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iPhone won't download entire playlist for offline playback on iOS 8.4

I'm about to give up on using apples new "iCloud music library". I've been trying to download all my music for offline use so I made a smart playlist that contained all my songs (3763, 29.49GB). The downloads start and the problems quickly arise. First off every so often i get an error promoting a song couldn't download then to retry or hit done. Second the downloads seem to do alright for the first several hundred downloads but then start to freeze and go really slow. My internet connection is fast and other downloads, like my podcast in my downcast app download gb's of data rather quickly. This has caused me to make several attempts to download them over night. However when i wake up i find the download halts at some random number. My most recent attempt got me down to about 200 songs however there were no ways to restart those stuck download. Restarting the phone and or hitting make available offline (again) results in all the songs already downloaded being removed. So basically at this point there is no easy way to download all my music. You think by now we are far enough in computing that downloading gb's of data should occur with out a hitch and as i said before for other apps and iTunes on desktop everything is fine. But right now my iPhone can just not download all my music. This a feature of both iTunes match and apple music that is essentially broken for me. And alternatives like turning off iCloud music library result in me not being able to use apple music.


So it seems i'm left with two options. 1. just deal with not having all my music offline and have said streaming eat up my data plan and battery. And hope that apple pushes an update that fixes these download issues. 2. Completely turn off iCloud library and as such apple music + iTunes match as well which ends up making all apples recent music product usless.


Does anyone have any solution to these problems?

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4, null

Posted on Jul 2, 2015 7:05 AM

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Posted on Jul 2, 2015 8:13 AM

Experiencing the exact same things as you. Trying to sync all my music (4400 songs) in a single playlist, and it's just not having it at all. Also a ton of error popups, freezes, crashes, restarts, just like you said.


I don't think it's isolated to a single playlist though, I think the whole offline service is messed up. I'm currently having issues syncing even a playlist with only 25 songs. It chokes and freezes when it gets to "Downloading 3 songs".


This is very disappointing, as reliable offline syncing is probably my #1 must-have in a streaming music service. I'll be going back to Spotify at the end of the trial if this isn't resolved.

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Jul 2, 2015 8:13 AM in response to Codycgb

Experiencing the exact same things as you. Trying to sync all my music (4400 songs) in a single playlist, and it's just not having it at all. Also a ton of error popups, freezes, crashes, restarts, just like you said.


I don't think it's isolated to a single playlist though, I think the whole offline service is messed up. I'm currently having issues syncing even a playlist with only 25 songs. It chokes and freezes when it gets to "Downloading 3 songs".


This is very disappointing, as reliable offline syncing is probably my #1 must-have in a streaming music service. I'll be going back to Spotify at the end of the trial if this isn't resolved.

Jul 2, 2015 8:31 AM in response to marcfromtimonium

Additionally, Apple Music doesn't seem to recognize when playlists made available offline need to be updated. For example - I created a new playlist, added 10 songs, and then marked that playlist for available offline. It synced the 10 songs successfully. However, then I add 10 more and it never recognizes that it needs to sync those. The only way for it to pick up the changes is to hit "Remove Downloads" on the playlist (thereby removing all my offline download progress) , and then "Make Available Offline" again. This is unacceptable.

Jul 2, 2015 8:48 AM in response to marcfromtimonium

I've only played around with small playlists, because I'm afraid a big playlist would run into issues, but so far I've found that when I make a playlist available offline I can go to iTunes, add more songs to it, and my device will start downloading those songs. However, I did have to restore my phone from a backup before Apple Music would work right (or somewhat right).

Jul 2, 2015 9:38 AM in response to Codycgb

I too share all of these problems. One error message I continually get is that I can't download a song because it wasn't purchased with my iTunes account. When that happens, it completely removes every song that it had just downloaded leaving me with nothing but frustration and wasted time. Also, this iCloud Music Library doesn't include music that I didn't purchase on iTunes, leaving me with no way to listen to anything not on the iTunes store at all. These are two major issues that are quickly ensuring that I go back to Spotify, which is far from perfect itself.

Jul 2, 2015 9:48 AM in response to etburnes

After many view/replies on this thread and many other similar threads i can safely say this is not an isolated issue and that many people are experiencing issues with offline playback sync since the release of apple music. Ranging from small to big libraries but especially to those of us that love music and have have big libraries (>1000). Apple please fix so we can stop troubleshooting and can get back to enjoying music. That my two cents. 😎

Jul 2, 2015 9:56 AM in response to Codycgb

Same here, happened after I deleted everything and tried to reload it.


Apple Music filled up my phone (getting a 128GB one next time). All of a sudden, after 8.4, I lost the last several GB of space.


So I'll share my little trick here: I made a smart playlist by size, consisting of 15 GB of my most recently listened to music. I'm trying to sync this, and then some key playlists.


I'm just lost in a flurry of stuck downloads and "Unable to download song" dialogs.

Jul 2, 2015 10:18 AM in response to Codycgb

It seems like we're all in similar boats here.


I'm wondering, what if I synced all my local music from iTunes on my computer to my iPhone and then started adding Apple cloud music to my library and making it available offline? As Apple Music just came out, I haven't added many of its songs to my library yet. My iPhone currently has no local songs on it though, just streaming my library from the cloud. Do you think if I synced my music from iTunes I could then just start adding more stuff from Apple's catalog?


I'm just worried iTunes syncing and the new cloud library don't play well together.


Any thoughts?

iPhone won't download entire playlist for offline playback on iOS 8.4

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