. after u have done this ur music should be syncing over to ur devices just fine. if it is not then u have officially ruled out ur music being the cause and can troubleshoot from there.

another thing, if u have itunes purchased music u might have to hide store purchases to see the scan for media option. to do this go to ur itunes preferences>store>uncheck show itunes in the cloud purchases. u can check that box again when ur done.

another thing #2. to clear up some general confusion ive noticed. if ur song has a cloud next to it in ur library, that means that u have the show itunes in the cloud purchases turned on and u are looking at a song u have purchased but is not actually downloaded onto ur computer. click the cloud to download it. if it does not have a cloud next to it that means it IS on ur computer. music that is not on ur computer will not sync to a device.

There are people piggybacking on this thread with all kinds of problems that are different from the OP's, but for those that have the OP's problem (like me), I completely rebuilt my itunes library and playlists -- a time-consuming exercise to say the least -- and it did not solve the problem. I would not waste your time unless the other solutions here do not work.

YMMV, of course.

ryandickey wrote:

 

There are people piggybacking on this thread with all kinds of problems that are different from the OP's, but for those that have the OP's problem (like me), I completely rebuilt my itunes library and playlists -- a time-consuming exercise to say the least -- and it did not solve the problem. I would not waste your time unless the other solutions here do not work.

 

YMMV, of course.

yah my post was referring to the piggy backers to try and clear that up.

You Solve nothing my good sir

All I did was move my photo's out of my iPod Cache to my desktop then go to Settings>General>Reset> and erased my iPod and Just resynced everything but this is an iPod not an iPhone and it's 5th Generation. I hope this hopes someone

I've been battling this same issue for quite awhile, very frustrating to have music that I wanted to have on my phone, to see that it's clicked to sync in iTunes to my phone, and not see it end up there after syncing. If I clicked to see what was on my iphone in iTunes I'd even see the missing music on the list all greyed out and vacant. I tried lots of different things, but after reading a lot of stuff in here tonight all I did was turn off automatic syncing and checked the box to manualy manage my music. Then I went for it and bam - over a thousand songs are finally being copied over - including all my missing playlists. So this simple solution totally worked for me, hope it will help someone else.

I have been having the same issue since September (after upgrading to ios 7).  I have a lot of music and add it frequently to my iphone 5, many times from cds.  Every time I add a cd to my library, it will not sync or shows up as a the grey dotted circle. Lately, even stuff that I have downloaded from itunes does not sync properly and is even deleted from the phone from a previous sync.  The step of "waiting for changes to be applied" takes forever and I have a vast amount of "other" on my phone taking up space.  I have done almost everything that I have read on the forums but have not done a full factory restore and backup. Is this still working for those who have done it?  I don't want to go through the trouble and find that it doesn't help!  Thanks all!