Q: Itunes playcount too high

Since 8.1 it is working again for me.  Why might that be?  I think it is because once the counts are messed up if you don't have a way to change the playcounts to correct them then it continues to look broken, even on 8.1.  I'm on a Mac and use the "New Play Count" AppleScript found at dougscripts.com to correct the playcount each time I sync (if it is wrong). Prior to 8.1 even after I fixed the playcount it would be wrong again after the next sync by the same factor.  Since 8.1 the counts are now correct for the albums that were having incorrect counts before.

Those of you on the Mac can try the script and see if it fixes it for you too.  For Windows folks, I don't know if there are similar scripts or if you could edit the iTunes xml to change the counts manually or not.

FYI for those that don't know about Doug's Scripts there are lots there that allow you to manipulate your iTunes library and ID3 tags in dozens of ways

IM SO GLAD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH THIS ISSUE!

I don't remember exactly when it started but it was sometimes around last week or two weeks ago. It's annoying the crap out of me because I listen to music every day from my phone and im always terrified to sync it in the afternoon when I get home.

I have re-installed itunes and reset my phone and it worked fine for a day and then it went right back to being buggy. I've sent in a feeedback to apple and i really hope they are working on this. I just find it weird that it wasnt fixed already considering apple released a  iOS update just a few days ago.

Who's Craig Federighi?

I think the most bizarre thing about this bug is how utterly random it is, both in terms of which songs get affected and by how much the play count goes up. I agree with most other people's observations that it's a bug that came with iOS 8, as it was all working perfectly well beforehand.

As someone who listens to music on their phone a fair bit, this is a really irritating and significant bug. I just hope it's fixed in the next update.

Craig Federighi is the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple.

This is effecting me as well and is making me sick.  I have spent a lot of money on all Apple products because they "just work" and now my play counts are so completely hosed it really doesn't work at all.  iTunes Match already completely ruined my play counts last year and I used a script to painstakingly repair a bulk of the higher counts to get my play lists working properly again.  Now only a year later I'm in the same boat again.  Sadly there aren't a lot of options in this seeming niche...

I don't know if this helps, but I noticed that for me at least, the songs that have a crazy amount of plays, are the ones I bought from the itunes store. The ones I got from other places seem to have normal play counts that match with the times i've actually played them. You think that has to do with the issue?

Not to me unfortunately, I've just played on my ipad a song that I haven't bought on itunes and with 1 play added 4 play counts :-(

Only seems to be affecting purchased songs for me and too. It's always the same songs and thanks to Last.fm, I know which ones they are. I've taken them off my iPhone and it's working Ok now.

You're lucky its only affecting songs you've purchased through itunes. It's affecting all my songs regardless of if they're from itunes or not. It's gotten to the point now where I don't listen to music through my phone anymore. I don't have the time to correct my plays every single night when i sync my phone. It's ridicolous.. Apple better fix this ******** asap.

Indeed. iTunes has been the main thing keeping me from trying android. There are android phones that are very interesting to me. I really hope apple fixes this. I have so many issues with my play counts already that it may be a lost cause already to fix it. Like another poster im glad I have last.fm which has more accurate counts I can get back to somehow.

I have a feeling we're gonna have to wait a long time for this to be fixed. Considering we just got an update to iphone and itunes just a few weeks ago i dont think we'll get any more for atleast a few months.. ugh, just thinking of that makes me so frustrated.

well i expect there to be an ios 8.1.1 relativity soon, within the next 3-4 weeks, thats my guess based on previous patch history, Apple are aware of the problem and are working on a fix, whether or not it makes it into 8.1.1 is a different matter ...

At the moment I'm using Google Play Music and just updating the plays manually on itunes when I get home each day (by starting a song and skipping it straight to the end to get it to add a play), bit of a pain but it works and keeps my plays accurate.

Like many of you, I have been pretty reluctant to use my iPhone or iPad to play music since this issue was uncovered. All my listening has been restricted to iTunes and my iPod Classic, which makes it a little annoying when I am commuting (USB cable as opposed to Bluetooth in the car and carrying both devices when I'm on public transport or walking) but at least I know that my iPod Classic WORKS.

I almost always have to plan what music I listen to if I am going to use my iPhone. For instance, last night, I stepped out to get some take-away and listened to four tracks from Elastica's debut album. I took a screenshot of their play counts before leaving and after syncing, they appeared okay, but seriously, you can't be doing that **** when you listen to seven or eight hours of music a day before syncing.

For those of you who don't have Doug's script which allows you to manage your play counts, get onto it, as it does allow you to make changes to play counts if they screw up with the least hassle, and removing the need to start/skip to the end if you need to.

The bigger picture here is what the **** the developers are doing to create such a drastic problem, and how they can avoid it in the future (this isn't the first time play counts have been tampered with on an iOS update).

This bothers me so much I used the Apple Feedback tool as well as sent an email to Tim Cook last night.  Who knows if he'll read it, but that's as far as I can go.  Sad if I got an Android phone it would probably do play counts fine with isyncr...

At this point, not manually correcting the counts every night, I think I'm too far gone to fix mine.  I still have the accurate data on last.fm should I ever decide to.  And I'll continue to scrobble to maintain that database.  This just baffles me that this got through all forms of testing and into our hands.  I might expect this if I signed up for beta testing...

Aren't your scrobbles messed up as well though? Mine were going up as much as the plays.