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Codycgb Author

Level 1

64 points

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

Top-ranking reply

marcfromtimonium

Level 1

30 points

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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50 replies

Sep 11, 2015 6:55 AM in response to Codycgb

I'm so happy and at the same time ****** with some bugs of Apple Music. For the people who is used to the Apple ecosystem, the service is great throughout iOS and OS X.. But seriously, this thing of being unable to download certain entire Apple Music playlists is frustrating. This only happen to me with some and not all Apple Music playlists I add to my library. Touching the option to keep it offline wont do anything at all and the only thing I can do is to manually download song per song!!!!! That is a huge bug. But I insist, I trust and bet on the service. I think it has so much more potential than Spotify, but Apple needs to focus and improve this basic features. I'd like to officially report the bug, but I couldn't find a channel to do so.

hgrit

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 11:12 AM in response to Codycgb

I'm starting to get annoyed by Apples ways. I love Apple. I love my iPhone. What I'm not liking is them buying out Beats by Dre, forcing their users to use other means to get to their music they already paid for. I'm not sure I complained this much about their Music App until the last 6 months thus far. iOS 9.2 isn't any better or worse. It just stinks! I had to delete 1 song from continuously downloading and so music would quit error out and use my data. Real dumb. I did download a 1,400 + playlist (BUT it was ALL songs I paid for from Apple). So even if this is the issue, they should fix it.

Jan 28, 2016 2:52 PM in response to Codycgb

Thank You very much

The smaller chunks version did worked . I tried using by 'Genre' section. It automatically sorts songs .

Sep 14, 2016 9:50 PM in response to Codycgb

Well.... a year and 3 months later, and on iOS 10, this is still an issue.

Sep 18, 2016 5:59 AM in response to Codycgb

I have the same issues.

I have a smart playlist with 4GB og random selected tracks from my entire Apple Music collection.

The 4GB limit gives about 500 tracks.

When I hit the cloud download button within that playlist some tracks are downloaded but after about a hundred i get errors such as "Unable to Download item", this has rendered my iPhone useless as the popups blocks every action on my phone.

Just wanted to add my story to this thread so that hopefully Apple will attend this obvious issue.

iOS 10.0.1, iPhone 6S

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