My iTunes isn't syncing to my iPhone 5.

What happens when you try to sync it? Do you have Manually Manage Music turned on? Does it display any error at all? Do you have the Playlist selected in iTunes to sync?

I've been having this same issue also, since I downloaded the new iTunes version on Tue 10/22/13. Did online chat with Apple rep last night, where they had me reset my phone and delete all songs and podcasts off my phone before trying to re-sync and nothing has helped. Going to the Genius Bar today.

You can only do one of those things, either manually manage music or sync. You cannot do both. If you are manually managing music, it won't sync. You have to drag the playlist from iTunes to the phone while it is connected to iTunes.

Am having the same problem. Brought some CDs and burnt them onto itunes (version 11.1.3) When I go to sync my iphone 5 (version 7.0.3) it goes through the various steps, spending an extensively long time on the last step (step 6) applying changes. However, the changes aren't applied and the music isn't on my phone. Despite me having around 30gb still of available space!

This is the first time I've had a problem like this and only occurred after updating.

Apple rep had no definitive answer for me.

They just gave me a new phone and it syncs 90 % of the time now, but it still spends longer than usual on the last step. Also, I didn't download the new 7.0.3 IOS version yet.

I am having the same problem! I never had issues with it until I did the last IOS update, and I make new playlists several times a week for my job. Do we know why yet?

The new phone they gave me to fix this problem originally started having the same issues about a month after getting it.

Finally spoke to a Snr Apple rep, he said it was one of two issues.

Either my most recent IOS version downloaded incorrectly and is just a bad version or somehow one of my backups got corrupted and whatever is wrong with it keeps getting passed on and down to each new back up I create.

So he helped me completely remove my most recent IOS version 7.0.4 and reinstall it which cleared up everything and I was able to update my playlists and podcasts again. And he said if the issues return, then most likely we know that the problems lie with my backups.

It's been a couple of weeks and the music/podcats iTunes syncs are starting to get iffy again. The last couple of syncs I performed, nothing new was pulled over. So I will be contacting the Snr rep again soon. From our last convo it sounded like the fix would be to restore my phone back to brand new factory settings and not use any of my backups to restore. I'd have to rebuild it manually, I guess.

yes turn on manage manually. Drag in some playlists directly onto the phone. Working for me in 7.0.6. Had never worked since I bought the phone. (5s 64gb) Thanks ChrisJ😁

ChrisJ4203 wrote:

You can only do one of those things, either manually manage music or sync. You cannot do both. If you are manually managing music, it won't sync. You have to drag the playlist from iTunes to the phone while it is connected to iTunes.

I've tried posting to these forums without much luck. Won't keep me from trying to solve the iTunes/iPhone/Playlist problem.

Tonight I tried deleting all of the songs from my iPhone. When SYNCed with "nothing" checked, no playlists, no purchases, nothing, the iPhone (device on iTunes) still said it had 35 songs. I opened the iPhone and sure enough, more than the 35 songs are still there. Many songs were flagged with a cloud. Even after deleting iCloud from the iPhone. The cloud songs are sill there.

Of the songs STILL on my iPhone , I can drag delete them, but they return after I sync it again. The really annoying thing is that I have deleted about a dozen songs from my library, deleted them from iTunes purchases, deleted them from my everything I can find and they still show up on my iPhone after SYNCing. Why? Where are these songs stored?

I posted on one of these forums that I created a playlist with 1805 songs just for my iPhone. Under device, it shows 1810 songs. In the iPhone itself, there are 1958 songs. Many of these songs are songs I deleted from everything I can find. They still keep coming back.

If the iTunes library isn't the place where the songs are stored, where are they stored?

Problem finally fixed, but i'm a little unsure of what the true solution was.

Like I mentioned earlier, I'd gotten a new phone and tried multiple solutions and the syncing problem has always slowly returned until I could no longer sync songs and podcasts using my PC iTunes.

Well, with the help of a Snr Apple Support rep we finally found a permanent solution.

First, we removed the automatic downloads for Music, Apps, etc that I'd selected under the Itunes and Apps settings. Then we restored of my phone back to factory settings and did not use any existing backups to rebuild all my settings. I had to do it all manually again. So I think I did this in Jan '14 and it's almost May now and the syncing issues have not returned at all.

So I couldn't tell you if the removal of the auto-downloads or the factory restore without using an existing backup was the true solution, but one or both or those things solved my problems.