IOS 8 won't sync music with itunes

OK, was initially having the problem that music not purchased through iTunes was not syncing. After trying various things it got worse where none of my music was syncing properly. However after following the advice to delete all of the music on my iPad the syncing started working perfectly. Thank you!

Thank you, I did this and it worked exactly like you said after i turned off itunes match, thank you for the help

I have officially moved to Spotify. Apple has had ample time to address or at least acknowledge this issue. I have tried all the "fixes" and while one will work on occasion I just do not have the time to perform a 6-12 hour sync every time I want to add a single album to my iPhone. I truly feel losing users will be the only way they will ever address this. I hope I'm wrong...

(Lightbulb goes off -- thank you thank you THANK YOU Analog83!).

I've been using the CopyTrans Suite from Wind Solutions for the past two months to sync and manage calendars, contacts, bookmarks and music. It's worked flawlessly, and it's been a real savior as Apple and iTunes have been unable to deliver on a solution to resolve my music sync issues. But I just read your post and I think I've been going about it all wrong.

CopyTrans works, and it works GREAT. Love the Suite, love the developer, great support, Apple and iTunes could learn a thing or two from them. But it takes me longer, the process is involved and requires attention to details, and I'm spending way too much time effort and energy on functions that used to be as simple as plugging an iPhone or iPad into a cable and hitting "sync".

WHY can't I simply let iTunes manage everything BUT music? Uncheck the music sync option within iTunes, let iTunes have its fun and mess up the music on my devices, THEN let CopyTrans FIX it by allowing it to copy everything over to those devices, correctly of course, and never use iTunes for music again?

I've asked CopyTrans and Apple if this will work. I expect a detailed speedy response from the former, and anything but from the latter 🙂

Thanks and best of luck to everyone who continues to battle with these issues every day. Absolutely shocked at Apple's lack of response to all of this. As much as I LOVE my iPhone 6 and I am so heavily vested in other Apple devices and applications, I am most definitely looking into Android smartphones next time around. You can bet on it.

I know this is probably a stupid question; but I'm guessing that iOS 8.1.2, which was just released, had no effect on this issue?

(try to hold back the laughter)

Correct. I'm on 8.1.2 and iTunes 12.0.1.26 and the bed is still shat.

I'm having the same issues and no solutions seems to fix it other than restoring my phone and never syncing it again. iOS8 has put me right off Apple. No one seems to know how to resolve these issues. The update has added loads of "cool" things I'd never used and taken up a load of space and ruined the ipod function in the process.

Went to Apple Store and explained the problem. First answer was to wipe and restore. Told them I had done that multiple times and that syncing worked twice each time after but then failed consistently.

Second answer was to wipe and NOT restore, but to rebuild the phone from scratch. Has anyone had lasting success with that option?

They seemed to be willing to replace the phone, but this discussion seems to have a number of people who have cycled through new hardware and the problem hasn't disappeared.

I have not rebuilt from scratch so I'm not sure if that is a permanent fix but I have serious doubts and am not willing to attempt that grueling process. I can confirm that this issue has spanned two iPhones for me so I HIGHLY doubt it is a hardware issue.

Its definitely a software issue and that software is ios8.

I may try it over the weekend. Only saving grace is that if this does NOT fix the problem, I can restore again and use a backup.

Apple store analysis of my iPhone is that it showed "a number of regularly crashing apps". I asked which apps they were, I may be willing to just delete them. Response: Oh, you can't. The "apps" are core elements of IOS. OK, understood. It's not the nasty apps I have on my phone, it's the nasty operating system.

Their contention is that I am restoring a corrupt version of the operating system every time I do a wipe and restore, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I can't downgrade the OS by restoring a backup that had version 8.0 or IOS 7. I always keep the latest release that's been installed on the phone. In addition, the regular updates from 8.0 to 8.01, to 8.1 should be replacing the "corrupt" elements of the OS.

So, I'm willing to try their suggestion, but I'm not optimistic.

I've been working directly with a senior Apple resource for over two months, with no resolution to these issues. In one of our more recent exchanges, he reached out to me with an extensive list of requests from one of his engineers, which included but was not limited to rebuilding my entire library. There were no solutions in their recommendations, only trial and error requests on my end to try and troubleshoot. So I pushed back, I refused to do anything that they asked me to do, but I insisted that they keep my case open until they could provide me with a solution. They do not have a fix, and I'm not sure if they're ever going to have one, because I don't see enough people having these issues. It seems to be limited to a small number of folks with the unique experience of owning a lot of their own music versus purchased through iTunes. That seems to be the common denominator among us. I have roughly 6700+ tracks, most of which I got from sources other than iTunes. It is definitely NOT device specific or hardware related, I've got this issue across every device I own - iPhone 6, iPhone 4S, iPad2, you name it. So don't go for the device exchange thinking that this will solve the problem, it won't.

I have worked up a set of replacement sync routines using two products from Wind Solutions - CopyTrans Contacts and CopyTrans Manager. The former does everything but music and cost about $19, the latter does media like music video etc. and it's free. Between the two of them, WiFi updates for iOS releases, app updates, Google Calendar syncing functionality, and a couple of other minor twists, I've got most of what an iTunes sync covers down pat, so I simply don't sync with iTunes anymore. I haven't synced with iTunes in two months and I'm happy to report that everything including music works perfectly across all of my devices.

The problem for me right now is that this routine takes a lot more time energy and attention versus a traditional iTunes sync, so I want to go back to iTunes for syncing everything BUT music, and I can't, because even though CopyTrans can manage the music piece, I can't find anything that will allow me to manage playlists without iTunes. And the second that I tell iTunes to start syncing again but uncheck the "sync music" option, I will lose playlists within iTunes and on any synced iOS devices as well. I am actively working on that issue, if I can come up with a workaround, that's the last piece. I lose Sound Check/volume normalization without iTunes as well but that's a small price to pay. Can't live without playlists, so I'm currently at an impasse. End game plan -- iTunes for everything but music, But if I can't come up with a workaround for playlists, I will use my current routine with CopyTrans and others indefinitely, use iTunes exclusively for a manual weekly backup just in case Apple ever resolves these issues, and never sync with iTunes again.

I've been living and breathing this nightmare every day since I got my iPhone 6 two months ago. I am no longer a happy Apple customer after years of satisfied use . The funny this is that right now, everything is working fine and I LOVE the iPhone 6 itself. It's iOS 8, iTunes, Apple support and syncing that I could do without.

I am more than happy to share my current process, procedures and components in detail with anyone who needs them. Good luck everyone.

Thanks for the detailed post. I had considered CopyTrans Manager in the past but decided against it. Primarily because I didn't want to introduce a third party with write-access to my device that would circumvent the Apple closed/protected ecosystem.

I'm ready to revisit that decision.

Not being able to manage playlists is an issue, but I guess I'll resolve one problem at a time.

I didn't understand your comment about disabling music sync causing you to lose playlists on iTunes and all other IOS devices. My understanding is that you would disable music sync for your iPhone only and that playlists would continue to exist and function within iTunes and any device that somehow managed to complete a sync.

My basic understanding of CopyTrans is that it uses iTunes drivers to provide the various functionality it provides without jailbreaking, which makes it kind of unique relative to other options out there.. I'm sure that you can read up on them and their solutions in extensive detail on their Web site. I had used CopyTrans in the past so I was already familiar with them. Support was tremendous initially but has tapered off as my questions have gotten harder 🙂 Bottom line is that their products are solid and I've had no issues with them after nearly a month and a half of replicating iTunes sync functions with their various products.

Right now, I use CopyTrans Manager to manage my music, it works great, I want to continue doing that, I need that playlist workaround in order to make it happen. The issue is, I also want to go back to iTunes in order to sync everything BUT music. I want to do that at least for my primary two devices - an iPhone 6, and an iPad 2. In order to do that, I need to uncheck the "sync music" option on the music tab within iTunes. When I do that, iTunes will remove all of the music from those devices. No problem, I've got CopyTrans Manager, I can get it all right back on them, sorted by song album artist genre etc. Just like iTunes. The problem is, that process will also remove all of my existing playlists from iTunes. Yes, I have them backed up, and I have them across multiple devices. The problem is, how to get those playlists back onto my devices after I've chosen to let iTunes sync for everything but music, at which point I would lose playlists both within iTunes and on the devices as well. CopyTrans evidently can't copy playlists from iTunes to device, computer folder to device, or device to device. Nothing out there in the Google search universe or Apple community seems to offer up any alternatives as well. So I might be stuck doing what I'm doing indefinitely, which is fine, beats having no sync options that work and losing/rebuilding playlists is not an option to me.

Hope that clarifies.

I'm assuming you use a Windows machine and that is why you are forced to do a wired sync to manage your contacts and calendars? I feel for you. Luckily I have all Mac's at home and am very happy utilizing iCloud to sync contacts, calendars, etc. I use Gmail for email so that is obviously synced across everything by default.

As I stated previously, I've taken advantage of Spotify's $.99/3 months deal that they are running to 1.) give it a shot and 2.) give Apple THAT much more time to acknowledge/address this issue. I'm not holding my breath though.

And for any who are wondering, Spotify has been great. I've always been worried about my data being sucked up by constantly streaming music (I'm a huge music fan) but it has the "Offline" feature that can hold up to 3,333 songs. Simple as can be. I'll have to re-visit my decision once my promotion runs out and I move to the $9.99 plan/month.