Problems with iTunes Match syncing from iOS devices

[crankerchick]

Does anyone have iTunes Match working to sync back playcounts and last played status from an iOS device?

My issue, and clearly i'm not alone, is that when I listen to music from my iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, the information is synced back to the other libraries. I use iTunes match with those 3 iOS devices as well as 2 desktop Win 7 64 PCs and a MBP. My "main" library is one of the Win desktops, where the music files are stored and my library is backed up. When I listen to music on any of the PCs or laptop, they all update reflecting that songs played, so my smart playlists that depend on last played, rating, and play count are all updated and the libraries are all identical. This play information also updates TO my iOS devices. I have no problem seeing music added to my PCs or laptop on the iOS devices either.

However, the same can't be said for when I listen to music on my iOS devices. The play history never seems to make it back to the cloud, so each of the 3 devices ends up with it's own "library" so to speak and all my smart playlist are as such independent of each other. I know at one point this was "working" ok, albeit it took some time to update sometimes, like 24 hours or so. I don't know if it just broke, or if iOS 6 broke it for me.

I've turned off iTunes Match on these devices now because it irritates me so much and I rely heavily on my smart playlists.

Has anyone had this problem and figured out how to remedy it? Is this even broken for everyone, or do some of you have it working?

Side note, it's also annoying that turning off iTunes match completely on my iPad works fine, but on my iPod Touch and iPhone, the music app still sees the cloud music (all of it) and will play it, even after a reboot of the phone. I had to factory reset my iPod Touch and iPhone 5 to get the music to go away and get iTunes to begin syncing the music like normal. Being that I don't feel like constantly restoring my phone, I'm hesitant to turn iTunes Match back on to even try to troubleshoot anymore.

 

[mmp1964]

Totally agree with everything you said. I would think "average" users/consumers must be totally baffled by the photo part of the Apple ecosystem.

 

[jclisenby]

Does anyone have iTunes Match working to sync back playcounts and last played status from an iOS device?

My issue, and clearly i'm not alone, is that when I listen to music from my iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, the information is synced back to the other libraries. I use iTunes match with those 3 iOS devices as well as 2 desktop Win 7 64 PCs and a MBP. My "main" library is one of the Win desktops, where the music files are stored and my library is backed up. When I listen to music on any of the PCs or laptop, they all update reflecting that songs played, so my smart playlists that depend on last played, rating, and play count are all updated and the libraries are all identical. This play information also updates TO my iOS devices. I have no problem seeing music added to my PCs or laptop on the iOS devices either.

However, the same can't be said for when I listen to music on my iOS devices. The play history never seems to make it back to the cloud, so each of the 3 devices ends up with it's own "library" so to speak and all my smart playlist are as such independent of each other. I know at one point this was "working" ok, albeit it took some time to update sometimes, like 24 hours or so. I don't know if it just broke, or if iOS 6 broke it for me.

I've turned off iTunes Match on these devices now because it irritates me so much and I rely heavily on my smart playlists.

Has anyone had this problem and figured out how to remedy it? Is this even broken for everyone, or do some of you have it working?

Side note, it's also annoying that turning off iTunes match completely on my iPad works fine, but on my iPod Touch and iPhone, the music app still sees the cloud music (all of it) and will play it, even after a reboot of the phone. I had to factory reset my iPod Touch and iPhone 5 to get the music to go away and get iTunes to begin syncing the music like normal. Being that I don't feel like constantly restoring my phone, I'm hesitant to turn iTunes Match back on to even try to troubleshoot anymore.

There's an option under Settings> Music that allows you to only show the music that is stored on your phone.

The purpose of iTunes Match is to allow you to have all your music readily available for download on all your devices. It's not a service designed to sync your play counts and the like. Smart playlists don't sync directly between devices using iTunes Match. Regularly created playlists will sync between all devices. Apple created this to allow you to access your music on multiple devices without syncing to your Mac. They may beef up the feature set as it moves along, but for now its primarily to make your music available.

Keep in mind that iTunes Match won't download all the music to your phone, it'll just show it all as available. You can download what you want on the device and then turn off the option to show all music, like mentioned above.

There's never a need to restore a device to get rid of music or to disable iTunes Match. Deleting music can be done directly in iTunes on your phone. You can show and hide all music like I mentioned above.



Tappin and Talkin from my iPhone 5

 

[crankerchick]

I can tell you from my own experience that I did have to reset my iPod touch and iPhone 5 the first time I turned on match and then tried to turn it off. When I turned it off, it still showed all of my music from the cloud in the music player and allowed me to play it. It would not sync normally with iTunes. Rebooting my device did not clear the iTunes Match setting, only a factory restore did. That was my experience. I subsequently have in a few months later and turned it on again on my phone, to see if anything relating to playcounts syncing was fixed (rumors on other threads were that it was working) and when it still didn't work reliably I was able to just turn match back off and it turned off fine.

As for how match is supposed to work, I'm well aware of what the service is and how it works (and how it fails to work). It indeed is supposed to sync playcounts and last played data. You are correct that smart playlists are local to the device, as in the rules are what syncs,and the device fills the list according to the rules. That's the beauty of smart playlists on apple devices, they update on the device without needing to sync back to the PC. iTunes Match is supposed to sync the last played and playcounts. It does work sometimes, just not reliably. There are threads and threads about this, how the syncing algorithm seems to work, and those of us reporting that it doesn't always behave properly. It may be worth it for you to check out some of the threads so you can learn more about how the service works, and how it fails to work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

 

[LazyStarGazer]

For what it's worth:
I've never had an issue with song play counts not synching from devices to pc/iTunes.
Maybe because I only use 1 pc instead of 2?
No smart playlists either, though I can't see how that would make a difference.

 

[crankerchick]

I have no problems getting playcounts to sync between PCs. My work PC, Home PC, and MacBook Pro all play exactly as they are supposed to with iTunes Match. The problem lies with iOS devices. My iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch all intermittently sync playcount and last played, and when it does work, the playcount is always incremented twice for every single play. This is well documented online. I'm not the only one who has been complaining about this for over a year.

I've kept following the issue on other sites, and it seems that it persists on iOS 7. I'm trying it myself now in iOS 7 to see if the problem remains.