Smart Playlist no longer syncs

Question

Smart Playlist no longer syncs

I have several simply smart playlists that I sync to my iPod, to help aid me in assigning ratings to unrated songs from ARTIST-NAME.

They are of the form:

[x] Match all of the following rules:

Artist contains [ARTIST-NAME]

Rating is 0 stars

[x] Live updating

They used to work fine under iTunes 11.0.5 on my iMac and iOS 6.x on my iPod Touch.

After upgrading to iTunes 11.1 on my iMac, and IOS 7.0 on my iPod Touch yesterday, the smart playlists appear on my iPod, but no songs appear inside them - the screen in each smart playlist shows "No Content". If I browse the Music app via the Artists category, I do see the songs on the iPod.

I've tried restarting my iPod, deleting the smart playlists and creatinbg ones from scratch, but nothings seems to work.

Anyone have success with Smart Playlists syncing under the new iTunes & iOS?

Posted on Sep 19, 2013 9:54 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Scott Russell

Level 2

435 points

Sep 20, 2013 3:42 AM in response to Jaime Villacorte

You are not alone. This problem with smart playlist handling has been around since the very first beta of iOS 7. Now that it's officially released, I'm planning on making an official "bug report" on Apple's feedback page.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

For some reason, the zero-star smart playlists show up empty on the iPhone (using iOS 7). But if you were to create a five-star smart playlist, it will sync just fine & display all the right songs. In iOS 6, if you were to adjust the star rating of the song on the iPhone (ie. change it to a four-star rating), the song would be instantly removed from the five-star playlist. In iOS 7, the song doesn't budge until you sync with iTunes on your Mac.

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Answer 2

Nov 13, 2013 3:57 AM in response to Scott Russell

I had the same problem, but I have just found a work around. If you creste a second smart playlist with the rule Playlist / is / the name of the playlist with 0 rating, it will actually sync the second playlist correctly and you have the songs on your iPhone that you marked through your first playlist

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Answer 3

Sep 3, 2018 1:06 PM in response to Scott Russell

Same problem here: empty playlist. But the songs ARE on my iPhone, just not in the playlist.

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Answer 4

Dec 8, 2013 12:04 PM in response to melisapalaciosvb

Good answer Melisa. I found the same work around, create a second playlist using only the first as input, but it is still annoying.

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Answer 5

gchin

Level 1

28 points

Dec 19, 2013 5:32 PM in response to melisapalaciosvb

Melisa's answer worked: creating a second smart playlist in iTunes with the rule Playlist / is / the name of the playlist

Now I can use the second playlist even while the first playlist shows no content on my iphone.

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Answer 6

Jan 24, 2014 11:17 AM in response to Jaime Villacorte

I just updated to iTunes 11.1.4.

I no longer have my playlist problem. Old smart playlists like I described in my original problem are now syncing and working as they should.

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Answer 7

eguardia

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2014 8:49 AM in response to melisapalaciosvb

This was a workaround for my problem as well. 11.1.4 (or .5) still do not work properly for me,

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Answer 8

Jun 29, 2014 1:31 PM in response to eguardia

What about iTunes Match? I keep clicking the manually add songs to my iPod Touch and it keeps getting unchecked! I am trying to get the same songs on the iPod playlist that I have on my iTunes library smart playlist.

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