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Since the update yesterday to itunes 12.5 and iOS 10, itunes keeps syncing the same songs over and over to my iPhone
Already erased all settings and restored a backup
Removed all Songs and started again
The songs are not in a smart playlist
Anything else I can try
I also posted this in the iPhone section but I think it's not the correct place for that
iTunes 12.5 keeps syncing same songs
Thanks in advance
Let me share what I have found with this - it has been a nightmare thanks to Apple's sloppy implementation of the new "Work" field.
The constant sync'ing is indeed because of the "Work" field being populated, For mp3's, the Work field in iTunes is stored in the "TIT1" frame, aka CONTENTGROUP. If you are using CONTENTGROUP in a 3rd party tagger to store mood & style keywords and have enjoyed seeing them import into iTunes' Grouping field for referencing in smartplaylists, those days are over, that data is now in "Work". And Work is nothing but problems and causes constant resyncing issues, etc., and however long it takes Apple to fix this is irrelevant, you probably want Grouping to work again like it used to. iTunes now read/writes Grouping to a new mp3 id3 frame called "GRP1". So if you want to retain all your hard-earned mood & style keywords that used to be in Grouping, you need to find a 3rd party tagger that supports both the TIT1 (CONTENTGROUP) frame and the new GRP1 (iTunes Grouping) frame. You can then copy CONTENTGROUP to GRP1 before getting rid of CONTENTGROUP which is now useless for anything but what it was designed for, the Classical "Work". Fortunately a couple of taggers have started supporting both tags... Mp3tag calls it "GROUPING". And thanks to Mp3tag's recent update, my iTunes library and syncs are functional again. Here are the steps:
1) use 3rd party tagger to copy "CONTENTGROUP" to "GROUPING", and delete CONTENTGROUP tag.
2) go into iTunes, select all files, Get Info, check "use work and movement", clear out Work field. Uncheck "use work and movement", update. This is the initial first step needed to get all that pesky CONTENTGROUP stuff out of Work in iTunes' library and stop the madness. Should not have to ever repeat this step unless you ever import songs into iTunes with CONTENTGROUP populated in the future.
3) re-import all affected songs into iTunes's library. Sometimes iTunes is flakey about reimporting into existing fields and ignores your attempt, there are iTunes "refresh library from file" scripts out there to ensure all fields are refreshed from the file tags, use them. Grouping should now be populated and Work empty. Constant resyncing should cease, and all references to Grouping in Smartplaylists should work again like they used to.
As long as any songs are imported into iTunes with CONTENTGROUP, aka TIT1 frame, aka "Work" populated, the problem will return. As long as songs are imported into iTunes with GROUPING, aka GRP1 frame populated, iTunes Grouping will work, and won't constantly resync.
I don't seem to be able to delete the lyrics in iTunes
I wrote a script for that for some reason. See ClearLyrics.
tt2
I am having the same problem. Unfortunately, it seems that playing the songs in iTunes on my MacBook Pro is what is causing the problem, so playing songs actually increases the number. I am currently at 3,595 songs that resync every time I sync my phone.
The below thread details the problems I am having and what I have done to try and resolve it:
Re: Same songs are getting re-synced every time
And then here's another thread with others who are having this problem.
I have two problems with iTunes 12.5.3.17:
1. The first, less vexing issue is that iTunes no longer seems to recognize the "Grouping" id3 tag. When I modify MP3 files using a third-party MP3 tag editor, iTunes no longer recognizes the "Grouping" tag and will leave it blank when I import the files into iTunes. Never used to be a problem. Now I have to manually add that tag in iTunes whenever I import new files.
2. The second, and more bothersome problem is the same one on this thread. I decided to add my two cents and more specific details. Every time I plug my iPod Nano (7th Gen) into my computer to sync it with iTunes, it syncs the same 84 songs every single time. The common thread between these songs is that they are all on a smart playlist which contains all my 5-star rated songs (2,175 of them). Some of the 84 have been played others have not, and they seem to be limited to a handful of different artists.
All the 5-star rated songs on specific albums by specific artists are affected, but not all albums by specific artists are affected, if that makes sense. As an example, if an artist has 5 albums, all the 5-star songs on 3 of those albums will be constantly synced, the 5-star songs on the other 2 albums will not be.
Steps I have tried to fix the issue:
1. Someone on another thread suggested it might be due to the new custom lyrics feature. I don't have lyrics on my songs, but I ran a VBS script to strip lyrics from all songs anyways, to no avail.
2. I have also removed the offending songs from iTunes altogether and re-added them, to no avail.
3. I deleted my smart playlist and recreated it, to no avail.
4. Did a factory reset/erase of my iPod Nano, to no avail.
Not really sure what else to try as this issue never happened prior to iTunes 12.5.
I stumbled upon a solution that stopped itunes from syncing the same 3500 songs very time I ran a sync.
So I use the "grouping" id3 tag to sort my music in certain ways. I will usually add the data for that tag in a 3rd party encoder before adding the songs to my iTunes library. Well, iTunes 12.5 now has an option for classical music fans that allows them to sort song titles into works and movements instead of just single song names. For some reason, iTunes 12.5 places the information you enter in 3rd party apps for the "grouping" tag into the "work" field in iTunes under that "work and movement" option. It does this whether you have "Use work and movement" selected or not. Well that's annoying, I thought. So last night I selected my entire iTunes library, hit "Get info", and then checked the box where it says "Use work and movement" so that it would show the "work" field. I then cleared out that field and hit "Okay". After it applied the change to my entire iTunes library (I have over 19,000 songs so it took about an hour), I then selected all the songs in my iTunes library again, selected "get info", and unchecked "Use work and movement". It then took another hour to apply that change.
This morning, when I synced my phone, it no longer re-synced the same 3500 songs like it has been doing since I updated to 12.5.3 last week.
I cannot begin to describe what a relief it is to have that problem solved!
That is interesting. Your process will have updated timestamps. I wonder if this has something to do with how they are stored and compared. I recall that at one point I had an issue with some backup software that would want to resync unchanged files when the clocks went forwards and backwards.
tt2
First HERE WE GO AGAIN. I thought I had this problem resolved, but Apple brought it back.
~
OK, so I tried this suggestion of editing all my songs with "Use work and movement" checked, and then unchecked (was I suppose to sync after checking and then again after unchecking? I didn't do that) to no avail.
~
COME ON APPLE. TRY FIXING A PROBLEM FOR ONCE. 😟
iTunes Keeps Syncing
