Syncing music creates duplicate "1" Playlist

YOU GOT IT JON!!! This is exactly the solution.....make sure iTunes is closed on your iPhone/iPad/iPod and you will no longer get the duplicate (& inaccurate) playlist. This has been bugging me for a long time, so long that I was no even looking for an answer anymore. I would just delete the dupe, re-sync and carry on. SO HAPPY I found this post though...wow!

The issue stems from changes being made on BOTH the computer (iTunes Library) and the device (phone, iPad) after a sync.

1. Sync the playlist from iTunes to Library. No "1" or "2" etc playlists yet.
2. Play songs from playlist on device. This updates the play count and last played time. That's all that seems necessary. You might add a song to the playlist or remove a song from the playlist -- doesn't matter as long as the playlist content is updated.
3. Make a change to the playlist on the computer. Play a song from the playlist, etc. In my case I rebuild these playlists nightly from a script. And sometimes I'll use the same "daily" playlist to pipe tunes around the house.

Next time you sync the computer with this device, iTunes will show "playlist" and "playlist 1" since it doesn't know which changes to keep and which to throw away.

One solution could be a Preference on your computer saying "Updates to playlist on computer have precedence over device changes" (that'd be my choice).

But until then, the workaround I use is to sync then remove "playlist 1" from the computer library and sync again.

that did the trick for me, and this has been a PITA for years! Just kill itunes on the iphone before syncing!! Seems so easy, not sure why I didn't think of that before.

Well done, Jon. You're exactly right. I'd been trying to figure that out for several months. The key is to close iTunes on the device prior to syncing. Thanks.

What he is mentioning used to take about 2 minutes. If you have a 3000 song playlist, what you are mentioning takes about 20 minutes. Why can we no longer adjust just a few songs?

Aloha all,

I've also been having this problem for a couple years now. It's just a thought and I'm testing my theory now. Have any of you noticed the problem after organizing my library. Under User -> Music ->, I have my Itunes media and a another music folder that contains music that was not purchased, but downloaded from limewire 12+ years ago.

My thought is that, after I "Organized Library," my computer has my old .mp3 in two places. One in Itunes library, and one in my old music folder. Itunes may be pulling music from both locations into the same playlist. For me, I've noticed that the playlist that it occurs in sometimes contains both itunes purchased music, and limewire music. It might not want to overwrite files in the playlist, so it automatically creates a new playlist.

just a thought right now. I changed the folder path for my limewire music so itunes can't find it and I'm currently removing(unsyncing) music from my phone and old phone.

The first sync (that creates "playlist 1") leaves it behind on your device -- it gets set aside as a "snapshot" of the list before it's synced. The second sync (after removing "playlist 1" from iTunes) removes "playlist 1" from your device.

In my case, since my playlist is rebuilt every day, these "playlist 1", "playlist 2", entries ate up all the storage on my iPhone.

Report the issue to Feedback - iTunes - Apple.

tt2

Jon Milan wrote:

...the workaround I use is to sync then remove "playlist 1" from the computer library and sync again.

Why is it necessary to sync a second time?

None of this has helped at all. I think we can all agree iTunes and Apple music have become a complicated s***show! I've got duplicate albums, duplicate songs, duplicate songs within albums, a playlist that's duplicated itself 3 times. What a f***in mess!!! Syncing used to be so easy. Now Apple's totally lost control of it, and it's become a tangled clusterf**k!

I'm glad to hear that this has helped several people, but it hasn't changed anything for me. I never have the Music app open on my iPhone (SE), nor do I have any of the affected playlists open in iTunes on my PC before I choose to sync. Any time I add or delete any songs to/from any playlist, syncing always results in a "_1" playlist being created on both my iPhone and on my PC. The only way I've found to deal with this is to uncheck any playlist (and its "_1" counterpart,) in iTunes, then sync (which removes the playlists & songs from my iPhone,) THEN delete the "_1" playlist from iTunes, THEN sync all over again to get my correct, updated playlist onto my iPhone.

Honestly, I'm really starting to get fed up with all of the "little" problems that have accumulated over the past few years. My service contract's up for renewal in another month, and I think it's time to take a break from Apple.

Thank you for expressing my exact thoughts on Apple and this software catastrophe. I have also tried renaming playlists so the software can't duplicate the list. Mixed results: iTunes recreates the deleted playlist from the phone...and I have turned off every sync, cloud option there is. Alternately, iTunes has also decided to empty a playlist if it is no longer on the device. This does not happen to "smart" playlists, so that is an option for creating future lists.

Hope you found a work around....maybe a walkman?