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iTunes Match- Play Count sync, running out of space on IOS, playlist sync

ra4oasis

ra4oasis

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 10, 2010
356
84
1. Will things such as play count now sync up if I have iTunes Match on my work Mac, and my home Mac? I have a few Smart Playlists that rely on play count, so it'd be great if that sort of thing would stay in sync.
2. I understand iTunes Match on my various Mac's, but on iOS devices, that have limited space, will I have to continuously delete songs for space sake, if I am also continuously downloading tracks from the cloud? I like the idea of having access to all my music at once, BUT, the idea of constantly running out of space on my iPhone or iPad because I'm always downloading tracks seems clunky. (It'd be really nice if I could sync some music for offline playing, and stream others if I so choose).
3. Do playlists I made just show up (it just works)? So far the iCloud experience has been basically flawless, so I could see this being the case. Honestly playlist syncing across all my devices is a HUGE selling point for me, as I use playlists a lot.

Any help with these three questions would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
toomuchrock

toomuchrock

macrumors member
Sep 28, 2005
52
35
Well here's what I know so far:

1) Dunno.

2) It doesn't automatically download anything to your iPhone. Your iPhone sees what is available in the cloud and then you can download it to your iPhone if you like. So if you have 10,000 tracks on iTunes you'll see them all in iPhone. If you try to play one (and you're on WiFi or you have the Enable Cellular Playback enabled) then it will download to your iPhone. Or you can tell your iPhone to download a whole playlist (say something you want for a plane ride later). If you want to make more room on your iPhone, you'll need to delete songs. You have to do this one-by-one currently. Kinda ugly.

3) Yes and No. This is why I came here searching. Last night I did a test iCloud synch with a new iTunes library just to test things up. My playlists went into the cloud. I turned my iPhone match and, hey, there are my playlists. Great. I say download and all is well. UNTIL...

I add something to my laptop and put it in an existing playlist on my laptop. Then I go back to my iPhone and the playlist does not show the new additions. I can find the new stuff in the Artist listing, but it doesn't key the playlists in sync. So that's bugging me a bit right now.

Anyone?
 
T

tharris0101

macrumors member
Apr 15, 2010
97
0
toomuchrock said:
Well here's what I know so far:

1) Dunno.

2) It doesn't automatically download anything to your iPhone. Your iPhone sees what is available in the cloud and then you can download it to your iPhone if you like. So if you have 10,000 tracks on iTunes you'll see them all in iPhone. If you try to play one (and you're on WiFi or you have the Enable Cellular Playback enabled) then it will download to your iPhone. Or you can tell your iPhone to download a whole playlist (say something you want for a plane ride later). If you want to make more room on your iPhone, you'll need to delete songs. You have to do this one-by-one currently. Kinda ugly.

3) Yes and No. This is why I came here searching. Last night I did a test iCloud synch with a new iTunes library just to test things up. My playlists went into the cloud. I turned my iPhone match and, hey, there are my playlists. Great. I say download and all is well. UNTIL...

I add something to my laptop and put it in an existing playlist on my laptop. Then I go back to my iPhone and the playlist does not show the new additions. I can find the new stuff in the Artist listing, but it doesn't key the playlists in sync. So that's bugging me a bit right now.

Anyone?
Click to expand...

Just tested this and it worked fine for me. Its just not instantaneous. It took about 5 to 10 minutes for the playlist additions to show up on my phone.
 
toomuchrock

toomuchrock

macrumors member
Sep 28, 2005
52
35
tharris0101 said:
Just tested this and it worked fine for me. Its just not instantaneous. It took about 5 to 10 minutes for the playlist additions to show up on my phone.
Click to expand...

Ah I've done more testing.

If I take the mp3 files and drag them directly from the Desktop to the playlist then it doesn't show up in the playlist on my iPhone. No matter how long I wait (overnight for example). If I then delete it from the playlist (leaving it in iTunes of course), then re-add it to the playlist it shows up almost immediately in the cloud and on my iPhone.

If I add it to the iTunes library first, and then drag it into the playlist, then it does show up on my iPhone. Again, almost immediately. ADDITIONALLY if I had some tracks in the Playlist that that I added directly (scenario 1 above) that hadn't shown up in the cloud already, those tracks then show up as well.

So I'm guessing that the act of adding an existing track to the playlist is what triggers the update to the Cloud. Probably a bug, but there's a work around at least.
 
pooryou

pooryou

macrumors 65816
Sep 28, 2007
1,329
63
NorCal
I haven't been able to figure out a way to get my playcounts to sync back to iTunes yet. Tried syncing the iPad over wi-fi (which doesn't work very well at all) and it didn't seem to do anything with songs. Plugging the iPad in and syncing just ran a useless attempt at Wi-Fi syncing which accomplished nothing.

I have no idea how we are supposed to scrobble what we listen to to Last.FM, or get Smart Playlists to update properly based on Last Played Date etc. This just seems like a mess.
 
toomuchrock

toomuchrock

macrumors member
Sep 28, 2005
52
35
pooryou said:
I haven't been able to figure out a way to get my playcounts to sync back to iTunes yet. Tried syncing the iPad over wi-fi (which doesn't work very well at all) and it didn't seem to do anything with songs. Plugging the iPad in and syncing just ran a useless attempt at Wi-Fi syncing which accomplished nothing.

I have no idea how we are supposed to scrobble what we listen to to Last.FM, or get Smart Playlists to update properly based on Last Played Date etc. This just seems like a mess.
Click to expand...

Well to answer your question and 1) above:

I just played a song on my iPhone, and watched the play count incremented on my iTunes via the cloud. No "syncing," just updates via the cloud. So it works for me. Well maybe... it didn't actually update until I changed the rating. May have been coincidence. So I played again. No update on the play count. I changed the rating. No update on the play count. So umm yeah something flakey.

Now last.fm scrobbling... I dunno how to solve that one. Last.fm may just need to revisit their application architecture as it's kinda dated.
 
pooryou

pooryou

macrumors 65816
Sep 28, 2007
1,329
63
NorCal
toomuchrock said:
Well to answer your question and 1) above:

I just played a song on my iPhone, and watched the play count incremented on my iTunes via the cloud. No "syncing," just updates via the cloud. So it works for me. Well maybe... it didn't actually update until I changed the rating. May have been coincidence. So I played again. No update on the play count. I changed the rating. No update on the play count. So umm yeah something flakey.

Now last.fm scrobbling... I dunno how to solve that one. Last.fm may just need to revisit their application architecture as it's kinda dated.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Did it also update the Last Played Date? Because without that the playcount info is kind of useless anyway.
 
toomuchrock

toomuchrock

macrumors member
Sep 28, 2005
52
35
pooryou said:
Thanks for the info. Did it also update the Last Played Date? Because without that the playcount info is kind of useless anyway.
Click to expand...

Sorry, try as I might, I can't get the play count to move again. Curious. The Last Played date is still BLANK but it lists 1 Play. I've played it a handfull of times through the iPhone (in it's entirety) and I haven't gotten it to move. The initial download had also already happened before I played the first time as well so that isn't it.

When I play it from the laptop it increments the play count and the Last Played but obviously that doesn't help you.

Wish I got paid to debug Apple products.
 
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