iphone 6 or 7 : tracks from albums uploaded with itune 12.7.2.58 (MacOS 10.12.6) are not grouped

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Level 1

4 points

iphone 6 or 7 : tracks from albums uploaded with itune 12.7.2.58 (MacOS 10.12.6) are not grouped

Hi all,

Since to update to itune 12.7 or ios 11 (it's difficult to know where is the problem), randomly an album uploaded from my Macbook pro 2012 appear fully splitted on iphone 7 Apple music player.

Note : This problem is also reproducible with an iphone 6 with ios 11. The tracks/albums list from itune are properly sorted in all case. Only the iphone Apple music player make a mess with the contents.

All the tracks from album are MP3. The track are well tagged, with album title, artists, etc... I suspected something wrong in itune ID3 metadata parser, and started to experiment album patched with less metadata to describe album contents. But it's not the case.

In fact the dysfunction appear randomly with you init the transfert from computer to phone. A same album can be uploaded as a single container with all tracks inside as expected, or, fully splitted with each track recognised by an album. Of course this last behavior is fully unsuitbale on the phone. When i want to play music, i search by artist, and i select one album, and finally a specific track.

For me ios 11 or itune 12.7 have big regressions by the way to manage music contents on phone. I use Apple devices since a very long time, and i must admit that the software quality decrease step by step in time especially since September 2017. As i'm senior software engineer specialized in QA, i can judge this king of important changes as a simple user.

Somebody can reproduce the dysfunction in this room ?

iPhone 7, iOS 11.2, null

Posted on Dec 10, 2017 2:32 AM

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Answer 1

humandynamo Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2017 2:54 AM in response to humandynamo

More information after some unit tests :

- When a new album is not properly uploaded (splitted), i remove it from my iphone with itune, and i try again to upload the same album (i drag and drop the files from finder to itune). The second try is always good. The album imported group all tracks as expected.

- As i said previously, the bug do not appear all time. Sometime the album appear group in the phone at the first import, sometime not. Removing and trying again to import fix the problem.

- I cannot imagine to upload each album one by one (i have more than 500 albums to upload in my iphone 7 128 Gb), and to check if each one is properly imported with all tracks grouped or not. It's just unacceptable for an end user.

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Answer 2

humandynamo Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:06 AM in response to humandynamo

Another result :

- Try to import more than one album at the same time always give ungrouped tracks on phone. Removing tracks from phone and try again do not solve the issue.

- The fix to re-upload one album to see all tracks group together as expected work only if just one album is uploaded one time, removed from the phone, and re-uploaded.

- Sound like a Apple music player internal database initial commit for one album which is broken. Typically, i suspect the entry not fully performed at the first time. Remove the album do not remove all database metadata from the phone. Tying again to upload the contents is perform successfully because the initialisation was previously done at the first time (or something like that)...

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Answer 3

humandynamo Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2017 3:12 AM in response to humandynamo

Another one :

- If i start to upload a huge album, i can see quickly if the import is grouped or not on the phone. I can cancel the upload on itune. Restarting the process to upload incomplete files do not fix the problem. You must remove files from phone (completed and not completed), and re-upload contents a second time.

- I suspect a multi-threading problem while itune process files to upload in phone database. I can see files uploaded in parallel.

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