Near Duplicate Playlist is Created when Syncing with IPhone

Hi there Vivien.

Well, you are made of stronger stuff than me..

I'm not sure that I'm ready to go through all of that when I can still delete the offending playlists quickly and then resync, even though it's still a pain..

I remember doing something like that for another reason a few years back when I used an iPod myself, before I had an iPhone (I still use my wonderful "old" iPod Classic, even though I get error messages every single time I try to sync it with iTunes these days! 😠😉) and remember the nightmare of sorting it all out.

What, with that and the hassle I've had with Google Calendar not sending notifications and the "workarounds/fixes" being short lived for both, I wonder whether I'd be best off jumping ship; the only thing that keeps me is the general advantage of using iTunes as I know of no alternative if I want to sync my iPhone with my Car Stereo!

Well I didn't really have an alternative as iTunes was not syncing with my iPod at all and my iPod was just creating new playlists without the new material.

I certainly wouldn't want to do it again, but like you I think iTunes is still the best way to get my iPod working in my car.

Cheers.

Bah. When I first started experiencing this issue, I couldn't find any threads about it. This must have been shortly before these threads were created because clearly I'm not the only one. I thought I'd just add my voice to the void that Apple will never respond to (but hopefully they'll actually fix it one day right)...

I've tried loads of things to stop this from happening for the last few years, and I had about 6 months maybe where it stopped happening altogether. That was great! However recently those dreaded +1s have started appearing again. At least I know I'm not alone ... Yeah it's not much of a comfort to me either.

I'm really into my music - that's why I use iPhone because to me it's just the fanciest iPod you can buy. However, the fact that I'm so obsessed also means that any procedures that involve re-syncing my music again are rarely something I can afford the time and hassle to do. I have a 70gb music playlist, and a 1.1TB iTunes library. This is on a really powerful computer ... and it still takes between six and EIGHT hours to sync the music completely. (I have the "convert all higher bitrate songs to 128kbps AAC" option enabled, which is probably something to do with this. But iTunes apparently uses a single thread to do the conversion as while it's syncing my very powerful Mac just stays there almost entirely un-utilised. Converting the same amount of songs in an app such as XLD, which uses as many processing threads as you can throw at it (and as much disk I/O), takes under half an hour.)

I like local media for obvious reasons. I also like iPhones. However this means for over a decade now I've had to bear the burden of iTunes for all my iPhone sins. I've watched as the software gained features, became more bloated, FINALLY added "Queue up next" features that made sense (shout out to iTunes DJ/Party Shuffle), and finally recently they took some hardly-even-noticed features out, to the zeroth gain of performance or efficiency. I like the UI now, it's not too bad, but it STUNS me that Apple, literally the world's richest and most admired company, can't make a basic database-driven app work to sync music back and forth. Now, nothing works 100% and is totally bug free. But as we've all seen, iTunes is actually experiencing a regression. If you had, say, a iPod (5th generation) back in 2006, you would have been able to sync your tunes to your heart's desire without this problem.

Apple needs to prioritise this because the people who are hanging on and using iTunes for their local media are likely some of their longest-running, longest-suffering and most dedicated customers. I'm so deeply locked in to the iTunes ecosystem that it will be an epically gargantuan effort to move to another platform, but if I can't get my ridiculously expensive and advanced devices to perform the basic features that I prioritise most, Apple will literally be forcing me to start looking at other solutions.

FIX IT APPLE. (Oh and stop blocking me from purchases I already own because I happen to owe you £5 that you can't think I will get away with not paying you. I'm a poor, ill person. But that's another gripe... More related to how you treat your customers. This thread is about your products NOT WORKING PROPERLY. Is this really so hard to fix? I mean, right now I can bring up my Photos app, type in 'trees' and see all the photos that contain any kind of tree out of my iCloud-hosted photo library which runs at 80gb. BUT YOU CAN'T SYNC MY MUSIC PLAYLISTS WITHOUT CREATING CRUFT THAT I HAVE TO MANUALLY CLEAN OUT EACH TIME? d a m n)

I agree with you about the lack of support by Apple for iTunes. My music has had a number of issues and Apple support is not helpful. The worst problems are with iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library. Why won't Apple put some of its resources into restoring iTunes for the users?

What!? That post is from 2013 and it's still an issue !!! APPLE FIX THIS !
between iPhone 5s and MacBook Air, latest updates on both, i religiously do updates but they haven't fixed this problem for years!

Wow ! it’s not just me I see, just bought an IPad 5th generation and I can’t believe this company with all its resources can’t come up with a good music library . I’m having duplicate playlist too , problems syncing I have to sync several times for it to work , songs disappearing from my playlist grrr . To make it worse I use my library music for my classes so to me that this is for my job Will Seriously think about ditching apple . So frustrated .

I am having this problem as well and it is driving me crazy....at first i thought syncing two devices at the same time creates this problem but i tried syncing one at a time and i am still having the same problem.

I have had this issue for quite some time now. I just recently decided to look into finding a fix. Like other users have said, after syncing I will get a duplicate playlist with MAYBE a few songs being different. The playlist will have a new number beside it also. Example:

Playlist (real one)

Playlist 1 (duplicate after 1 sync)

Playlist 1 2 (duplicate after 2nd sync)

This will just keep adding up until I delete them. After I delete them it justs starts the numbering over and keeps duplicating. This is very annoying as I pay apple for my music and for their service and would like to have the ability to properly manage my music without bugs like this from cluttering up my library and confusing me while looking for the correct playlist. APPLE PLEASE PROVIDE A RESOLVE TO YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS!!!

I have this one too for some time, and it hasn't gone away even with OS X 10.10.3, iTunes 12.1.2 and iOS 8.3 on an iPhone 6. I've also noticed that it seems to be tied to smart albums/playlists/folders/whatever they're called this week.

I have wondered whether it's something to do with the "Live Updating" option on a smart playlist. EG: You configure the (smart) playlist for live updating. You synchronise it onto the iPhone. You play a track or two from that playlist on the iPhone, which updates the actual set of songs in the playlist. You synchronise again, and because the 2 playlists (one on the iPhone, one on the Mac) are different, iTunes thinks that you've created a new playlist on the 'phone so it creates it too. Then repeat.

I haven't had time to investigate this, but I did notice this problem some time after Apple broke and then fixed "Live Updating" of playlists some time ago, perhaps when the original iPod app on the iPhone was replaced with the new "Music" app.

Does anyone else only see this with smart playlists?

Regards,

Chris

Never was an issue before the latest update in July 2015... But I am also having this issue. I'm sure there's a setting somewhere... It's like my phone wants to keep the original playlist then creates a new one when i add new music. I thought Synching would over-ride the original playlist.

Come on Apple, step your game up!

I've had the same exact problem ever since upgrading to iOS 8.4!

Having this same issue...has anyone figured it out?

Having this same issue too, except on on a Mac (Yes, I know this is a "Windows" forum, but it's the same issue 😝).

So it seems like it's in iTunes across both Windows and Mac platforms.

Fairly annoying and it only seems to have started in the last month or so.

I notice the duplicating issue when I sync an edited playlist.

For example:

Say I have a playlist named "MIX - Rock" and it was created in iTunes. I'm syncing it to my iPhone.

In iTunes if I add or remove tracks to that playlist, then sync, I get 2 playlists in both iTunes and on the iPhone.

MIX - Rock

&

MIX - Rock 1

After comparing both the one with the correct ORIGINAL name has my added tracks.

The MIX - Rock 1 seems to be a copy of the former playlist before I edited and synced the changes.

I've been deleting the extra playlist copy but thought I'd try and look for a solution, ended up finding this thread.

So at least I don't feel alone now :>

I am having the exact same issue.

I create playlists on iTunes and then sync them to my iPhone 6, my playlists are entitled:

Car I

Car II etc.

There's never been a problem, until recently, presumably after an upgrade to either iOS, or iTunes?

Now, whenever I do this, some new tracks don't sync, until I've played them on iTunes and I also get this weird duplication of playlists so that

the Playlists on my iPhone read, as follows:

Car I

Car 1

Car II

Car 2 and I end up having to delete them from the iPhone.

If I don't and merely delete them from iTunes and re-sync, then they reappear on iTunes.

So, it seems that I have to manually delete them from the iPhone, but it's a wearisome process, as I tend to change/update playlists weekly.

I'm really pleased that someone has raised this issue and hope that it is resolved quickly.

I'm thinking of phoning the Apple "Support," number in the UK/Ireland, as they were very helpful regarding an issue I had with iTunes Match earlier on in the year.

Hopefully, it's something that can be resolved in settings, or, if not, a bug that will be dealt with soon.

Same issue except that I am noticing the songs show up in my music library 2 or 3 times and I only have one version on the song in the iTunes media folder. This is really becoming a nuisance as well as creating additional and unnecessary work for us, the users.