Q: Music Won't Sync From Itunes Correctly

that's great that kstaff1 is writing the rules for Apple's response prosedures on the boards. I barely caught this fun fact because I was immersed with a massive intact music collection on my iPhone 6 Plus.

While Kstaff1 continues to waste his/her time trying diag an old problem, I cannot believe it took 8 pages before someone had to make an insulting/bashing remark on another member who was simply offering their help & experience. Instead of hating on others because you're iPhone's inop, relax and internalize the problem, fix it and share what you discovered rather than bullying & trolling on others. Cheers, fanboi-hater.

I'm not sure what a "prosedure" is, so not really sure where I'm questioning it.

But you are continuing to bully and troll (not the other people on this thread) because you seem to be taking personal offense that nobody is recognizing that you solved a problem. Do you want validation from all of us that you figured out your problem? OK, here it is: you're smart, good for you. Your phone works great? Good, run along and play with it. If you had bothered to read anyone's posts, including mine, we expect Apple to come to us with an official response for a problem that is impacting many, yet they refuse to acknowledge.

I could care less if anyone acknowledges what worked for me. I jumped back in because you're a piece for commenting the way you did. Don't be bitter. Don't complain. Typical Apple hater nothing works for you, and you pit yourself against others who managed to fix it on their own. Think different haha. Typical forum troll...

I am a neutral third party in this disagreement, speaking on behalf of MANY people whose email inboxes are getting cluttered as we speak.  Can we please reserve posts on here for solutions/possible solutions despite how upset one could be about non-technical commentary?  I do expect my inbox to be cluttered as I am following this thread, but would appreciate it be only as much as is necessary.  THANK YOU.

I am now writing to share the solution that worked for me today.  I am confident that it truly worked and that I will not have to take back this statement.  I synced multiple times, with and without changes, over wifi and over cable, and each time was able to play all of the numerous random songs that I tested from different albums.  While I sincerely HOPE that this will work for everyone (and please like this post if it works for you), I of course understand that it is possible that similar/same symptomatololgy could be presenting for different reasons.  Note that I haven't posted in a few weeks but like many people reading this, I have been reading every post on here every day, doing my best to synthesize that information as it applies to my situation and planning an algorithm with which to attack this problem.

Pertinent Factors:

• Issue is with syncing my music to my new iPhone 6, 128 GB AT&T (space gray).
• The first iPhone 6 I got in the mail from AT&T came with a screen defect; however, I set it up and used it for a while anyway before getting a replacement phone from the Apple Store.  It is with this replacement that I had the problem, although I am not sure if I had the problem with the original phone too.
• I named the replacement phone with a different name than I assigned the original one with the screen defect.
• A brief summary of the problem is: the songs would appear on the phone after a sync but when I went to play one it would come up with a red play button next to it, rapidly skip to the next song where the same thing would happen, rapidly switching through songs with no sound coming out until it ended up on a song purchased from iTunes.  Subsequent syncs would add/remove various numbers of songs almost randomly, but these songs were only SHOWN on the phone for the most part and would shuffle away as described when clicked upon.
• I did previously have iTunes match, and it was off months before I placed the order for iPhone 6.
• My initial attempts before finding this forum involved deleting all of the music from the iPhone (by going through the settings on the phone itself where it lets you ‘manage storage).  No success.

The steps that fixed it permanently: 

(NOTE: I made sure the only playlists I had were smart playlists... if you have regular playlists make sure that they don't contain any songs that could be duplicates.)

1. 1)    plugged in phone
2. 2)    changed the name of the iPhone within iTunes by double clicking on the name.  I changed it to what I named the original iPhone 6 I received that had the screen defect.
3. 3)    Deauthorized my laptop (on which I was working with the phone connected)
4. 4)    Filtered all songs in iTunes for “Exact Duplicate Items” by pressing the alt/option key and clicking on View.
5. 5)    Noticed that there were ~200 (out of a library of over 10,000 songs) duplicated songs, many of which were actually voice memos (and on my iPhone I had noticed previously that my voice memos were screwed up in that they were all grayed out (inaccessible) and mostly contained the same title).
6. 6)    Manually located each duplicate song file (NOT in the iTunes music folder—I never ever touched that. Read on.).  For a given song that was duplicated, it either had a space and then the number 1 appended to the end of its file name or a space and then a number higher than one appended to its file name, indicating there were in fact more than one duplicate. Additionally, some duplicate file names for voice memos, in addition to being as described above here in this paragraph, also had a different format as their file name that indicated the same time stamp information about them.  Note that in every solitary case I was sure to (1) delete ALL duplicates, (2) delete the duplicated files and NEVER the original.  Note that iTunes will NOT change in any way whatsoever until the deleted duplicate file has been deleted FROM THE TRASH.  ** Make sure none of the songs in your playlists refer to duplicates or are duplicates.
7. 7)    After deleting the duplicated song/voicememo files from their original folder(s) and from the Trash as described directly above, I went back to iTunes where it was still just displaying exact duplicates.  I double-clicked on the first song/voicememo, and pressed the >> button on my keyboard continuously, during which time iTunes would flag the duplicated songs with a “!” due to the fact that I had just deleted the duplicated files.  I selected ALL of these marked with “!” and deleted them from iTunes.
8. 8)    I exited the “Exact Duplicate Items” view, closed and reopened iTunes, and re-entered “Exact Duplicate Items” view.  I saw that no more duplicates of any kind existed in my iTunes song library (that included voice-memos).
9. 9)    I re-authorized my laptop with my iTunes account.
10. 10)  At this point, iTunes did not show my iPhone connected even though it was (which is likely not relevant to anything).  So I unplugged and plugged in my iPhone.  It was not set to sync upon being plugged in, so it did not sync at that point (obviously).  I went into the syncing settings.  I unchecked the option to sync ANY AND ALL music, a dialogue appeared warning me that upon next sync all music would be removed, I accepted that dialogue, and then I immediately re-checked the very same button (to sync all music).  I did this same process for the option to sync any playlists.
11. 11)  At this point, I simply synced my phone and the problem was solved.  (As stated above I verified that it was a true fix).

If this method works for you please spread the news clearly by referring to this method as "Method J".

I installed OSX Yosemite this evening.  iTunes 12 seems to be working just fine with my iPhone 6+.  Just thought I'd share. 

I Know it's not the IPhone6 or name change reason. At least not in my case. I am running a 4s and started since the ios8 update. I rarely sync or change any settings in iTunes. I am going to do as stated above with de-authorizing and re-authorizing iTunes along with deleting duplicates. I will not sync until I see some feedback from other people as I have no need and all music available. I have a question though, not to jack thread. Anyone else having a problem with certain albums having one song out of the album. I think I have 3-4 albums, one purchase and 3 addes from CD's where the first song of album is separated from the rest of the album. I try doing the get info and making sure EVERYTHING is checked and the same and still does not correct this. Dont know if this is a possible prpblem due to or In conjunction with our current problem as well  or different problem  all together.

Can it be? I also installed Yosemite, and it seems all prior problems have disappeared. I'll be holding my breath when I check the phone tomorrow morning, but so far so good. I have synced via wifi and via cable to computer, and the music library on my iPhone 6 remains intact. Here's to hoping!

I'm finally setting up my iPhone the way I have all my devices.. Able to sync playlists now and every sync has succeeded and all the music is intact on my phone.  I also tried removing the music and it was removed successfully. 

I'm having the same issue.  iPhone 6 128GB in Space Gray.

I spent most of the night restoring from backup after wiping my phone.

Some songs still won't sync - I can see the songs didn't sync by going to the device, then clicking "on my device" and see a lot of gray circles.

I'm using iTunes version 12, but the same issue was happening with version 11.

I tried many of the suggestions here - removing duplicate songs, trying different methods of syncing, authorizing and de-authorizing my pc (Using Win7).

iTunes match is enabled on my pc, but not on phone (i tried several combinations).

This is a serious problem.

I have a feeling that any lingering issues will be cleared up Monday when iOS 8.1 drops.  This is probably been the bumpiest iPhone launch yet.  Hopefully 8.1 is loaded with a lot more bug fixes.

Well this bug has now infected my previously immune ipad mini, and there have been no software updates during the interim period so I'm confused as to why it would happen now. The other new factor is that not only does it delete all my music, it also flips out when I play any tv shows and gives me the startup screen before returning to the previous state as if nothing had happened.

I have no fixes, but I do feel it's important to document these events, if anything to avoid having to laboriously state the same sequence of events over the phone to an applecare advisor; this way we have all our troubles documented here for ease of reading.

I have a macpro en route to me (yes, despite the buggy launch of the 6 I am still a fan of Apple products) and once that shows up I guess I'll be able to test the new OS with my devices and let y'all know if that solves the problem, cos I sure as heck ain't upgrading my current mac until I know that shizzle is safe.

Your reply gives me hope, Obi-Wan. Is this just a case of new phone OS needing Yosemite to work properly u reckon?

Problem description: only some songs that appear to be on the phone are playable. Many other song titles appear, but when I attempt to play them, the music skips to the next playable song, sometimes skipping past six or eight other songs, and the song that I originally tried to play now has a symbol similar to the one I normally see in the App Store when I am about to download the app. (It shows a thin circle around a square, all in red.)

i to see the exact same thing on my phone.  It only occurs with music I've ripped from cd.  The music I purchas from iTunes never gets removed.  I discovered that it I attem to play those tracks and the music app skips over all the songs that aren't really there, when I connect my phone again iTunes will copy them back.  I sure hope this is fixed Monday with 8.1 as itunes 12 has done nothing to address the issue although I origian thought it did.