IOS 8 won't sync music with itunes

Two weeks later, the issues continue.

My devices affected - anything running 8.0.2. that sync to iTunes 11.4.0.18 running on a Windows 7 Pro Dual Core Pentium machine - (2) iPad 2 64GB, (1) iPhone 6 128GB, (1) iPhone 4S 64GB - I have others that might be affected as well but I haven't got the time or energy to start bringing them into the fold, focusing on the here, now and most important one.

The issues - if I go through a normal sync like I always did before 8.0.2., the iPhone 6 or whatever changed to mess everything up, by having the "Sync Music" selection checked, I can count on all of my ripped music (roughly 6400 songs) "disappearing" or becoming grayed out the next time I try to play a song, playlist, on the phone, over Bluetooth, basically under any condition but at some random time, sometimes right away, usually right away, sometimes not. When that happens, I then have to go back and resync the device by first unchecking the "Sync Music" selection, which then requires hours for the music to be removed from the device. Then I have to go back and resync the device, again, by now checking the "Sync Music" selection which then requires hours for the music to be reinstalled on the device. For 6400 songs, I'm looking at 10-12 hours, each way, a full day to remove then add back. Of curious note is that my iTunes purchased songs are NOT affected by any of this, at any time before during or after this 24 hour at a time crisis, I can access and play my iTunes purchased songs, with the exception of when I get really ticked off and decide to restore the device from scratch within iTunes. Which is a waste of time and creates nothing but more work and most certainly does not fix the problem.

The fix - my fix? I've been saying it for the past week or so in multiple posts, there really is only one fix...get your device to a point that you are happy with (i.e. use whatever combination you need to in order to get all of your music, purchased, ripped or otherwise) on that device, test it thoroughly to make sure that you don't get the "fast forward artwork missing music" screen of death followed by greyed out songs all over the place, and once that is working, it's very simple...

DO NOT SYNC YOUR DEVICE!

I haven't synced in over a week. Guess what? Everything has been and continues to work fine...apps, Bluetooth, and most especially music. Plays fine, not so much as a hiccup, playlists, individual songs, skipping around, moving from Bluetooth in one vehicle to another. Not so much as a blip.

Because I HAVEN'T SYNCED MY DEVICE IN A WEEK.

Now I'm still going out to the App Store and doing updates over WiFi. And I will occasionally hook up the iPhone 6 to iTunes to do a manual backup, because I was tired of continuously losing my icon layouts and groupings. But I am NOT syncing. The first hurdle I see is the next time I rip a CD and want to someone get it over to the iPhone without syncing, haven't figured that one out yet but not worth it. I know that I can get music on and off in its entirety in 24 hours if need be, so I'll wait until I have a day to spare. Or Apple fixes the issue. Whichever comes first.

Additional comments --- I have not TOUCHED the option to "Manually Manage Music and Videos". I haven't had to, but if nothing else had worked and that worked for me, I would give it a go. I just haven't had the need. Simply checking/unchecking "Sync Music" works on my end. I also notice that some folks have issues getting their purchased stuff on their device, whereas I have the opposite situation. FYI, I have about 80 purchased tunes on iTunes, and about 6320 ripped of my own, I'm wondering if that makes the difference in terms of which set of workarounds work best for any particular situation.

Last but not least - Apple and in particular my assigned Apple rep has been tremendous throughout this two week plus period of living ****. He has given me constructive advice and we have tried various steps together that make sense, none of that "have you rebooted" or "must be something on YOUR end" BS, he recognizes that there is a problem and he's working with me and his engineers to try and solve it. One of the things that he asked me to do that may or may not have helped was to select the option "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128Kbps". I'm not sure it actually does or did anything, but it does free up some space so that's nice. We have a couple of plans in the works for next week, including the addition of songs/albums to be purchased on iTunes versus ripped, then run a couple of experiments, probably wind up capturing some data on my end to send back to the engineers. I am trying my best to help Apple to help me/us, constructive discussions on these boards are getting noticed and helping them as well.

And certainly last and absolutely least -- because Apple is trying to help and I like my rep, I cannot confirm nor deny that I have seen a certain tweet by a certain poster to this discussion board, and I cannot confirm or deny that I was laughing so hard that I literally went out and found a site that actually sends me a message any time that a certain hashtag is being used. I think it's the greatest hashtag ever, I just can't confirm or deny that I saw it because Apple is still helping me and I want to keep them happy. For now 🙂

Good luck everyone!

I, for one, very much appreciate your thorough and well articulated input. As some said previous, "misery loves company," and its good to know that I'm far from the only one with this issue.

I have only gotten the "greyed out" songs after one of my botched syncs. More typical is my "Other" file on iTunes is arbitrarily increased by such a large amount that my music is not longer sync-able. I am then forced to delete all music using the device and then resync. Sometimes it works. Most times it doesn't.

After my last successful attempt I have sworn off syncing until I have confirmation that this problem is cleared up. Praying that iTunes 12/iOS 8.____ fixes the issue.

#syncgate lives!

I might have left out one step. At least. Sorry.

I too had the massive "Other" issue, on several of my devices, and was able to alleviate on ALL of them by doing a full restore through iTunes and setting up as a new iPhone. Or new iPad or whatever. That definitely fixed that particular issue. Lost everything but not such a big deal on a new phone, bigger deal on older established devices, just take good notes, make printouts of your icon layouts and groupings, and prepare for a little extra work on the back end to set everything up again. Good luck.

I am also having annoying, persistent problems with music syncing since "upgrading" to iOS 8 on my iPhone 5. I'm running the latest version of iTunes (11.4) on a Mac.

Here's what happened in order:

1) I upgraded the phone to iOS8 and everything appeared to be fine.
2) A few days later the cover art started getting mixed up on the phone - the cover image from one artist would appear when another artist's song played. This happened with music that I ripped from my CDs into my Mac's iTunes library and synced to the phone.

3) A week after that only songs purchased through iTunes would play on my phone. The rest of my music appeared to be there, but each song had a red circle icon beside it and the player app would skip over those songs when playing.

4) I deleted all music from my phone and synced it all over again (a long, annoying process).

5) That seemed to work, but now I cannot seem to sync new songs over. My iTunes library has a Smart Playlist that automatically collects songs that I rate 4 or 5 stars. This is the playlist that I sync to the phone. The playlist updates in iTunes but new songs do not sync over.

Ugh. What a hassle.

Update. After 4 hours of cleaning up my iTunes Lib, I restarted, and the phone pulled the few playlists I had selected. Today, the next time I reconnected my phone, I experienced the same bizarre behavior that everyone else is experiencing: Phone synced and removed all of my songs. When I attempted to resync, it failed to upload any songs and even became stuck in step 1 of 4, "waiting for sync to start." Ridiculous.

Who is going to bite the bullet and be the first to attempt a sync with iTunes 12 (Yosemite) and iOS 8.1 on Monday?

YAY! 8.1 on Monday! I'm sure we'll all be back here Monday night with some other random issue.

(I'm bitter). ;-)

Same issues as mine, only the songs purchased can by synced to my phone. This is a first for me, it really *****. it seems like you can only add purchased items and not the one I downloaded to my laptop. *** big time

Yup. Having all these same problems, in some configuration or other, running iPhone 6 on 8.0.2. Never had a problem, ever, with any iPhone and music sync. (The problem may be the ages old iTunesasaurus, that has been cobbled together generation after generation and needs a total overhaul; but that's another thread!)

Interesting and well-thought out replies from everyone. Appreciate reading everyone's input.

For me, this was the tipping point. No more iTunes. There are alternatives today that work with Apple products that I have been testing since the botched iOS7 upgrade (which looks great compared to all the issues with iOS8).

WiFi, photo upload, and others...and now spending 12 hours on lost media to only find this thread now. Apple has reached a new low with their upgrades and lack of quality control.

I have spent 4 weeks with half-working devices, especially while traveling. I lost a lot of money and time.

iTunes has been a painful beast for years, and they just can never get it to work seamlessly. I rarely sync over the years regardless of the version because it just doesn't work most of the time and takes hours to figure out. Multiple devices, multiple iOS, multiple OS, and multiple computers...all the same unreliable processes.

Farewell iTunes...no more purchases through iTunes as well. Off to things that work consistently.... I wish enough people would do this to hurt their bottom line to kick them in the rear. Maybe one day...because I would like to see Apple be a winner again.

Got an update to iTunes Windows, 12.0.1.26 tonight. Downloaded and trying now. No change to how my iPhone 6 synchronizes.

On Monday I figure I have nothing to lose, so will be updating the 6 first to iOS 8.1. No rush on the other devices until some review, good or bad, for the 6.

As usual, the update to iTunes tries to take away the menu list of Music, Podcasts, Devices, Playlists, etc that should be listed all down the left side of the page. The problem is, I can't locate the menu setting yet to get it back. Some simpleton at Apple keeps thinking iTunes would look better if it were more like Microsoft Zune software; all icons and colors instead of the database it actually is. Sometimes, though, things work well in a certain method, and SHOULD NOT BE CHANGED. my opinion... Irritating customers, always getting in the way of "good design".

I believe (for me anyway) I have a workaround.

(it appears that while copying music from one playlist to my device, if I "interrupt" that by asking iTunes to copy over a second playlist, or more songs while it's copying, it cancels the sync)

I have iTunes 12, and an iPhone 6 Plus. I have manually manage music and video enabled.

I would copy a bunch of songs over from various playlists and noticed a bunch hadn't yet copied over to my phone, and appeared "greyed out" on my device.

I deleted all my music from my phone, and started again by copying one playlist over. Waiting until that is completed and then copying over more songs.

It's a little more laborious, but works fine for me.

I updated my wife's 4S from iOS 6 -> iOS 8 and am having the same problem. Extremely frustrating as she's gun shy of updates and I finally convince her and now the most important thing to her (music) is inaccessible!!

Also, I'm getting the phone hanging in 'waiting for changes to be applied' for hours. I left it on all night and it still didn't complete.

Welcome to our (1st world problems) nightmare. Tweet about #syncgate if you are able. Only way this will get actual traction.