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iPod NEGATIVE Play Count?!

ColoJohnBoy

ColoJohnBoy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 10, 2003
1,129
0
Denver, Colorado
I'm just heading out the door to workout, but first I loaded some new tunes on my workout playlist; I was surprised to find several songs showing NEGATIVE play counts: -1093297440, -1092497455, -1092491224, and so on, for 130 songs total. What gives? Oh, and it's only on my iPod, a green mini. My iTunes library is unaffected.
 
ColoJohnBoy said:
I'm just heading out the door to workout, but first I loaded some new tunes on my workout playlist; I was surprised to find several songs showing NEGATIVE play counts: -1093297440, -1092497455, -1092491224, and so on, for 130 songs total. What gives? Oh, and it's only on my iPod, a green mini. My iTunes library is unaffected.
Click to expand...

Maybe you dropped it in the toilot 1 too many times... Try re-installing the firmware on it, that usually fixes those kinds of bugs.
 
i only have 30 gym songs :( and most of them are TV themes

but what a strange problem that is! negative is one thing but the numbers displayed is kinda strange.
on a Mac? it might be a virus if you're on a PC? messing around with files and all that.
 
Theres a play count for an iPod? Where? On the iPod itself? Or when connected to a computer...
 
It's only the songs on my iPod - I can see the play count only in iTunes when the iPod is connected. And I'm using an Apple, so no weird viruses. I'll give the firmware re-install a shot.

P.S. - I'm not necessarily ripped, but I am pretty easy on the eyes ;) Hell, I'm just easy in general...
 
Theres a play count for an iPod? Where? On the iPod itself? Or when connected to a computer...
Click to expand...

It only shows up when connected to a computer. When the iPod is in an Automatic syncing mode (copy all tunes from iTunes to iPod) the playcount is just updated back and forth between the place where it was most recently played (as in, if iTunes played it last, the iPod track gets the new playcount and vise versa).

If the iPod is in manual mode, there is a separate playcount for the iPod tracks and there is no syncing of that information. Although you are able to see if when the iPod is connected to a computer.
 
Thats incredibly strange.

Probably a programming error on Apple's part to do with syncing the iPod to iTunes.

You might have to just reset the play count and start again.
 
Same thing is happening to mine.
 

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probably a database error. well, definitely an error.

it looks exactly like something used the wrong endianness when writing to the database. have you used any 3rd party tools?
 
How do you reset the play count? I've not used any 3rd party tools for itunes/ipod.

I noticed that some of my itunes ratings had changed too!
 
I have played counts of greater than a million in my old PowerMac's library. It's simply a database error, reset the iPod and it should be fine.
 
dmw007 said:
Negative play count???

Are you playing your songs backwards? ;)
Click to expand...

:p Damn, I wanted to be the one to say that!

It's easy to tell if the songs are backwards - for instance if you listen to country music, your wife comes back, your dog gets un-run over, you get your job back..
 
whooleytoo said:
:p Damn, I wanted to be the one to say that!

It's easy to tell if the songs are backwards - for instance if you listen to country music, your wife comes back, your dog gets un-run over, you get your job back..
Click to expand...

Sorry to beat you to the punch. ;)

Just could not resist.
 
How do you reset the playcount?

i've got a couple of tracks that are in the negative as of my update to v4.9 and my update of the latest firmware. no, its not sgt. pepper's. ;)

i'd rather not reinstall everything for a couple of strange play counts.

does anyone know how to edit the play counts manually?
 
Here's what I think is happening: When you listen to a song all the way through on iTunes on a computer it saves information into an XML file of play count, etc.
On an iPod, it would try and make a smaller XML file of your favorites, what you've played, etc., but not everything (as to keep the file tiny) such as it would only list the Artist, Album, Song name, and Genre. When it doesn't put anything else in and iTunes on a computer reads that file, it has to give a value, so it just takes whatever value that is programmed (let's say x, you can try this on GCC) and prints it out. So if I type in int x; cout << x; x may be 10029342 - which on iTunes, its over a certain number so it prints out negative. or something like that. THat's how I think this is all coming up.
 
pendulum said:
i've got a couple of tracks that are in the negative as of my update to v4.9 and my update of the latest firmware. no, its not sgt. pepper's. ;)

i'd rather not reinstall everything for a couple of strange play counts.

does anyone know how to edit the play counts manually?
Click to expand...

to reset the playcounts, select the song (or songs) and press "reset play count". if you want to have a certain number of playcounts on a certain song, the easiest way is to put that song on repeat and click to the end of the song whenever it starts playing. or you could leave a playlist on all night... i don't think there's any other way.
 
I've been looking for a way to manually change the playcounts on an iPod. I'm planning on buying a new iPod and I want to transfer the playcounts from my old iPod to my new one. Is there anyway to do this, or rather to manually change playcounts without clicking to the end of a track while its on repeat? I have 500 songs on my iPod and that would be a pain.........
 
Need help, please

When I updated Itunes months ago my play counts did the same thing and I found the fix-it somewhere in the forums. Now, with the new, new Itunes it has done it again, I can't remember the fix and I need help!!!

Thanks. :eek: xx
 
Jedi128 said:
I've been looking for a way to manually change the playcounts on an iPod. I'm planning on buying a new iPod and I want to transfer the playcounts from my old iPod to my new one. Is there anyway to do this, or rather to manually change playcounts without clicking to the end of a track while its on repeat? I have 500 songs on my iPod and that would be a pain.........
Click to expand...

The playcounts will transfer across automatically, when you sync the new iPod to your iTunes collection, assuming you are not manually managing your tunes.

If you do want to manually change playcounts though, the following script will do it.

http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=newplayedcount
 
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