IOS 8 won't sync music with itunes

*-Possible Fix-*

Hey guys. I've gone through this whole thread and the hundreds out there people have posted with the same problem. I've tried all the fixes posted and I think I've come up with something that might help. Done on Windows. It appears to be a problem related to a previous sync error.

1) the first thing you want to do is completely delete the original music database. Go to settings, usage, manage storage and delete all the songs.

2) if you're j@ilbrok3n then further clean it up by doing this in ifile. (not completely necessary but will further clean)

a) go to var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control and delete the music folder

b) go to var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes and delete MediaLibrary.sqlitedb

3) plug your phone into iTunes. at the top of iTunes click on your device. On the left click on music and on the right screen uncheck every playlist artist album

genre (ctrl click is a shortcut to select all/none) after that deselect "sync music" at top. Sync phone

4) restart your device and also your computer. (I know I know just do it)

5) in iTunes click on the music icon directly under "file". Not the music section on your device but to go to your complete library stored on your computer.

6) you will see on the left music, music videos, devices and playlists. Under devices you should see your device listed there.

7) drag a playlist that you have created (4 lines beside a musical note. Not a smart playlist. Gotta be one you created) and drag it onto the device.

8) at this point iTunes should be copying your playlist onto your device. If not then keep googling.

9) once the playlist is on your phone go back and repeat step 3 turning off the music sync again. Sync phone

10) restart your computer and phone again.

11) you should now be able to turn sync on and select whatever playlist album or whatever you want to sync.

Let me know if that works for you guys.

This works for me romeoyankee

Count me in. I have a 128gb iPhone 6 plus and my 60gb-ish library syncs fine THE FIRST TIME. When I add any songs to it it first 1. fails to add any new songs and then upon a second or third try 2. deletes all but a few iTunes purchased songs. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE. I don't have time to baby sit this crap. It is just supposed to work. The weeks I've spent ripping all my CDs years ago will not be repeated.

I am having the exact same problem with a new generation iPod Touch I was bought for Christmas, the device has been restored 7 times, I have tried the convert to higher bit rate, manually managing, syncing entire library, syncing selected playlists etc, nothing has worked. Is there a way around this problem or do we just have to wait for the next update?

Workaround: If you compress music to AAC before syncing try turning off "convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC". I've come to the conclusion that conversion works fine (as it did on my iPhone 5) until it stops working (iPhone 6)... and then you are screwed. There is no way to effectively troubleshoot the cause of the failure, so switching off this feature is your only choice.

Search this forum for "convert higher bit rate sync problem" and you will find many similar posts, some dating back years.

I upgraded from iPhone 5 64GB to iPhone 6 128GB. Tried restoring, tried all the options, one playlist at a time, manually managing the music, wifi sync on, wifi sync off, new lightning cable, different USB port and so on and so on for days.

No matter what I did some songs always generated warnings "<song> was not sync'd because the file could not be converted", and the sync process would hang at some stage, usually when it transfers X of Y tracks to the device, or at the 'waiting for items to copy", or waiting for sync to finish. Very, very frustrating with no logs to examine (dear Apple, please add verbose logging in iTunes diagnostics)

Finally, in desperation I restored the phone yet again and chose not to sync music. Then I turned off the convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC option, even though it rendered my iPhone 6's extra 64Gb of space more or less redundant:

I tried a single playlist first -- it sync'd almost immediately. I checked a few more and did another sync. BOOOM... it was suddenly working. I rechecked all my playlists and smart playlists and left it running for a couple of hours (much faster without conversion) and when I came back the sync had completed, not a single error.

It's been a week now, with several interim syncs. All working fine. The only discrepancy now is the song count, which is different on the usage bar, the music summary screen in iTunes and the song count screen on the iPhone. Doesn't seem to matter though...

I've never used the CONVERT options when I've synched, but I believe the solution is the same.

iTunes complained about 7 songs when I synched. Said they wouldn't sync. Not a problem. Obviously iTunes found a problem and reported it.

The issue, I believe, is if you continue to try to sync these problem songs. I deselected the songs and continued syncing without a problem. I can't be positive that this is indeed the solution, but I've tried everything else and this is what made a difference for me.

Sorry for the late response!

my problem was that some songs showing up in my list were not playable.

some other songs would not sync . ( songs that i ripped or made myself )

ALbum covers would get mixed up.

I Use itunes on Yosamite , iphone 6 and ios 8.1.2 and have about 900 songs. Aprox 30% are ripped songs or songs made by me.

All songs in my itunes are converted to native AAC .. Even tough i do have wav or mp3 versions in my computer.

since i did the complete erase of all songs from my iphone ( through manage storage in settings ) and resynced i have had no ptoblems( resynced many times and everything seens to be ok ) .... But i am keeping an eye .. i will report if something goes wrong again .

what im impressed most about is apples care and attention.

Greetings and a very happy New Year to my fellow Apple customers who continue experiencing these issues.

I'm not sure, but I think that I might have fixed my specific issues on my own a few days ago.

I've been getting fantastic, focused support from Apple since escalating to their executive leadership team, but truth be told it's been all me and just a few quick moves to possibly get me back to a healthy sync on my iPhone 6.

As part of the initial process of working with Apple to resolve these issues, I agreed to start utilizing my old iPhone 4S as a test system, starting with setting it back to factory defaults and setting it up as a new iPhone. After I did that, I led with music and started the setup process by installing my entire music library on the device first, before any apps or anything else. It took a remarkably short amount of time than in the past, something under an hour for about 6300 songs, so immediately I'm thinking that something has changed in iOS8 either by way of updates that took place over the last 1 1/2 months (a reminder that I had not synced to iTunes in almost 2 months), or something else. In any case, I started playing with the music on the 4S, adding songs, deleting songs, adding new iTunes purchases, adding new non-iTunes purchases, shuffling, playing individual tracks all over the place, etc., etc. I could not recreate my previous problems over a two day period.

So I bit the bullet, and did the same thing on my iPhone 6. Happy to report that after two full days of adding/deleting tracks, shuffling, playing individual tracks versus playlists, selecting tracks from all over the library, turning music on/off, turning phone on/off, plus 10-15 individual syncs and many other experiments, I am yet to recreate the problem. I had a call with Apple this morning to report my findings, and they are on hold and standing by until later this month or whenever the problem resurfaces, whichever comes first as appropriate.

ONE MORE THING...taking a page out of NEMC's book, I half noticed on all 4S syncs and the first few syncs on the 6 that I was receiving an error message from iTunes that it was having problems with eight tracks. Thought nothing of it, ignored that same issue for YEARS. Well, in between the first 2-3 syncs on the 6, I scrambled to my computer, watched the sync nervously complete, then went through each of those error messages one by one and fixed the issue, either by locating the file or deleting it from my library as appropriate. I have to believe that this had SOMETHING to do with the issues that we are experiencing, and for whatever reasons, post-iOS8, you need to have a clean iTunes library in order to regularly and reliably sync with iOS8 devices. I am convinced at this point, but I will need further proof in terms of reliable syncing over time, so I will check back with these boards over time, or in a long time, or after the first time that the issue resurfaces to admit that I was wrong and plead for Apple's continue support, whichever of those come first.

Bottom line - go through your library with a fine tooth comb, and look for any file that has an issue - either iTunes can't find the actual music file or whatever, any track noted with an "!" and fix that issue before syncing with an iOS8 device. That is my suggestion today, later or tomorrow might be a different story.

Good luck! Thanks again to NEMC for the light bulb moment this week.

So if I read this correctly your method is as follows:

1. Restore the iOS device to factory settings.

2. Sync music to the device BEFORE performing any type of restore from a backup.

3. Delete any files that show up as an error during the sync process.

4. Restore phone from a backup Once music successfully syncs? Or start over with the fresh phone?

Not exactly...

Optimally, this is the process that I would follow if I could do it all over again:

1.) Take screen shots of your iPhone the way you like it, make notes of apps, groupings, settings, etc. anything that you will need to set up your iPhone as if you were doing it from scratch, because that's what you're going to do. The process of (re)setting up the iPhone after "the issue" used to take me days (i.e. one day to remove music, one day to reinstall music, several days to set the iPhone back up the way I had it), but this time I was able to rebuild my iPhone from scratch in under 5 hours by doing this work ahead of time.

2.) Go through your iTunes library file by file, and make sure that there are no tracks noted with a "!" next to them. Fix by either finding the missing source file or deleting the track from the library. I did NOT do this before I started syncing, and consider myself lucky to have escaped "the issue".

3.) Restore the iOS device to factory settings.

4.) Set the device up as a NEW DEVICE. DO NOT RESTORE FROM A BACKUP.

4a.) Stop the initial sync at some logical point (i.e. after it completes a backup?) by selecting the "Sync Music" option on the Music tab, hit apply/resync or whatever it's called and sync all of your music FIRST before you sync over anything else like apps, other media, calendars, contacts, etc. Music FIRST.

5) Repeat Step 1 - for any errors that show up during the sync process, take good notes (i.e. a screen shot with the additional track information expanded), and fix those errors either by a.) deleting those tracks, or b.) locating the appropriate source file in your music library and pointing iTunes toward it. You'll know if you did b.) right if you can actually play the file.

5a.) Do a full sync with everything else you want on your iPhone - apps, media, calendars, contacts, etc. Sync and sync and sync again. Unplug, replug, start playing songs, albums, tracks, individually or as part of playlists. Then start trying to add tracks to your library, your own music, then iTunes purchased music, songs then albums, keep testing and keep syncing. It's the only way to make sure it works and get some sense of confidence that the issue has been resolved. After about 20 rounds of this, I'm feeling pretty good about now (but still knocking on wood 🙂)

6.) Forget the word backup, The only way I see me ever using an iTunes backup again is after many many MANY successful syncs, WAY down the road, if for some reason something ELSE goes wrong, THEN I might consider restoring from a backup. For me, specific to this issue, should it happen again, the only way I see out is to rebuild the phone from scratch. No restore from backup. Sorry.

Hope this helps! You're an old timer like me in these here boards, I wish you the best of luck!

I don't know if starting from fresh is necessary, but removing files showing errors does appear to be the key.

In my case turning off conversion to AAC eliminated all sync errors, and then it sync'd without generating further errors on the exact same songs and playlists, but in their native format (mostly 320kbps MP3 files).

Admittedly I didn't try this option before restoring, but I suspect that would have worked too. It just seems to depend if the method you use causes iTunes to generate errors or not.

iTunes really should handle errors more gracefully. It should be able to sync 'good' music regardless of errors along the way. If it can't do this automagically, give the user an easier way to clean up bad files, preferably with a useful report if the sync had errors and buttons to mark/remove/repair those bad files. For me, every playlist some errors. Hunting around in my library over and over agaun is just about the worst option I can think of, and totally "un-Apple".

A very good point...this could be as simple as just correcting any files that iTunes notes as having errors during any sync process. I would also state the obvious that all of this worked perfectly before the iOS8 update, and iTunes used to be far more tolerant of my "error ridden" music library. Whatever, it's not like any of us are going BACK to previous iTunes versions in order to get this to work, we've got to deal with the current hand dealt. My sincere hope is that I've stumbled upon something that works for me, maybe it will work for others, and that iTunes continues to prompt users and give us the chance to fix individual file errors before those errors cause THE ISSUE. So far so good for me. I might have gone about it in a very over the top manner but for now it works and I'm happy. Continuing to knock on wood, share my experiences as best as I can here, and wish you all the best of luck, happy to help out anyone who asks for it.

Afterthought - if you don't feel like spending a day setting up your iPhone from scratch, you could just try a restore, then the iTunes library file by file integrity check, would take a lot less time if it does work. I'd be curious if anyone has done this or plans on doing it, might be a lot simpler than my route.

In my case the errors only appeared during the conversion->sync process. The source files themselves showed no problems, with no indication anything was wrong with them in the library view. This was a major source of frustration as the only way to determine good from bad was to run a sync, wait for it to fail then write down the track names (the only information provided in the error report) manually.

It wouldn't have been such a big deal but every failure caused a slew of other problems that required restoring the phone every time...

Afterthought to my afterthought...

I'm wondering if those eight problem files on my end were mp3s that I converted to AAC or something along those lines?

Like you, I didn't get the information about the bad track information until AFTER I synced. You might be correct that a review of the library beforehand would do nothing, I just thought it would be a good first step. If there was an erroneous file BEFORE you synced, you would definitely want to fix that first, then fix whatever errors iTunes provided AFTER a sync before the NEXT sync.

FYI, I used Printscreen on an expanded view of the error note I got with the eight erroneous files. Beats writing that info down 🙂