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Songs won't add to playlists

I keep adding music to my playlists and more than 80% of the time it won't show up. I'll get the message that it's been added, but when I navigate to the playlist, it's not there.


Also, if I go to  Music on another device (iTunes on Mac, iOS on iPad) the syncing doesn't appear to be working correctly either.


Anyone else having these issues?

Posted on Jul 1, 2015 7:20 AM

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35 replies

Jul 1, 2015 11:38 AM in response to Tim Baker

I created a brief video showing exactly what happens for me. You'll notice the following:

  • Adding an album to "My Music" will say it's been added, but then as soon as the message goes away, the "check mark" turns back to a "plus sign"
  • Songs will say they are added to playlist, however navigating to the playlist shows it wasn't added.

https://vimeo.com/132360206

Jul 1, 2015 8:18 AM in response to aburgener

I am experiencing similar issues while trying to add existing songs (that I have downloaded to my computer prior to Apple Music) to a playlist. Whenever I try to add certain songs (sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't) to a playlist in iTunes on my PC, an iCloud icon with a line through it appears next to the playlist name. (To get to the place I'm at, click on the Music note in the top left corner, then click on Playlists on the top bar) Once I add this "broken" song to my playlist and the cloud icon with a line appears, the playlist automatically disappears from my iPhone without syncing it to iTunes.
User uploaded file

Jul 1, 2015 9:24 AM in response to Tim Baker

Think I found the solution.

I too set up my Apple Music account and went crazy adding songs to existing playlist and updating them all to include this new free music. I did this on my MacBooPro and then did a sync with my iPhone. On my iPhone, none of the playlists were there. NONE!

  • So I flipped out for a bit then toggled off all the Apple Music switches on my iOS device for Apple Music, did a second sync, and they all came back... minus the apple music. This was a problem.
  • So once again In iTunes I toggled the switch for iCloud Music Library off and then back on as you see below.

User uploaded file

Apparently what this does is upload all the viable playlists up to their iCloud server then back down to your device. So this will take some time it could take hours depending on how many playlists, how much bandwidth, and how many songs you have. Once it's complete your music is up in the cloud and will sync to your devices... but if you toggled things off and on like me somewhere in the mix you might have missing songs (like all the apple music). (FIX below "SOME THINGS STILL MISSING?")

What's a Viable Playlist? A playlist can not contain the following

  1. Duplicate Songs (if you changed the name or title of a purchased track you have created a duplicate in your iCloud library as it will automatically have all your purchased music). Not sure what the fix is for this yet I've yet to experiment.
  2. Different Media Like Videos if you like me own the 4 minutes video by Madonna but didn't buy the song... well you're fine cause it's an apple purchase and it's in the cloud. However if you like me own some rando copy of Prince's Alphabet street that was given to you by a hommie a few years back well that will invalidate your ENTIRE PLAYLIST. See below how I did that very thing and the Faster dALE playlist is now killed it was removed from my iOS device as well. Removing the video fixed this... but then the playlist was kinda broken. (FIX in next section).

User uploaded file

Some Things STILL MISSING? If like me and you did the step above, you will be missing songs on your iOS playlist vs the iTunes one... try these.

  1. On your IOS device and in the iTunes windowToggle the make available offline switch on that playlist.
  2. Move a song around in the playlist thats missing tracks (or not synced). It will then re-sync the playlist across the iCloud. All my songs that I had added in the iTunes playlist that were not on the iOS device immediately started showing up. It kinda threw the whole playlist out of whack (I think) for a second so moving things to where I wanted them on iTunes playlist fixed that, and was now mirrored on the iOS device.

Please let me know if this doesn't work for you or if it does. I would rather not be giving bad info to family and friends when they convert over.

Jul 1, 2015 10:14 AM in response to Tim Baker

I am having the same problem with my iPhone 6+, I add music and it doesn't show up in the playlist , sometimes my playlist will show up if I add a radio playlist but the list of songs are empty. The interesting thing is my iPad does not have this problem. it could be a bug limited to certain devices. I know it was working yesterday at some point and now it stopped .

Jul 1, 2015 6:44 PM in response to Tim Baker

So I solved the problem...


Turns out that I was at the 25K limit in matched library size. I had around 20,000 matched songs that were automatically transferred over as well as another 4800 "uploaded" songs (that couldn't be matched). Because I was reaching 25k limit by adding new albums to my library, they wouldn't show up. In order to fix it, I created a smart playlist for "matched" songs and just removed those albums that I don't listen to right now (they're all backed up on an external hard drive just in case).

Songs won't add to playlists

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