Can't get music transferred to iPhone 6

Try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour (including the troublesome grey dotted circles). They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

1. Backup device.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Re: disable encrypted backups, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud.

tt2

Because they want to keep alive the iTunes business. The cds or records you own don't really belong to you any more, according to their business mentality. my love affair with apple is getting worn out

Having the same issue with my iPhone 6 (128 GB) as well. Trying to sync about 75GB of music to the phone and it will not allow for it to happen. Getting hung up on applications as well.

So here is the final steps I took to finally get the 79.15GB (15,389 songs) that is my music library to sink.

1. I had to restore phone to factory setting after multiple attempts to sync my music library only to think it was complete, but find 40GB of something under the category of "other".
2. I did not restore my iPhone from a back up, I did it as a new phone.
3. Once I finished restoring and before I plugged it in to sync, I downloaded all the apps I use to the phone itself from the app store. So my plan was not to sync apps via iTunes on my iMac. I only was going to sync music and movies and that is only because I has a ton of CDs converted to MP3s before I started buying everything through iTunes.
4. Since I have a large library typically I check covert songs to 128kbps AAC, however this time around I did not do that.
5. Once I plugged in the iPhone for the first time to my iMac, using the cable provided with the iPhone, I told iTunes to only sync music and movies. I checked all the playlist and movies I wanted on the phone. I did not do entire library. Also, my intent was to check everything I wanted to do it one big swoop and not return for second.
6. I then hit sync and it worked.

A few things to note. I never interrupted the sync. I allowed for the iMac to think however it long it needed in what ever step it was. I didn't get inpatient this time around. I also did not check sync via WiFi (which I regret). I regret this because now I don't intend to plug into the iMac for fear that it will put some content back under the category of "other" as it has in the past. Restoring and uploading and do it again has been a 3 day process that I don't wan to do again. I intend to use the phone like it had no home base and only download straight to the phone from the music / app store. Anything I purchase on my computer or phone will be available via the cloud to download onto my other devices. This is where I stand now, the hope is that the next iOS or iTunes update will fix whatever error is creating all this loop jumping.

Has anyone had better outcomes with syncing now that iOS 8.0.2 is out?

I finally got my music to transfer....it was fairly easy. Be sure "Home sharing" is on in ITunes. then go to your Iphone...go to Music. Click on "More" Click on "Shared" Be sure your Library is checked!!!!!!!!!! that will transfer all your music from your library to your phone.

Well, that got more songs on but still only about half of them. I swear I don't understand why Apple makes this so difficult.

I have been struggling with this all weekend (first world problem, I know). My first attempt to fix this resulted in approximately 25GB of music being reported as "Other" in iTunes, which was over the phone's capacity, and in order to get back to a phone that would actually sync I needed to restore iPhone. Prior to this, I tried restarting iPhone, my Mac, turning off music sync, and a voodoo chant. Nothing worked.

After restoring, the "Other" was gone after the initial sync, but the phone still believed that it had transferred Music to itself. Very few of the 25GB of songs were actually transferred.

The suggestion about enabling Sharing on iPhone didn't work for me -- selecting my Mac's iTunes library on the phone just allowed me to play that library through the phone; it didn't actually transfer it to the phone.

What finally worked for me:

1. In iTunes, deselect any playlists that were syncing with the phone, and then resync.

2. Go to Settings>Music on iPhone and deselect "Show All Music". This sets iPhone to only display music that's actually on the phone -- not stuff that you may have purchased but not downloaded or stuff that's sitting in the cloud.

3. I opened the Music app on iPhone and pressed play. The phone started to play through the library, immediately skipping any songs that were not actually on the phone. Out of approximately 2000 songs, fewer than 20 were actually on the phone, so I just sat there while it blasted through the library in five minutes or so. When that process was complete, the Music app reported an accurate count of the number of songs actually on iPhone. Sync in iTunes and note that the bar in iTunes that shows what's on iPhone will change to reflect how much music is actually on iPhone. For me, it went from 25GB to less than 1GB. (Note that when this step starts, iPhone still thinks all the music that was on the phone is still there, despite being told to not sync it, from step 1.)

4. Re-select playlists in iTunes, then re-sync. At this point, iTunes and iPhone seemed to make up and the music actually transferred. I tested this with a couple small playlists by syncing and then stepping through the playlist on iPhone to verify the music was actually there. (Full disclosure: I did not fully step through the 2000+ songs on my phone, but I think they're all there.) Music app reports song numbers that are consistent with the playlists in iTunes.

Your mileage (or kilometer-age, depending upon your geographic location) may vary, but it worked for me.

Would be absolutely lovely if it worked the way it is supposed to out of the box. Not sure if this is an iPhone 6 problem, an iOS 8 problem, or some combination of both.

For what it's worth, if Apple is listening, here's what I'm running:

• iPhone: 6, 64GB, 8.0.2
• Mac: iMac, early 2010, 10.9.5
• iTunes: 11.4 (18)

I retract my earlier post -- upon a subsequent sync, I'm back in exactly the same spot -- iPhone thinks all those songs are on the device, but trying to play them proves that they are not. I'm trying my fix again, and it seems to be working, but if I have to do this every time I sync, then I am going to be very charitable and say that it's not working. If I have the time and the energy tomorrow I will try syncing my iPhone 4 running iOS 7 to at least rule out an iTunes or Mac issue.

This is definitely putting a damper on the new shiny happiness that was supposed to come with iPhone 6.

I've been dealing with this problem as well and it among the most frustrating things I've ever encountered. I'm running the exact same phone that you are using the same version of iTunes on an iMac. The only thing that works is deleting all of the music on the phone by syncing without checking "Sync Music." Then I reselect it, hit "Sync Music" and it works. But even if I make a minor change (like clicking a different artist to include during the next sync) I'm back at square one. This is absolutely absurd. I've done everything I've found on these forums and it seems like the only option is to delete everything every time you want to make a change to the music on your iPhone.

Yes, that seemed to work. Well, it synced 95% of my music instead of the 45% before. It seems like having "Find My iPhone" turned on in your iPhone may help too. But they really need to straighten this out. This is one of the primary functions of iTunes and iPhone. We're on the 12th version of iTunes and the 8th of iOS so you'd think they could get this right by now.

I had this issue on my 4S but i assumed upgrading to an iphone 6 would resolve. I have a macbook pro and the solid state drive isn't big enough to house my iTunes library. I have had iPhones since the original. So i have 4-5 thousand songs from iTunes purchases as well as my cd collection that I ripped and disposed of years ago. not to mention tv shows etc. After struggling with this for days I finally got it to work and get my music on my iphone 6. I don't know if all of these steps were necessary but this is what I did.

1.No longer backed up to the cloud, backed up the phone to my computer as the default

2. wiped my iTunes library & rescanned my media on my macbook & added my automatically add to iTunes folder from my external networked hard drive. This took a long time and broke all of my playlists which are critical to being able to effectively listen to a deep music library . It's really disappointing as i've had to rebuild these playlists so many times over the years shifting my library from machine to machine. I thought once i went full Apple I'd never have to again but I digress

3. Hard wire the iphone to the macbook (instead of syncing wirelessly)

4. Turned off Match on itunes

5. On the main info page of the iphone checked manually manage music and videos & sync

navigate to the music tab on iTunes left hand nag and then selected a song in my library, navigated to the top menu edit, select all, then drag and drop my entire library of songs to the iphone on the left hand nav

6. I also had some smart play lists that I dragged and dropped onto the iPhone

7. Synced my iphone again to pick up the changes.

I have my entire music library back on my iphone now. But I am afraid to back up my info to the cloud, I have to rebuild my playlists apparently on my phone because i am also concerned about losing my media upon reconnecting with iTunes. I am paying for match but unable to utilize it. Nor an i able to utilize genius mixes/playlists on my iphone. I would have gone to see a genius but since I have to store my library on an external hard drive I can't bring the mountain to Mohammed. I think Steve Wozniak was right. If this solution is suitable to any of you go nuts. At least i have my songs on my phone

Hello,

i seem to have a similar Problem:

after i got my new iPhone i wanted to sync my playlists.

However when i wanted to Play the Songs later on on my phone i noticed most/many of them were not synced to the phone.

It seems iTunes is only syncing Music to my iPhone which i bought on iTunes.

None of the stuff i bought from Amazon or ripped from CD is getting synced.

Anyone have an idea how to fix this? or did Apple mess it up?

The titles on the playlists are all on my harddisk. Full Albums and single Songs are not getting synced.

At first the seem to be on your phone until you want to Play them. then the Music Player skips from one missing song to the next until it finds one again taht is actually there.

It is really weird, since the stuff seems to get synced in the first place.

I have this same problem, and i tested it both on iphone 6 and iphone 4s with my macbook pro

The only thing working for me is if remove/deselect all my music and re sync all my music again.

I also tired syncing music with a windows and i have no issue what so ever. So i guess there is some problem with itunes on my macbook pro

Windows 8 users

- close itunes

- open task manager

- stop iPodService Module

- restart itunes

music syncing restarted