Q: Itunes playcount too high

I can confirm the frustration of Angeltearx. I discovered the anomaly last night, and checked back through my 'Recently Played' playlist to explore further, and sure enough, the duplication of play counts appears to have occurred since, low and behold, the iOS8 update was applied.

No issues with playing songs through iTunes, and no issues with my trusty iPod Classic. Have yet to explore what it does with my iPad but am unlikely to experiment further until Apple admits there is a problem and issues a fix.

For the record, I took a text export of the playlist I played today, which had all play counts listed. I played 56 songs on my iPhone throughout the day and when I synced with iTunes in the evening, the play counts were curious. About 25 of them added 2 to the play count (i.e. play count was 10, but after the song was played it listed 12) and 20 of them added 3. The rest were fine. I thought it might be the type of files (i.e. MP3, AAC, Purchased from iTunes, etc) but there was no logic to it. They weren't related to a particular artist or album, or a specific time they were played.

In a word, stuffed!

I've written a couple of scripts that can sync or combine stats from an iPod/iOS device and the library (SyncStats and CombineStats). Perhaps one that can import the current playcounts from a device, overriding the library, would be useful?

tt2

happening to me also. my iPhone plays don't sync correctly to my iTunes. 1 play increases the plays by 2 or 4.

this happened after the recent update

I'm having this exact same issue, but with iTunes on a Mac. Otherwise identical, and again it's only happened since the iOS8 update.

It's effectively broken iTunes for me, as I have a load of nested smart playlists driven by play count, date added, last played etc. to give me a new mix of music to take to work each day. Now the play counts are rocketing up way past the true number of plays, so my smart playlists aren't so smart any more.

Hi

I spoke to an Apple support adviser through the online chat last week about this. She was also experiencing this problem and has said she's reported it, but that I could do the same through www.apple.com/feedback

I think we'll probably have to wait for iOS 8.1 for this to be fixed. So frustrating.

I've just reported it through www.apple.com/feedback and I encourage you all to do the same. The more of us that raise it, the more likely it will be fixed in the next release.

For Windows users I've written a script called AddToPlays which could be used, for example, to add a negative value to a batch of recently played tracks, although you would still need to have an idea of which tracks might have been increased by, say 2 instead of 1, or 8 instead of 3 (assuming that is how it works).

tt2

I am having the same issue.  I downloaded a song yesterday and have listened to it pretty consistently, however when I synched the first time after downloading it, iTunes reported me having 33 plays (which I thought was overstated, but I had been listening to it on repeat).  I listened to it 2 more times, and the play count jumped to 57. I cleared my play count entirely for this song, shut my computer down, shut my iPhone down, and rebooted everything.  Play count went as follows:

Play 1 - play count 1

Play 2 - play count 30

Play 3 - play count 97

Like what???

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem, i think it is my Ipad, since I have downloaded the new OS8 but it is messing up all my playcount. I had to restore it at least twice.

What can we do?

Thanks

I too have noticed this problem since updating to ios 8.0 series. It is a nuisance as I rely on accurate play counts to update my smart playlists. Apple are getting very sloppy of late. Given that we pay a premium for the privilege of using their products the least they can do is get it right. Any idea when they plan to put this right?

Add me to this list of frustrated users. I don't think the play count issue is limited only to the iOS 8 release. This issue was also present in iOS 7. I have reported this issue numerous times, there doesn't seem to be a logical explanation for which songs apply the exponential increase in play counts. No one at Apple seems to prioritize this issue. I suppose they'll get to it some day, but this should be a no brainer fix.