IOS 8 won't sync music with itunes

Yes on Windows. I do love my iOS devices but I grew up using computers in business, that means Windows. I fully recognize that Apple makes a better box but the Windows world suits me just fine. If I was ever going to make the switch to Apple computer products, that shipped sailed with these sync issues, at least for the time being.

I tried the Calendar sync via iCloud once. It was a nightmare. I'm a big MS Outlook user, contacts and calendars feed and sync off of that data. Didn't work so well. Perfect example of Microsoft and Apple not playing nice together. Took me a day to resolve. My wife has moved her Chrome bookmarks to iCloud and says it works perfectly, so maybe down the road I will go the same route for bookmarks, maybe give contacts a try for backup purposes, but not calendar. So that leaves me with multiple solutions again, instead of one iTunes sync plus an option for music. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me unless I go iCloud across the board and I just don't see that happening for me, sorry.

Sounds like you got a GREAT deal on Spotify. I totally respect your decision but as you probably can guess by my Windows wired behavior, I'm not a big cloud guy in general. I use iCloud strictly for photos and Find My Phone, that's it. I do hope that Spotify works out for you for as long as you need it, or until Apple gets their act together, acknowledges these sync issues and fixes them, whichever comes first. Like you, I'm not waiting around for Apple, and I would advise anyone who cares about syncing and backing up data to investigate solution(s) that work best for them and make the move. Apple doesn't care about this because not enough people are complaining, so no one is working on resolving these issues. You have to fix them yourself.

This post is now quite long, and I've not had time to read every post, but this is what worked for me:

On my iPhone (just a 4S, and they way this has worked out for me - my last iPhone) I went into Settings: General: Usage: Manage Storage.

I deleted all the music (artist by artist) which took a long time.

Plugged my phone into my Windows 7 laptop, and quickly cancelled the automatic sync.

Changed the automatic sync so I could manage my music manually, I also checked the box that changed the bit rate to 128.

This brought up an "autofill" option. Using the settings, I could choose to delete all the music before replacing it, so I chose that.

4 hours later, all my music was back (4200+ songs), plus my missing movies, so my phone is now how I want it to be (although my photos are still gone, which I'll live with).

I no longer trust the sync function in iTunes, so in essence, I won't be adding much new music to my phone from now on. This problem has really freaked me out. I listen to music playlists on shuffle every day, and the thought of only having access to only the 200 or so songs I'd bought off iTunes filled me with dread. Reading this and other posts, it's apparent this problem is widespread, but also apparent it's been around a very long time. It's the end of my relationship with Apple. I've an iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone, and basically I won't be replacing them with anything that needs iTunes to manage music. I'll keep them as long as they keep working, but when they don't, it won't be Apple products I buy.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this post. The solution above came from other suggestions, and I'm really glad it worked for me.

Tried the suggestion of wiping the phone and rebuilding it from scratch as opposed to restoring a backup.

Got about 30 GB of music on without an issue, added another 30 and then the same problems began. VERY Slow to sync. Would wait for an hour before copying the first track.

On the third sync, iTunes and the iPhone had a little disagreement which left all the existing music on my iPhone showing as OTHER in the bar chart within iTunes. It now said I didn't have enough space to sync more music . . . because effectively I had just lost 60 GB of space.

Wiped the phone and restored from backup.

As I see it, the solutions are as follows:

Plan on wiping and restoring your phone every time you want to sync music. I'm only being partially faecitous here. I know the drill now, and I don't change up the music all that often. If you do it 3-4 times a year, it's still an embarrassingly bad remedy, but it is functional. If you start the restore before you go to bed, it will be done in the morning.

A variation on the above would be to never modify the music you've got on your iPhone after the initial copy.

I haven't tried buying music from iTunes once the sync starts failing. You may be able to add new music simply by purchasing it on your iPhone and having it download directly, instead of syncing through iTunes.

Use CopyTrans Manager instead of iTunes for managing music.

Wait for Apple to release a fix.

Very well put, particularly the summary at the end.

I have zero confidence that Apple will ever release a fix for these issues. There aren't enough people complaining about it, the chatter in this group and in general has subsided, we are on our own.

My personal experiences with wipe and restore are that it doesn't consistently resolve the music sync issues. After several attempts, I wound up going the "set it up as a new iPhone" route, each and every time. Which involves even more time and effort, you walk away for half a day, resync, wait another half day, then spend days getting the iPhone setup the way that you had it before. I literally have screen shots of groupings, layouts, settings, etc. saved and ready if and when I have to do it again. I haven't had to do it in two months but all it takes is one mistake (sync instead of backup to iTunes) and I'll be doing it again.

My experiences with CopyTrans continue to be positive, including the support from their key developer. Barring an Apple fix which is not coming anyway, my game plan is to start using iTunes again for syncing everything EXCEPT music, and use CopyTrans Manager (one of their free applications) to manage music and other media. This solution works, the only problem is playlists. I have no way of getting playlists from either iTunes, i-devices or xml backup, back onto those devices after I tell iTunes to stop syncing music. I can't find any solution including CopyTrans that will manage iTunes playlists without the involvement of iTunes. And I use playlists, a lot. So this is a showstopper for me.

Right now I am in a holding pattern. I use CopyTrans Contacts to perform calendar, contacts and bookmark syncs like I used to do with iTunes. I use CopyTrans Manager to add/remove/manage music and media files. I do app and iTunes music updates (free songs and apps mostly) through the applications on the devices themselves, and allow updates to other devices. I use a combination of MS Outlook with an application called GSyncit to get data up to Google Calendar and onto devices for a pretty much real time updated view of my calendar. And I still backup to iTunes only once a week for my two primary devices, and I update apps in the iTunes library every other week, just in case Apple ever gets there act together on this one.

That's a lot of extra work, all because Apple can't fix these sync issues, and/or no one in the entire universe makes an application that will copy iTunes playlists from device to device, computer to device, or third party app to device, without iTunes.

And yet I make it a point to ask each and every person holding an S4 or the likes to see if they're happy or having any issues. They are, and they're not, respectively. Hmm.

You're a genius. Totally missed that. Thanks!!

I doubt this would work, but it's at least worth mentioning.

If you setup smart playlists in iTunes . . . where does the intelligence happen? Just on iTunes? If the playlist is still dynamic once you copy it to your iPhone, it might be smart enough the update with new music that you added either from the iTunes store or using CopyTrans Manager.

The other general thing I've discovered is that each sync process now seems to be very fragile and sensitive to interruption. The rule I follow now is to never interrupt a sync once it starts. That may not fix the issue, but it may very well prevent the OTHER lost storage space from occurring.

Totally agreed on the fragility of the sync process! Not sure if you're in the Windows or Mac world, but in (my) Windows world, iTunes doesn't play well with other in general. You can add Outlook as well as just the general sharing of memory and system resources to that list. I used to actually LIKE iTunes, thought it was this amazing piece of software that allowed MAGIC to happen between iPhone and Outlook. Wow have the times changed!

Let me clarify on playlists...CopyTrans manages playlists, just like iTunes. I can add to a playlist, remove a track from a playlist, change play order, you name it, it can do it. The issue is getting the playlists to my iPhone and iPad in the first place. Right now, I have playlists on devices, playlists in iTunes, backed up, got 'em everywhere. If and when I tell iTunes to stop syncing music, the first thing that it will do is remove all music AND PLAYLISTS from my iPhone or iPad. And that's that problem. Without iTunes, I can't figure out how to get those playlists back ON the iPhone or iPad. Once they're there, I'm done, I can manage all music including existing playlists from CopyTrans. If I didn't use playlists that often, or if some of my playlists didn't contain THOUSANDS of songs, I could probably just say iTunes can keep my playlists, I'll just rebuild them from scratch or whatever. My playlists represent years of work, or fun, depending on how you look at them. Like I said, I've got all of my playlists on all of my devices, and since I discovered this major snafu, I've been backing them up in xml format as well. I hardly ever change them, but I do change sort orders, add a track or two, etc. I am hoping that my regularly Googling on the subject will unveil something that will simply move iTunes playlists from point A to point B without iTunes, or CopyTrans will wake up, realize that they are the only real game in town besides iTunes, and develop another slick piece of functionality to do this, either as part of CopyTrans Manager or via another module altogether. Like the overall issue that has brought us all together in this forum, there just aren't enough people asking for this, so I'm not hoping but not holding out too much hope that anything is going to happen on this related issue to my overall music sync issue.

Apple fixes the issue, or someone delivers playlist portability without iTunes - which is going to happen first, place your bets!

I've found that once music syncing goes south, it doesn't remove anything . . . it doesn't sync at all.

My thought would be to sync music with iTunes until it breaks . . . won't take long.

Don't disable music sync within iTunes, just continue syncing and everything else should work.

Your tones, mail, contacts, photos should continue to transfer.

Your playlists should still be on the iPhone, you're syncing everything but Music and you can pick up the job using Copy Trans Manager.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think conceptually that would work.

(Lightbulb switches on)

My experience with music syncing gone bad is generally different...it messes up a perfectly good library on the device, I wind up zipping through artwork, playing only iTunes purchased tracks, or some subset of my library winds up working with no distinct pattern, anything from just a few of my non-iTunes purchased tracks up to and including most but not all of my library. No rhyme or reason, just screwed up to the point that I have rebuild my entire phone because iTunes can't sync my entire library anymore.

Now taking a page from your book, what if...I let iTunes do a full sync including music and playlists, allowing it as you put it to eventually screw up the music on my iPhone again, then I use CopyTrans to fix the situation? In theory, no matter how screwed up the music gets, the playlists are still going to be there on the devices by way of iTunes sync. I'm yet to see playlists disappear as part of these sync issues, they only disappear if I'm manually deleting them through iTunes, on devices, etc. as part of the overall music removal/reinstall process on any given device. One of the great features of CopyTrans is that it actively prevents you from copying duplicate files onto a device. Of course their best practices call for copying over tracks in increments of 100 or so at a time, so depending on how badly iTunes screws up my iPhone's music library, this could be a small task, or a large one. But either way, I get back to normal iTunes syncing for everything BUT music, let iTunes have its way with my iPhone's music library, and let CopyTrans clean up the mess?

A variation on your theme but conceptually it should work. Wow, I need to think about this. Thanks for the fresh perspective NEMC.

I'm so disappointed with this iOS8 and Apple that I'm not even using my iPod Touch anymore and I no longer have desire to buy devices such as iPad from Apple. I sent a feedback about this issue to Apple and at this point I'm searching for a nice 7" or 8" tablet running Android with external Memory Card slot to use as my MP3. I saw great products from Samsung and they are not that expensive. I decide to wait some more weeks and good bye Apple. I can't stay and support companies that does not support their customer. It's a huge issue not sync my music with my device that I should not even have to think hard to do it. It should be plug and sync. I did so many resets, and start over from 0 and all other tricks from this forum and nothing works then I realized that they really don't care about us. It's all about money. The end of a lifestyle is pretty much here. Android here I go.

From my perspective, the challenge is not so much finding an Android replacement for an iPad or iPod, it's the iPhone. I like to carry everything around including my music on one device. I've made it a point to ask each and every S4/S5 user that I see on the street if they are happy with their device, any issues, etc., the consistent reply has been "no, I love it". That's great, but if you do some heavy duty Googling on iPhone vs. S4/S5, the results consistently point towards the iPhone as the better overall device. So maybe it's just a question of Android users not knowing how good or bad they can have it with an iPhone, I don't know. I can tell you that I would never ever have even considered a switch to an Android smartphone, but when my contract is up next time, it's a given. I'm pretty heavily vested in Apple devices and applications, but I don't care, nothing compares to the amount of time and energy that I've personally put into resolving these issues over the past two months plus. iPad and iPod are easy, like you I've seen PLENTY of solid, less expensive alternatives out there for tablets and MP3 players. I actually have a cheap Android tablet that works fine for what it is. An all in one smartphone with solid functionality and no sync issues, that's a little bit harder I think. But then again, my last "smartphone" before several iPhones was a Palm Treo, enough said 🙂

Wake up Apple, please fix these music sync issues before you continue losing good customers!

I agree with the sentiment.

I've never like the Mac World. I've been PC based my entire life, but I fell in love with the iPad, iPad and the iPhone.

I've probably spent 20 hours troubleshooting this particular issue. That's not counting the hours of resyncing . . . just my time researching, reconfiguring, etc.

If Apple came out and said: Yes, there's a bug with this particular environment. We know about it and are trying to fix it. We don't have an ETA, but we acknowledge the problem. Here's a workaround that may or may not be acceptable to you. At least there could be some hope that iOS 8.* would fix the issue.

I've found Apple to be incredibly arrogant. They want the user to think it's their problem. Nothing to do with Apple's hardware, software, content and services.

I too am ready to switch away from the iPhone, however I am acutely aware that I'm very familiar with all the iPhone's problems and idiosyncrasies. I'm willing to bet that there are some pretty significant gotchas waiting for me in the Android world as well.

Did everyone see the post with executive leadership email addresses to write directly to about this issue? My guess is that the original poster violated one or more Apple Support Communities rules regarding posting their addresses, I'm not sure I understand why that post is gone. Maybe a moderator can repost the official rules that were violated and caused the post to be removed, so that we can all understand and make sure that we don't do the same. In any case, if you follow this post, then you have an email notification with the information from that post before it was removed. I concur with the original poster that it is time for everyone that is affected by these issues to take further action in terms of getting Apple to take notice and understand what's going on. Right now, I do not believe that Apple even acknowledges that there IS an issue here, so they are not taking any action, and we are all waiting around for a fix that will never come if we don't all step up and say something. I am kind of surprised that the moderator for this forum chose to remove that post, we are customers, we have a right to vent our frustrations and contact Apple within the rules set out by these boards. I have taken the initiative to write a lengthy message about these issues to Apple executive leadership.

<Edited by Host>

Holy cow, whoever moderates this forum edited my last message! I can't believe it. I think I'm in trouble lmao, what did I say?? Moderator, please note whatever rules I violated that required you to edit my post, and please post that information in reply to this message,so that others including myself can more closely follow Apple Support Community posting rules moving forward. I would further add that If Apple spent half the time, money, and resources trying to resolve these issues, as it evidently spends censoring content posted by loyal customers within the only really viable available resource to us, we might have an actual resolution to these issues by now 🙂

This issue is already 3 months later and there is no update that helped. I think it's time to go a bit loud. Let's tweet and retweet about it until the message get delivered. Something like #Apple doesn't care about #MacUsers. Please fix music sync issue for our devices/computers. What is the worst thing they can do it, a new issue to do not sync our contacts/movies/apps. If we don't do it anything it might happen very soon.