Q: Music not syncing after iOS 7 update

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.

How did you delete all your album covers? When you restored your phone did you lose anything in the process?

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?

dvx. do u go to the summary page and then click on the music tab next to summary and choose what music u want to sync? if so what troubleshooting options have u tried to fix the issue?

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.

The solution is simple enough: iTunes won't sync songs to iPhone or iPod

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.

I've logged in only to tell you that all those things that Apple Support have told you about this problem are ********. An expensive ******** as you will notice the next time that you already have this problem. This issue has come with iOS 7, worst iOS ever, and is still here 8 months after. I've soffered it with a 4s, a 5 and now with a 5s, and with all iOS 7 revisions. I've tried a lot of solutions including deleting all my playlists and deleting tousends of songs. At this moment the "best" solution for me, when I try to copy some song and they remain greyed is to do a sync and then wait around 30' to 45' minutes until the message "Waiting for changes..." dissapears.

Sorry for my english. Yesterday I have restored the Settings of my iPad 2, that works very bad after the iOS 7 update, and I've forgot to reinstall the english keyboard.

P.D.: Asteriks have sustitued cow male deyections. ;-)