Level 1

13 points

Sync Issue - Invisible Songs Displaying On My iPhone

I am running the newest versions of iOS (10.3.2) and iTunes (12.6.1.25). I have a brand new HP Spectre 360 PC (although I had this issue on an older PC as well) and an iPhone 6s that is just over a year old. I do not use iTunes match or have an Apple Music subscription. I have my phone set not automatically sync with iTunes when plugged in.

I recently added a lot of music to my phone and I’m running into an issue with some of the songs not displaying properly on my iPhone – specifically in the artist view and sometimes in the album view. I have attached some pictures that give an example of what I’m seeing on my phone. Take a look at the picture titled “Aaliyah – Broken.” I have added (7) Aaliyah songs to my iPhone, but only one (the song “I Miss You”) can be viewed on the artist view for Aaliyah (I’m going to Artists-->Aaliyah-->Unknown Album). The other songs are there, but their names aren’t appearing. They are listed as empty spaces. If I select one of the empty spaces a song will play, but you don’t know what song will play until after you touch it and it starts playing.

I’ve included another example (see pictures “112 – Pic 1 – Broken” and “112 – Pic 2 – Broken”). Of the (8) 112 songs I added, only (5) titles are visible. Also attached is a picture of an artist (Alan Jackson) that is displaying correctly. I can easily view and select all of songs I added for him.

So unfortunately this is happening for some but not all albums/artists. I’m having a hard time determining why it happens for some but not others. The only thing I’m noticing is on the “broken” pictures (112 & Aaliyah) you will see the red cloud icon but on the “correct” one (Alan Jackson) there is no cloud icon at all.

My guess/assumption is this is somehow caused by a conflict with the cloud and/or previous music that I’ve purchased in the iTunes store. Music I've purchased in the iTunes store makes up less than 1% of my total music. I’m pretty sure I don’t have music saved/stored in the cloud, but it’s possible I need to fix my settings to make sure there isn’t conflict somewhere.

Any help you can provide would be hugely appreciated!

-Mark

iPhone 6s, iOS 10.3.2, null

Posted on Jul 12, 2017 1:06 PM

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Posted on Oct 18, 2017 11:42 AM

It could well be that iTunes isn't detecting and stripping out the tag(s) properly when you use Convert to none. This could leave residual information, some of which is blank. iTunes reports what it is in its database, which should tally with what it has read from the tag(s) and/or written to them. Windows Explorer shows only the values that it reads from the tag(s). It might help to use a third party tool such as Mp3tag to inspect the tags and strip them. If they are completely clean as viewed from Windows Explorer, then Convert > ID3v2.3 ought to push data into the file in a way that works correctly in iTunes, in Windows Explorer, and on your iPhone.

tt2

View in context

40 replies

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Jul 12, 2017 4:10 PM in response to mmish84

mmish84 wrote:

When you say "restore as a new device" you mean erase your phone (settings-->general-->reset-->erase all content and settings-->enter passcode-->tap erase twice) correct? Then restore using iTunes from the backup made in step 1?

Yep. That's what I meant. Although you can do it iTunes too.

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Jul 12, 2017 4:09 PM in response to mmish84

I have cloud items that show correctly on my devices. I am however quite particular about the metadata in my tracks. Each has at minimum track name & no., artist, album artist, album, and embedded artwork. Sort values are used consistently so that no two different primary values are assigned the same sort value. Without comparing what is on your device with what is in your library it is hard to guess what the discrepancies are.

The cloud symbol against an artist or album would indicate that you have one more tracks from that artist or album that are not downloaded to your device, however I would then normally expect to see one or more cloud symbols in the track listing further down the screen. Since you don't have iTunes Match or Apple Music these would be related to purchased items.

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Oct 17, 2017 10:32 AM in response to mmish84

Did you ever look at the suggestion I made back here? Multiple tags are about the only way I can think of to introduce an inconsistency like this. Your recent examples show the artist as Unknown, but presumably the detail is there in the library.

tt2

mmish84 Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 18, 2017 11:16 AM in response to turingtest2

Ok I might have had a minor breakthrough - it appears that when I go through the multiple tags process that it generally doesn't change any info in iTunes (besides the cover art and occasionally it changes a track number or something).

However, I noticed that the multiple tags process often changes some of the data in Windows Explorer - never the file name itself but often times I'll see some (or all) of the title, contributing artists, and album show up as blank (see screenshot).

It appears that iTunes isn't using this information but the iPhone is. So I have been able to manually go through and enter this information into Windows Explorer, then re-add the songs to iTunes, and re-add them to the iPhone. It's a long and annoying process, but it seems to be working.

Is there a way to get the iPhone to ignore what is in Windows Explorer and instead use what I have in iTunes?

I appreciate your help on this - without your multiple tags suggestion, I don't think I would have discovered the Windows Explorer connection.

mmish84 Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 18, 2017 1:11 PM in response to turingtest2

Like you mentioned several posts above, I have to hit "none" multiple times.

The first time I hit none, I generally notice no change in how it's displaying in Windows explorer. The second time I hit "none" it will delete all tags in Windows Explorer except for the actual file name (the title, artist, album, etc will be blank).

Then once I hit v2.3, the tags will come back in Windows Explorer.

The frustrating part is that I then need to go back into iTunes and re-enter track numbers, album year, featured artists, album art, etc. All info that I have already entered years ago and it's very time consuming (especially for rap music which has a ton of featured artists - I have to go to the wikipedia page and look through track by track to see who is featured and then re-enter it into iTunes).

It would be great if I could somehow clear the tags and then automatically get them back to what I had before. Make sense?

mmish84 Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 18, 2017 1:16 PM in response to mmish84

The good news is that at least after I go through the annoying hassle described above, the tracks will at least appear correctly on my phone. So from that standpoint it's very helpful, it's just taking me forever to get there due to having to re-enter info that is already perfect (at least in iTunes).

Feels strange to have to delete perfectly entered info, just to re-enter it in order for it to display correctly on the iPhone. There has to be a setting somewhere that is causing the iPhone not to simply copy what's listed in iTunes.

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Oct 18, 2017 2:44 PM in response to mmish84

Some of my scripts might help:

ExportImport can be used to export metadata that is in iTunes, and then later add it back after tag cleaning.
CreateFolderArt will save associated or embedded artwork as a Folder.jpg image before you clean the tags.
EmbedFolderArt can embed an image from album folder after the new tags have been created.

tt2

mmish84 Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 18, 2017 5:23 PM in response to turingtest2

Ok I will give that a shot tomorrow and see if it's a time saver compared to what I've been doing today.

Would you agree that it seems strange that I have to go through this process just to get song track names to appear on my iPhone? Whether or not your scripts save time, it's quite frustrating that there is no other way to figure out why this is happening as well as what can be done to reverse it.

In the meantime, just to make sure there wasn't an easier fix I just backed up my phone to iTunes, restored the phone as new, then restored the new phone from the backup. That cleared the music on my phone. I just tried loading an album that wasn't displaying properly before the restore and it's still unfortunately not working.

Any other ideas on how to fix this problem so I don't need to use the time-consuming work-arounds? Just to make sure I'm clear, I do not use iCloud for music, I don't automatically sync. There was a time where ALL of my music displayed correctly on my phone so I know it's possible. At some point something changed - it was probably when I got a new phone (iPhone 6s) in 2016. The songs displayed perfectly on my previous phone.

I do really appreciate your help though.

mmish84 Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 25, 2017 6:18 PM in response to turingtest2

I did try adding album names to several of the single songs (for several different artists) that had the invisible track names - it did not fix any of them unfortunately. Even with the album name, the track titles were not displaying. Again, this is on the "artist" view on the phone. Click on the artist --> click on "unknown album" (or whatever made up album name I created) = still invisible track names for the songs.

Even if this did work, it would take me forever to go through artist by artist and create an album for all songs not linked to an album. I know that it SHOULD work without needing to create an album. I know this because I never have created one before (and all of my songs used to display correctly) and also because I have current single songs that are displaying correctly (especially my single songs that I added before restoring as new last week).

Regarding the cloud icon, I mentioned something about that in my very first post on this thread - initially I noticed that many times when the songs names weren't displaying I would see a cloud icon, and when they were displaying correctly I would not see the cloud icon. However as I look now, that's not always the case. Below is another image of songs not displaying correctly (in this instance 1 of the 3 songs is displaying and the other 2 are invisible) - no cloud in this instance.

When there is a cloud icon there, I've noticed that if I click on the cloud icon (click on my phone) it just goes away. Not sure what that means.

I know for a fact that I've never signed up for Apple music.

I used to know how to check for iTunes match, but everything is moved now. Can you remind me how I can make sure I do not have iTunes Match signed on?

Here is the image I was referring to earlier. No cloud icon and only one of the 3 song titles displaying. the other two are invisible/hidden

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Oct 26, 2017 9:51 AM in response to mmish84

I guess my thinking is to add a few things slowly to an otherwise empty device in order to see if you can pick up on any sort of pattern. When you get something that won't display properly try making edits and resync/manually add (whichever method you normally use) until you find something that works. Then try preemptively making the same kind of edit on another small selection and add to confirm that it has helped. You could remove all of the music rather than do a full restore since you've done that recently. If you find something that works it might be possible to use a script to make bulk changes.

tt2

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Sync Issue - Invisible Songs Displaying On My iPhone