IOS 8 won't sync music with itunes

Greg, I think I have more-or-less the same set-up as you (128 gb iPhone 6, all software updated to current release, etc.), although I've had the same sync issues with both the family 2013 Mac Mini and my 2010 Macbook. I have a large music library (500+ gb), mostly mp3s at 256 or 320.

Anyway, last night, with no new software updates to either the phone or itunes, my phone synced three times in a row like a champ, all without requiring me to perform a full restore. I didn't try to remove any music, which has caused the software to wipe everything a couple of times in the past week, but the fact that I could continue to add music to the phone without it freezing or wiping everything off the phone was significant. Didn't do anything different; the phone just suddenly worked like it's supposed to. After all the annoyances of the last week, this was an incredible relief. Wish I could tell y'all what changed, and I hope that it keeps working.

I've been saying that it *seems* like it's iTunes and not iOS. It just seems to make sense since that's where everything starts.

New problem. I recently deleted a couple of albums from iTunes and synced but they remained on my iPhone, at least the listings remained. No amount of syncing could get them removed from the iPhone. Once I tried to play the files on the phone and it raced through the list, greying them out as unavailable, I hit the little stop icon next to the song, re-synced, and they were removed.

The good news is that it didn't take ages to complete the sync, but I have been quitting and restarting iTunes and restarting the iPhone before each sync and having success with that.

After it started doing that I reinstalled iTunes by downloading the file and running the installer (I'm on a Mac and it's not really possible to uninstall it, and Apple's prescribed fix is to install over the existing installation). Didn't help.

Well, I'm not sure if a reinstall alone will fix a corrupted library. Did you check your Music folder if there are any folders that don't belong there?

I've gone so far as to install Mavericks on a new partition, created a new iTunes library, ad synced oton a restored-as-new iPhone, and I still have the issues where ripped files stop playing after a few syncs.

I also synced my iPad Air ,which has 8.02, and that now it is exhibiting the same issues. I restored the iPad back to 8.0, and am re-syncing the music library now - if this doesn't fix it, there is some issue in 8.0x - perhaps specifically converting higher bit rate songs down to AAC. I am mostly AIFF, so all converts to 256 AAC for mobile use.

This was not an issue with iOS 7.0x

I suspect most users are just buying iTunes music or putting lower bit rate music directly on their devices without the convert option checked. This is why it may not be widespread.

Both my devices are 128 gb as well - not sure if that's a factor.

(as an aside, this forum software is poor - you only have a short time to edit, and randomly, edits I make to fix typos do not appear after saving - but if you re-edit the post, the correction is there)

This just started happening for me literally a few minutes ago. There are a large number of songs that all of the sudden are not playable on my iPhone. They exist in my iTunes library and play fine, but when I try to play them on my phone (I sync my entire library) they disappear. It is not all of my songs, and it's not anything I've added recently, at least as far as I've seen. I haven't gone through everything, but it seems relegated to songs in certain playlists.

I just connected my phone to my Mac and tried to re-sync so I could remove all of the music but it's hung up on "preparing to copy items" and not doing anything.

This is crap!!!! Every time I plug my phone into my computer it wipes off nearly all my music. I'm getting tired of this. Apple better find out what the problem is. This is the first time ive seriously thought about jumping ship. Get your stuff together Apple!!!

So been having the same problem as everyone else since the update to IOS 8.0.2 on my iPhone 5 64GB, it sync's my music but then adds the same as Data according to the bar at the bottom of the iPhone summary screen in iTunes on my Mac which puts it over the limit.

There's obviously a problem so when do we think Apple will pull their fingers out of their ***** and provide a solution?

So as others have suggested, I looked through my iTunes music folder for anything that wasn't a music file.

I found two PDF's which were part of a U2 album purchase from iTunes, and an.m3u playlist file, which I had exported some time ago for my Sonos systems

These items have always been there, and of course are not in the iTunes Library file. Nonetheless, I removed them and have re-synced my phone again.

I don't consider it fixed yet, but I've disconnected and reconnected 20 times (while my iPad is still syncing on another cable) and syncs were quick (as expected, as I hadn't made any further changes to the library), and all music still plays fine in the iPhone. I've restarted the phone a few times, and will restarted the computer after the iPad syncs, add and delete files, and see if things remain working. It's hard to imagine files in that music folder that aren't in the ITL file would make a lick of difference, and they didn't before...but let's see...

Is there an easier way to find non-music files than to go through each individual folder?

Also, does anybody have any AppleScripts installed with iTunes? Just trying to think what can be causing this. I have one that lets me enter play counts.

Continuing a theme. I don’t think it’s iTunes. I’m convinced it’s iOS8 + iPhone. My wife’s iPhone 5S with iOS7 is fine — all synced perfectly (and we both sync to the same library). My iPad with iOS 8.02 is also fine — all synced perfectly with all songs and data. My iPhone 5 with iOS8.02 had all kinds of problems the day after the update to iOS 8.02 — the one that was supposed to fix the problems with iOS 8.0. I had gone through the first update to iOS8.0 with no problems. The next update caused my song list to go from 9900 to 1900 even though all the music, all 9900, was still in my iTunes library. I followed all suggestions in these posts and nothing fixed it. The iPhone also lost my audio books (Audible and iTunes purchases). I also had the dreaded dashed circle symbol next to about 100 of my now 1900 songs. On some resyncs, iTunes wouldn’t proceed because it said I was out of space — even though I still had 13GB free!

I finally gave up and went through a complete restore — not from backup because my backup by now was the 1900 song backup, not the 9900 song version. So I restored as to a “New” iPhone. Still now sorting out my screens and passwords etc. and arranging the iPhone the way I like it; but all my music is back on the iPhone and the audio books and all Apps — and yes, I still have just under 13GB free. So far, so good. But I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again until Apple does another iOS8 update or iTunes update or both. My wife’s sticking with iOS7 until I tell her it all seems to be sorted out and won’t happen to her too.

Well, if it's iOS 8, its iOS 8 on more than just the phone...it happened on my iPad Air as well.

If you have all your music in the iTunes Music folder, select that folder (not a folder inside) and type

-aiff -aac -mp3 -m4a -m4p -m4r

in the search bar in the upper right of your Finder window - that eliminate those file from the search...scroll through the list, and any files that are outside those excluded file types will appear, even if they are buried - scroll through the list, and if clean, you will just see folders of your music

If I missed a music format, feel free to add it with the "-" before it to exclude.

I think the only way for this to be fixed, is with an update to iTunes, because every option we've tried with works for some, and not others, and iTunes sync was flawless before iOS 8, no matter what boxes we had checked or unchecked.

EXACTLY !!!

Before this update , didn't have to do special tricks to get MY music to sink to my phone !

where is the link to complain directly to Apple , all this back and forth means notin , APPLE HAS TO FIX THIS !!!

Yes, they should address it, and I would guess internally they are...their track record is ultimately very good in fixing issues (not all), but given the multitude of devices and systems out there, and the relatively few of us having issues, it may not be quick. So this thread is better served by people posting what they've tried, their setup, and what progress if any has been made.

I'm feeling somewhat encouraged after the last fix, which was to remove all non-music files from the iTunes Music folder (and other folders if you have music in more than one spot). Since doing that, I've re-syned about 25 times, and no loss of music, no extra data, and no mis-match song count.

What I did most recently, in order...

- Installed Mavericks on new HD partition and created a new iTunes library (no improvement)

- Did a restore as new phone (no improvement)

- Changed cables and USB ports (no improvement)

- Located and deleted non-music files (PDFs, .zip, and .m3u files from my ITMF) (improvement - potential fix)

I returned to my original boot drive, currently running Yosemite - since I share the same user folder between both the Mavericks and Yosemite boots, I could continue testing syncs without starting from scratch...15 syncs later, it continues to play. I've restarted the Mac and iPhone multiple times. I've not tried WiFi syncing yet, but it may be that iTunes is not handling invalid file formats in the music locations correctly, despite the fact they are not in the ITL. I'm not saying I understand the logic, just reporting...

So try searching your ITMF with the exclusions noted earlier, move out non-music files, and see. You might want to move out FLAC files if they're there as they are not natively supported in iTunes.