Smart Playlists Don't Synch from Mac Music to Phone

I might have made some progress - this might be a fix.

I’ve been looking in detail at the tracks which don’t synch across. One common, although not definitive, theme is that tracks in Smart Playlists which use rules based on “Album Rating” don’t always synch. In the following explanation, “Live Updating” is always on for the Smart Playlists.

I’ve got a smart playlist which selects tracks by (Album Rating = 3) AND (Plays <21). This playlist doesn’t synch. I’ve played with it, I’ve duplicated it, I’ve re-written it , I’ve changed the Album Ratings of tracks to change the playlist contents, and I’ve changed the other Rule to be date based, or genre based, etc - all to no avail. This Playlist won’t synch and it seems to be something to do with the Album Rating.

I wrote a script to modify the Comments of each track in my Library which is on an Album with (Album Rating =3); I added “3*” to the Comments of these tracks, then changed the Smart Playlist Rules to

(Comments Contains 3*) AND (Plays<21).

And now this playlist Synchs fine. I did the same with my 4* and 5* playlists (i.e. appended 4* or 5* to the Comments) which were also not synching properly, and these too have synched OK.

To be clear - it’s not a function of whether a particular album or track has x stars, it’s a function of whether one of the Smart List Rules selects on the basis of Album Rating.

I’m not offering this as a definitive fix because I thought I had a fix last month which worked for a while, but for now this has worked on my iPhone SE (Gen 1) and iPhone SE (Gen 2) and if it helps anyone out there then great, but if past experiences are anything to go by I don’t expect it to stick - call me a pessimist.

I have a vague recollection that iPhones used to have a setting in Music related to allowing or displaying Star Ratings. It’s gone now (or at least I can’t find it) and I wonder if this might be causing the Synch problems.

I’ll keep an eye on this syncing and come back if it sticks or changes. If someone could tell me how long I’ve got before Apple locks the thread due to inactivity it would be helpful so I can put a reminder in my Calendar to update it.

There are no errors when creating, synching, updating, modifying or deleting smart playlists. I've reset warnings on both Mac and devices just to make sure, but there are no error messages.

I've tried synching via both USB and wireless and the problem occurs with both.

It only happens with smart playlists.

I've tried all combinations of (songs ticked and not ticked ) and (Match only ticked items).

I've tried re-creating the smart playlists that don't synch and mostly they don't synch. Sometimes they do, but eventually they'll stop. There is nothing obviously different about playlists which synch. I've controlled for the number of tracks in the playlist; I've made playlists with only one type of file; I've made playlists with files added before/after certain dates; I've made playlists of songs by genre, length, BPM;, skipped status, play count, and whether comments are empty or not. There is no correlation between any of these and whether a track will synch. Some tracks will synch OK on one playlist and not synch on another. For example - I have a generic playlist - let's call it "GPList" - that pulls in tracks from other playlists such as 4* albums, 5* albums and recently added - all of these have play-count conditions (e.g. 3* listened to less than 21 times - let's call this one "3*<21"). If I synch the two smart playlists GPList and 3<21 to my phone then the playlists appear on the phone, but they are empty. If I untick Live Updating for GPList but leave live updating on for the 3*<21 playlist then synch the two playists again, all the tracks of GPlist appear OK on the phone. The GPList includes all the tracks from 3<21 and they are in the 3GPL playlist on the phone. However, the 3*<21 playlist is empty on the phone, even though all its tracks are on the phone. Now, if I delete all the music from the phone - both in Finder by unticking Synch Music and also in the phone in General/Settings/Storage (just to make sure all the music is gone) and then sync JUST the 3*<21 smart playlist (with live updating ticked) the playlist shows up in the phone's Music Library, but it is empty. If I go into Albums or Artists or Songs on the phone then all the tracks are there. Unfortunately, this behaviour, too, is not consistent and there are other smart playlists that transfer with no tracks and none appear in Albums, artists, etc.

As in my OP, I've tried duplicating playlists that synch and then changing the criteria. Sometimes these synch, sometimes they don't. I had a whole bunch of these that synched OK for about a month, but now some are stopping synching. I've tried creating lots of different types of smart playlists - for example ones which don't refer to other playlists, ones which do refer to other playlists, ones which do/don't refer to other smart playlists, ones which do/don't refer to playlist folders. The behaviour is the same for smart playlists in/not in playlist folders. I've tried including/not including "Media Kind is Music" as a criterion. I've tried including/not including the "Music" playlist as a criterion. I reckon I've spent about 50 hours in the last 2 years trying to get to the bottom of this. About a month ago I thought I'd fixed it by multiple duplications of one of the playlists that synched OK and then editing the dupes and changing the smart criteria to get what I wanted. This post came about because at the weekend these "new, working" smart playlists stopped synching.

I've got a fair amount of music (23,000 tracks) and a lot of playlists (probably over 100 smart playlists) and I spend a lot of time with them and I've been an iTunes/Music user since ~2009. I listen to music via Smart Playlists on either my Mac or phone/ipad pobably for an average of about 4 hours a day . Yesterday it was 7 hours, 230 hours in May - I've got Smart Playlists that track these sort of stats. I'm a music nerd - I know my way around this stuff. Synching was never, ever a problem with iTunes. This problem started with Music.

Thanks turing.

There's no option for showing star ratings on the phone in my phone - 15.5.

The playlists are still synching OK, but, given that I thought I'd sorted this another way ages ago, I'm not holding my breath.

Bump

I never had a problem with iTunes. I never understood the complaints I read about it online and I wish they'd kept quiet because the result is Mac Music and there's very little to like about it.