David Cooper

Q: lost playlists created on iPhone

My daughter has upgraded her phone to a 6s and backed up her old iPhone 4s to iTunes then installed from back up to 6s. All the music playlists she created on here 4s have gone and I cannot see how to stop this happening again. Please help

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Dec 26, 2015 12:02 AM

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Q: lost playlists created on iPhone

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  • by joe_7399,

    joe_7399 joe_7399 Dec 27, 2015 11:45 AM in response to David Cooper
    Community Specialists
    Dec 27, 2015 11:45 AM in response to David Cooper

    Hello David,

     

    Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities!

     

    I understand that your daughter restored her new iPhone 6s from a backup of her iPhone 4s, but playlists that were created on the iPhone 4s were not restored. 

     

    Playlists can be recovered if either iTunes Match or Apple Music was being used on the iPhone. These two services use iCloud Music Library and the playlists will be preserved and available to be redownloaded. 

     

    iCloud Music Library is a service that works with either Apple Music or iTunes Match which matches your songs, making them available across all of your devices. A lot of the information from the following article will not pertain to your issue specifically, but it is a good overview on how iCloud Music Library works with these two services. 

     

    iCloud Music Library: Understanding differences between Apple Music and iTunes Match - Apple Support

     

    If your daughter was using either Apple Music or iTunes Match and utilizing iCloud Music Library with one or both of those services, the following information will describe how to download these playlists. 

     

        1. Open the Music application on the iPhone 

        2. Select My Music from the bottom bar within the Music application 

        3. You will see two options on the top of this page; Library and Playlists. Select Playlists 

        4. Tap the name of the desired playlist

        5. Tap  to download the playlist

     

    Cheers!