Q: Itunes playcount too high

There seem to be problems of a similar nature going back several years, although this is the first time I have encountered them. There appear to be some new issues emerging which by an amazing coincidence appear to follow an update. I think Apple are getting very sloppy. Time to consider taking our business elsewhere if the engineers cannot get their act together.

Same here, so frustrated. It is not the first time i have lost the stats. But this time there is no starting from the scratch and i have a lot of smart playlists. It is either device itself keeps somewhere playcounts despite resets, because even when playcounts are reseted music stats apps report from device's database some playcounts or itunes messes it up during the sync.

so angry

Any ideas Apple?

This is affected me aswell.

- formatted iPhone to default settings

- formatted PC to Windows 7 fresh install

I'm affected as well. (MacBook Pro Retina - iPhone 6 Plus)

Whenever I sync my phone with iTunes the playcounts just skyrockets even though I know that I haven't listened to the songs that much.

Hope this gets fixed with 8.1.

I'm having the same issue, reported it to Apple, I'm hoping ios 8.0.3 fixes it and comes out soon, puts me off listening to music on my iphone knowing the playcounts will be messed up.

Same thing here. I experienced it as many of you stated. Especially after the iOS8 Update. It seems that some songs at one point didn't clear their intern count, since the new songs I put on just count fine, I'll try to delete all music from my device and load it again, maybe it will be refreshed and count fine by then. I'm gonna let you know if it worked.

No need to delete anything. I've done all the deleting and resetting. useless. Until you sync your phone that is. If you dont sync playcount on the iphone is correct.

I had to reset all the counts( now i can't sync iphone with itunes so i wont loose playcounts again and i about to travel so i cant even back up(

Looks like a few people are having the issue aswell.

It appears that the iPhone and iTunes are holding two seperate play counters. Whenever you sync the phone, the play count on the phone should reset everything to zero. What is actually happening is that the iPhones play count and iTunes play count are adding together these numbers - hence the large increase in play count.

So, if you listen to a song once and then sync the phone - play count will be 1. If you then do the same - it jumps up to 3. Again, playing the song again - will increase the count to 5.

I've had this issue ever since iOS 8 and a few of my songs in iTunes have over 1300 plays... Fairly sure I didn't leave the song on repeat and let it play for 5 days straight...

Hello,

A little precision : evolution of playcount is not 1, 3, 5 but :

- listen 1 time on phone and sync = 1

- listen again 1 time on phone and sync = 3

- listen again 1 time on phone and sync = 6 (because "3 on start" + "1 new listen" + "2 old listenings")

- listen again 1 time on phone and sync = 10 ("6" + "1 new" + "3 old).

Resume : if I listen a song each day in a week with synchronisation every day :

- before iOS8 : playcount to 7

- with iOS 8 : 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 28 !!!

The problem is "old listening" is not reseting to 0 after synchronisation.

Please : a correction... :-)

yes this is exactly what happens to me for both iPhone and iPad

I'm new to iphones, has anything like this happened before? Is it likely to get fixed anytime soon?

Some additional info that might be interesting. I really recomment that everybody feedbacks this problem, wo we get it solved with the next update, cause most people don't care about the counts, so it won't be considered a "major problem". So please feedback it! Here you can have a list of problems and "symptoms" that I analyzed, and should be the problem for everyone of you, as it is a major bug:

I can partly agree with the theory about the intern playcount on the iPhone. It indeed should reset after syncing so it doesn't count double, triple...etc.

It doesn't reset, so every time you LISTEN to it once, it will add up to the previous playcounts intern that aren't reseted, even though they had to be after the last sync. So you actually get all the old ones + the new one AGAIN added up on iTunes.

What it does:

- It only adds up, when you actually listen to it. I.E. even though it has for example 5 playcounts internally on the phone (which are falsly there cause it doesn't reset) it WON'T add up these 5 counts the next time you sync. But if you listen it once and THEN sync it, it will sync 6 (5 old ones + the new one). So it is triggered by ONE listening. Which means you can't sync it 5 times in a row and expect +25. It will only add 5, until you listen to it again (The triggering is important, it doesn't add up until you listen to it, which probably means that internally on the phone the play count is stuck, but it won't recognize until you listen to it, which probably "puts" the song in a list to be considered for "updating" the next time it gets synced so iTunes won't have to check all tracks on the phone for new plays/rating etc).

What it also does:

- It only occurs with some tracks and this one randomly: In some cases it "triggers" the counter, by only having the song go for about 1 second. What do I mean? I mean, that you don't listen the song until it's (almost) over to count the trigger. It has to be ONLY played once, eventhough it's just the beginning and that way it "triggers" the function, to add up again. Normally it should only count it when you go down to 0:00, but it triggers it now by only being player or klicked on for just a fraction of a second. I saw this problem occur when I wanted to test it. when I skipped to the next song and closed the music player completly and synced again, the next song was counted once on iTunes again.

So the "trigger" for counting is probably broken aswell. But it has to be triggered so it counts all the (false) play counts to your iTunes. Otherwise it won't.

I hope this info helped. Again I hope that everybody feedbacks it this way, so they can fix it!

Kind regards

EDIT:

For the last part: maybe listening to the song for just one second at the beginning for example, doesn't trigger the count, but "puts" the song in the list of the tracks that iTunes has to check for new ratings/counts. So it will probably add the old counts, even though you have no "new count" on that song cause you didn't listen to it until the end). So probably the count itself isn't broken, but only the resetting of the playcounts on the iPhone.

In ios8 if you select song manually to play it seems to trigger play count , no need to play it through. But if it is automatically selected it will only trigger when song is over. Also if you skip song with headphones control skips are not counted. But if you do skip manually then it does. apple should fire all qa staff  

PLEASE report this issue, it is effecting everyone and needs to be fixed, it seems very simple - the iphone/ipad/ipod isn't resetting it's play counts after syncing, this should be very simple for Apple to fix but we NEED to report it to bring it to their attention:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

I spoke to someone from Apple via the online chat support last night who told me to report it and gave me a link to the iphone feedback page as that is the device I am using, I reported it on that and on the itunes section - i'd suggest you all do the same to get Apple to put this right ASAP.

PS: if you can't see the 'submit' button on the feedback form it is to the right of 'Please read Apple’s Unsolicited Idea Submission Policybefore you send us your feedback.' if you hover your mouse over it you'll see be able to click it