Q: Music Won't Sync From Itunes Correctly

I THINK  I figured out how to get all of my songs over!  I have spent hours trying to figure this out and even went to the Genius Bar, and they had less of a clue that us here!  Bottom line, when I tell it to Sync all music from the Music tab, it flips out when played on the phone. Even better, it shows that it will load all of the songs when syncing but when it's done, the blue music bar flips back to less songs and when played on the phone, they freak out again.

I thought it had to do with songs from cd verses songs from iTunes...nope didn't matter.

So....

For me, it definitely has to do with how you have the sync set in the Summary tab verses the Music tab. Right now on my system, if i select "Manually manage music and videos" on the Summary tab, it deselects the ability to select songs on the Music tab. (seems counter-intuitive but okay).  When you select "Sync only checked songs and videos" on the Summary tab, then you can manually select the playlists and songs on the Music tab.

So that being understood, make sure Automatically Sync when attached and over wi-fi is OFF, attach phone. Select "Sync only checked songs and videos" on the Summary tab, select the playlists you want from the Music tab, then switch it to"Manually manage" on the Summary tab and force the sync. It worked this morning!

But what about the hundreds/thousands of songs not in playlists?  Hmm, other than checking every artist, I checked every genre instead. I switched to "Sync only checked songs", selected playlists and all genres, switched back to "manually manage" and forced the sync.  Voila!  I officially have all 3300 songs on the phone and as of now, no flipping out!!

Glad some have found some workarounds. However, I'm still stuck. I can do the initial sync fine with any number of these workarounds. Then upon subsequent syncing, I get the "Syncing Album Artwork" status during the sync, for roughly 1/3 of the songs on the iPhone. Each song that gets its "album artwork" synced becomes unplayable. After this sync, my free space strangely increases by about 1gb on iTunes, but if I look at the phone with iTools, the usage is what I expect. After the second sync, I am unable to sync a third time, getting stuck on "Waiting for changes to be applied". My only recourse is to wipe the phone.

Completely frustrated, I signed up for iTunes match today. After spending $400 on a phone that is basically as useful as a brick, what's another $25? First, this service is complete trash, for those of you using it. The streaming services I get from Spotify are far superior in terms of sound quality. Why should I pay to upload my songs, only for Apple to stream them back to me at a lower quality? Second, I had to create a completely new library within iTunes to get under 25,000 songs (why they can't let me pick and choose which playlists can go to match is beyond me, it would take minimal development effort, but I digress because this isn't the forum and we all know at this point that Apple is lazy and uninspired when QA'ing their "features"). But at any rate, I was hoping just having match turned on within iTunes, but turned off at the phone would take care of the problem. I was wrong.

I have given up. Loyal Apple customer for 25 years, and I am done. When my husband's contract expires in the spring, we'll be switching to Android.

Congrats, Apple. It takes a special breed of incompetence to **** off your customers like this.

Hi all, Apple tech support is getting engineering involved on this issue. We replicated the problem even after creating a brand new iTunes library. I should hear something by the middle of next week.

Hi folks: while it's unfortunate that any of us are having this problem, I'm very relieved to discover that I am not the only one. Shortly after getting my iPhone 6 and upgrading my iPad3 to OS8, none of my songs sync correctly. Both my iPad and my iPhone only get a sporadic sampling of songs. I have tried just about everything, including rebuilding my entire iTunes library without success.

If anyone hears of a definitive solution, I would be very grateful to hear it.

I tried this too.  It doesn't work.  I even restored the phone.  Nothing seems to work.

FYI, I have now followed this procedure: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1786762&highlight=syncing+issues on two iPhones (new 6 and my old 5) and two iPads running iOS8 (all but the 6 had problems syncing before iOS8 too) and it has worked flawlessly. Since doing it sync has worked normally. It's a little scary to use a third party app to do something like this, but it does work, and it does not affect anything else on the phone. If Apple can't fix their own product, this seems like the best solution.

FWIW I have done all the other stuff people recommended on here -- none of it worked.

JLB3, thank you so much. This solved it for me, too.

JLB3's solution worked for me. I was struggling with the extreme size of "Other", the waiting for changes to be applied, the ghost songs. So far, looks like it fixed all of the problems.. Fingers crossed it lasts.

Hi guys,

I just posted the same problem but just found this one. Hopefully Apple fix this promptly.

My original post:

"

I have an iPhone 6 (64GB) and restored everything from my 4S via iCloud.

I have around 15GB of songs. All songs syncs onto my iPhone 6 okay.

The problem arises when I sync with my Macbook Pro. Every time I sync the music on my iPhone 6 (except for purchases) are deleted. However on the iPhone it still lists all the artist/songs but it is greyed out when I click on the song. For instance if I go into a playlist and click on a song it flicks through the entire playlist very quickly and becomes greyed out and it seems to be downloading from iCloud after?

The iPhone usage tab still states that the songs are still on the phone with 28gb available but the iTunes usage graph states that I have 43gb available.

The only way to restore the songs on my iPhone is to delete all music via the iPhone usage tab then sync again with iTunes which will then add the songs again (which is bad for the flash drive of the iPhone - rewriting 3000 songs every time I need to sync).

This is annoying because if I want to add new songs onto my iPhone I will need to go through with this silly process.

Anyone else is having this problem???"

I totally agree with everything you just said.  I am absolutely FURIOUS.  Whatever happened to "it just works"?

I have the same problem as everyone here - BUT - I had it also before my iphone6 and ios8.  I had it with my iphone 5.  I tried all the fixes above - sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't.  Apple support claimed that one of my files was corrupt and that is what was causing the problem.  Ultimately I have had to do factory resets which sometimes solve the problem.  As many have noted - things that seem to work once don't always work the next time.

I had an appointment at Apple yesterday. Guy told me the same thing....I have corrupt apps and to go home and set it up as a new phone. I did that. The first time it syncs my music, works perfectly. Any changes I make, it doesn't work. I had another appointment today. I left my phone set up as a new phone. The guy told me that it's a Windows/iTunes issue and that I need to bring my PC with. Later on today, I have ANOTHER appointment. He also told me I could restore my phone from the iCloud backup. 

Ah, well. It worked for a few days. Alas, it just blew up again.

Yes.  I have the exact same problem with my I phone 5s.  Since updating to ios8  I have had issues with iTunes.  When I click on a song, it shuffles very quickly to another random song.  When I go back to the original song I clicked on, it is all grayed out, along with about 4-5 songs that are underneath it.  Very frustrating!!

I had another appointment with Apple tonight.  The guy created a new ITunes Music Folder for me than transferred all my music over.  It took about 30 minutes to transfer 40gb of music.  He first renamed my old folder to itunesold.  Anyways it has solved the problem.  My music will sync with my phone.  The only downside is you will lose any playlists you created.  I am not sure if this makes a difference but under "summary" when my phone is connected to iTunes both 'sync checked songs and videos' and 'manually manage music and videos' is unchecked.  In the Music tab, I have checked the playlist I want to add to my phone.