Apple Music Play Counts Not Syncing

I've also been having this music ever since I started tracking my plays in January this year! No one seems to be able to help me at Apple. All they say is that they have had other reports and are looking into it 😠

I have the same problem and I've read a lot of posts about it!

For me, if I hear a song on my phone on my Wi-Fi, it updates iTunes play count right away. It just doesn't do it if I'm on LTE. I've read somewhere that it may take 24 hours for it to update, but I checked and sometimes it just doesn't happen.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this concern though, the friends I talked to thought I was crazy to pay that much attention to play counts 🙂

I have tried. Still not working for me.

I'm really angry... This is the point that will make me unsubscribe from Apple Music

This issue exists for more than 2 years and Apple just does not care at all and given the time passed they will not fix it.

For those who wanted to update there play counts manually with a script Apple made sure that this is not possible anymore either. https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php?p=2266 Actually that only counts for songs from Apple music. Physical songs on your hard drive without DRM protection will save the manual set play count.

I remember there was a time in 2017 when the play counts where synced from my iPad AND even my Android. An other update came along and since then it doesn't work any more.

Play counts only work if I play music from my Mac, if I play icloud music or downloaded music from my iPhone 8 nothing updates when apple music is enabled, which pretty much makes my smart playlist useless. I cannot store my entire library on my phone (library is too large).

When I turned off apple musice or icloud on my phone I had to reset the phone to factory settings and set it up as a new phone. After that play counts work. So as of now I am discontinuing icloud and apple music subscriptions.

To my the only benefit of itunes versus other music rental apps (Spotify, Pandora, etc.) was the ability for make smart playlist.

I've also been experiencing this desynchronization with play counts & it's been driving me insane 😠

Like several others here, my issue is only songs played from my Mac update the play count or 'last plated' date. Nothing played from my iPhone—regardless of its download status—or HomePod is getting synced with iTunes, and is consequently breaking many of my Smart Playlists too!

I’ve been google searching & combing support discussions all evening, which lead me here lol, and have yet to find a viable ‘patch,’ much less an actual solution. I have seen a few people claiming they solved this type of issue via signing out of iTunes on their Macs/PC’s. I haven’t bothered trying that because I use iTunes as my music library, I’m an iTunes Match and Apple Music subscriber, and have devices (e.g., HomePod) that reply on said services.

There was one other suggestion I came across numerous times where people were able to restore play count syncing after de-authorizing iTunes on their computer, re-booting, and re-authorizing. However, the most recent reports of success were ~1yr ago by users running v12.7 & even then it seemed to be hit-or-miss.

Have any of you tried anything along those lines?

I think a lot of people are struggling with desynchronisation. I don’t use Apple Music but do have match but it all boils down to same thing ‘iCloud music library’. If I update a rating of a song on my iOS devices it does not feed into my Windows iTunes library. In fact if I open iTunes it pushes the original rating back to my other devices. Everytime I open it this happens. It’s annoying that after spending 30 odd seconds ‘making iCloud library available’ it undoes my work on other devices. Last played doesn’t update on my iTunes library either but the play count counter does! New song purchases and playlists do sync back to iTunes ok though. Weird. I think it’s very buggy. If I keep iTunes open and then go off and update ratings or play songs on other devices then there is no problem , the ratings and last played synchronises just fine. But of course I am never going to leave iTunes open 24/7 to circumvent this.

I recently noticed this problem and it's pretty annoying because it won't update my Top 25 songs. I tried listening to the song while having the phone sync with my laptop and iTunes open but still nothing. I also have noticed that some new songs I added into library has play counts but no last played date which makes me think that it's play counts from Apple Music but I'm not sure because it doesn't count it after that. I hope Apple can make iTunes like Spotify where I can see the played songs live and control it from my phone or laptop.

Im having the same problem. I've seen a few people on here suggesting a few things to do but i've tried all of them and so far none of them seems to be working.

Some say to de-authorise your device and then reauthorise it but that did'nt work for me also some say to use you're iPod and go to settings-music and turn on "use listening history but again i've had mine turned on all the time and it doesn't work either.

Not sure what the solution is for this but hopefully apple get it sorted. It might seem like a small thing to them but geeks like me like that kind of thing. Overall im enjoying apple music but a few wee tweaks here and there would take it head and shoulders above the rest in the market in my opinion.

Yes the problem drives me crazy and I have noticed it for probably about 8 months now and Apple still hasn’t fixed it. I have raised it with tech guys but I think it’s a low priority.

Anyway I see iTunes updates play count but not last played. Has anyone also noticed iTunes (mine is windows version) pushing back song rating changes made on other devices? So I might change a song rating from 3 to 2 directly in my iPhone. I can see this change sync to things like my iPad and Apple TV but then I go and start up iTunes and the rating does not update. Worse still it pushes the rating back to 3, I go check my iPad and sure enough the rating has gone back to 3. So irritating! The caveat is if iTunes is already running and I then go to an iOS device and update the rating or play a song then iTunes receives the new rating and also updates the last played field just fine and all is good across the board. But it has to be already running and there is no way I’m leaving my PC and iTunes on 24/7 to workaround this issue. It’s a lame bug and again poor QA that seems to of been a mantra creeping into Apple over the past few years

I have exactly the same issue!!! I contacted Apple and all they said is to turn off and on apple music. But I've done that 3 times already and nothing is fixed 😟

So I think I figured it out???

Make sure that "use listening history" is turned on in your iphone settings.

Settings > Music > Use Listening History

🙂

The down side is that the new Homepod does not fully function without applemusic enabled (it won't play your playlists via siri if applemusic is not enabled).