Smart Playlists Out of Sync

Hi
I have several smart playlists that filter on "last played", "number of stars" etc. I have noticed in the past few months that the # of songs on my iPod Touch's playlist are continually out of sync with the number of songs in the similar playlist in iTunes (Windows 7 OS).
This applies to all of my smart playlists and - as I stated - the disconnect between iTunes and my iPod Touch has worsened since...hmm.. January of 2012.
Help!

see Sam's post here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2163995&tstart=15
(he seems to be our unofficial playlist fixer lol!)

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IPhone 4 Fails to Start Sync Wifi, Smart Playlists Won't Sync Wifi or Wired, and Missing Artwork iTunes Screensaver

Hi all,
I recently deleted a few gigs worth of photos off my iPhone 4. Ever since I've been having trouble with a few things. All software is up to date. So far here are the things I've noticed that seem suspicious.
iPhone fails to start sync using wifi. It times out on Step 1 (starting sync) or Step 2 (backup). I've tried closing and reopening iTunes, restarting the MBP and iPhone, and deleting my iPhone backup. In some cases iTunes loses the connection to phone and won't come back. It syncs fine using a USB cable, but won't get past step 2 using wifi. I hate wires so I would prefer to do this over the air.
My smart playlists no longer sync. I've tried unchecking the boxes and selecting them again, but nothing. Duplicating an exisitng smart playlist and selecting it to sync seems to have worked for now, but I'm concerned about now being able to add my original playlist. Sounds like a larger issue to me.
My iTunes screensaver on my MBP no longer displays artwork. It says there is no artwork to display, but iTunes still has artwork in it.
I've read numerous threads about all these issues. I know there are many people out there having these problems. I just haven't found a good solution for any of them. Everything was working beautifully until I tried to clean up some old stuff on my phone. Apple is playing dumb according to the people that have contacted them.
I'm running:
OSX Lion 10.7.4
iTunes 10.6.3
iOS 5.1.1
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Just nudging this one back to the top in case anyone has some input.

Why are my Smart playlists out of order in iOS 5?

Since upgrading to iOS 5 on an iPad and iPhone 4 (Verizon), many (not all) of my smart playlists made in iTunes are out of order in both my iPad and iPhone (meaning the songs within the lists are our of order not the lists themselves). Somtimes the playlists vary even between my iPad and iPhone, not just with iTunes.
I tried a couple of workarounds I found on the web:
1) I've unchecked Live Updating on my affected Smart playlists, but it only seemed to work on some of them.
2) Resorting the Smart playlists in iTunes by a different order, like Album, Name, or Artists seemed to work for others.
Still, some of the smart playlists on my iPad and iPhone have resisted even these solutions and stubornly will not sort to the order I have them in iTunes.
My iPad has now more smart playlists synced correctly than my iPhone, yet, i have the same sync settings for both of them. I've been trying to find the rhyme or reason behind the mangled sort order but haven't a clue. Anyone else experiencing such strange behavior with smart playlists since upgrading to iOS 5? Is this a bug or just some setting I am missing?

Created a similar post about 1 month ago - with no response...its driving me crazy too! Would love a fix!

Smart playlist disapperas during sync

MacOs 10.6.8 / iOS 5 / iTunes 10.5
I use a smart playlist to sync music to my iPhone.
On the first synchronization, everything works fine : my playlist is sync'ed and my music goes to my iPhone.
After disconnecting then reconnecting my playlist is still both on the iPhone and in iTunes.
The second sync goes fine.
The third one goes bad :
As soon as I re-sync, the smart playlist disappears from both the phone and iTunes. I do not know which disappers first as it happens very quickly.
The capacity gauge reflects the fact that all my music has vanished.
At this point all I can do is re-create my playlist and sync again. I have to go through this process every other time I need to sync my phone.
This is extremely cumbersome as I use the "convert higher bit rate song to 128 kbs AAC" option. Syncing all my musing and converting it to 128 kbps takes about 5 hours! I can no longer do a quick sync, to bring my address book and calendars up to date, as I stand a 50% chance of losing my music in the process.

I have solved my issue. I went through, recreating my smart playlist item by item, checking each time to see if it continued to show up as an option to sync in the music tab when my iPhone/iPod was connected. I had several rules that might have been perceived as contradictory or overlapping (which still doesn't explain why they showed up and worked fine inside of iTunes.app, but I digress).
For example, I had "Media Kind is Music." But I also had "Media Kind is not Podcast / is not Audiobook / is not Music Video," not realizing that since I had specified that items meet ALL rules, my first rule, "Media Kind is Music," was sufficient to exclude podcasts, audiobooks, and music videos, as well as all the other media kinds in iTunes.
So, look carefully at the rules you have to make sure that they don't overlap like mine did. Hope everyone figures out their issues. Thanks for all the input,
Alex

Smart playlists don't sync onto iPhone 6, and some other serious problems

Am syncing my music library via cable from a Mac Book iTUnes library onto the iPhone. The songs are on the phone, but
- many songs are duplicated and greyed out
- some songs don't sync at all and have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- some songs are greyed out AND have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- none of my roughly 30 smart playlists and one regular playlist are synced, There are only two standard entries "Genius Playlis" and "New Playlist".
- have tried manually syncing playlists by deselecting "sync all" and just checking one to be synced, but it won't sync either
- there is a mismatch in song count. ITunes on the Mac has 1415 songs, iTunes n the iPHone has 1024 songs
What's going on?????

Tried all the solutions but later found that the problem was related to iTunes being unable to find the link to the original file.
In iTunes, click on the Music icon at top left of screen, which should bring up the list of your music, artist, album etc.if you see an exclamation mark next to each file, it may be that the link to the location of your music file is lost. You need to right click on the track name and click GET INFO, then search through your computer to find the location of the missing file. I did this for a few tracks and then iTunes helpfully (?) asked if i would like it to do the rest of my music for me.
Then went back t iTunes and SYNCED as normal. I am not a techo type but hope this is helpful for others. Happy New Year

Smart Playlist is not syncing onto my iPod

I have a smart playlist of recently added songs on my iTunes. I just got the 3.0 software for my iPod touch and now my recently added playlist is not showing up as the songs that are on my iTunes. The songs that are supposed to be in that playlist are correct on the iTunes, but are totally different songs on my iPod after I've synced it. I've tried restarting my iPod, restoring it and I've made a new smart playlist for my new songs and it still comes up as the same set of different songs as before on my iPod. How can I fix this playlist to have to right songs in it on my iPod?

im in the same situation.. i recently switched over to the 3.1.3 version and what a mistake that was. i wish we could go back because half the things dont work anymore. like the smart playlists... it says i have them correct on both itunes and my ipod but i check it ON my ipod and its random songs...

Smart Playlist is not syncing to iPod after upgrade to iTunes 9

Since upgrading to iTunes 9, one of my smart playlists is no longer syncing to my iPod, however, it syncs fine with my iPhone.
The conditions for the playlist are:
Media kind is podcast
PlayCount is 0
Any ideas why it's not syncing?

Quick fix: Make a regular playlist. Drag the contents of the smart playlist into it. Sync the new playlist.
WIthout seeing the rules for your smart list it is hard to guess what the problem is, but you may get better results if you break it down into more sublists gathered together in a playlist folder.
tt2

ITunes 9 not allowing most smart playlists to automatically sync with iPod

Oh dearie me. This is another major blunder for iTunes 9 - which I cannot see anyone else has noticed yet (but sorry if I couldn't find an existing related post).
Since upgrading to iTunes 9- almost all of my smart playlists (whick worked perfectly before) have disappeared from my iPod. They have also removed themselves from the list in iTunes where I choose which playlists to sync. Yes- I use the 'sync only checked songs & playlists' option (but please don't suggest I manually manage music, as I've been there before).
The problem seems to happen when a smart playlist references 2 or more other (smart or normal) playlists in iTunes. This excludes about 95% of my playlists from syncing in iTunes 9.
Before the upgrade I noticed that iTunes posted an exclamation mark next to any playlist on my iPod that had a rule referencing a playlist in iTunes- but they still sunc perfectly for years. I mean if Apple allowed us to make our own smart playlists only for the iPod- then I would understand- but its the only way I can see to have a playlist for example that plays all favourite but not recently played dance music (regardles of actual genre); nor anything I have moved to a manual playlist called 'not for syncing'.
As a test, I tried an experiment with a new smart playlist which said so long as the song appears in (all) 2 smart playlists- to see when it would become 'syncable'. As would be expected- it was not available to sync. As soon as I deleted the 2nd playlist rule- ie it only had to be in 1 playlist, it became 'syncable'. As soon as I added a 2nd rule again- be it a smart or normal playlist- it became 'unsyncable' again (disappeared from the sync list).
Apple please fix this ASAP. I cannot see this as being desirable behavior in any way, shape or form.
And while you are at it with the new improvements with iTunes 9 playlisting- please add an option to exclude certain 'match' parameters- eg match x and y, but exclude anything that matches z. Besides allowing for much better playlisting, that would (to a degree) also provide a workable workaround to the problem above.
Yours faithfully,
Mike

Cheers for chiming in- but I don't think that will solve this problem. I have no podcasts on my iPod- only mp3s. My problem is I have way too much music in my library- over 300GB. So I have all my iTunes smart playlists- eg genre Dubstep- but then I have an iPod version of each of these eg Dubstep iPod- which says match both criteria- playlist is Dubstep, & playlist is not 'Master not sync'. Every smart playlist on my iPod revolves around this playlist- whose rules are if any of the following 2 criteria match: rating is not between 1&2 stars; playlist is not the normal manual playlist called 'not for iPod sync'- where I drop any mp3s that I don't need on my iPod. This scheme worked perfectly before.
But I am gonna chew on what you said today- maybe there is a clue in there or maybe if I experiment with the 'music' rule. Either way- this is not an improvement- it's about 200 steps back. I still maintain that the problem I am seeing is not intentional coding. Something broke in the codebase & now iTunes 9 has playlist / syncing bugs which need fixing.
Either that, or Apple need to finally release a 500GB iPod- so I can get rid of my iPod specific playlists & sync all my iTunes playlists. Then I would even consider putting podcasts on there as well...;) Heck maybe even some video... crazy idea, I know.

Smart Playlists are not syncing!

I don't remember when this stopped working but I have 1 playlist that shows in iTunes but does not update on the iPod. Not sure why... all the others seem to sync just fine. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Solution/work around:
Add a new smart play list.
File > New Smart Playlist. From this point a pop up will appear.
Match following rule is selected
(Date added) - (In the last) - (2) - (weeks)
No limit set
No match only checked items
Live update selected
Then <ok>.
Change name of smart playlist to something like 'New Music' and Sync to IPhone/IPod.

Songs are there but smart playlists don't sync/work

I use my iPod Touch in my car and rarely sync it. I noticed that there were suddenly no songs on a few of my smart playlists. The songs were still on the iPod but the playlists said "No Music" when you tried to view them. The only playlist with songs on it is the "Purchased" playlist. You can still access all the songs by selecting the artist or album.
I brought the iPod in and synced it. Same problem.
I restored my iPod. Same problem.
I deleted and recreated my smart playlists, then synced. Same problem.
I restored the iPod again. Same problem.
Now I can't even get all the playlists to show up on my iPod.
Anybody have a clue what to do next?

I've been having the exact same problem for several months and have been unable to resolve it. I wanted to transfer my song library from my desktop computer to my laptop so I copied my library onto an external hard drive. I've tried searching Apple's online support articles with no luck and also spoke with an Apple support person who wasn't able to resolve my issue. I was going to try deleting my library from my external hard drive and uninstalling iTunes from my laptop and then starting over again but after reading your story I'm wondering if that will solve the problem. I'm getting very frustrated.

HT204406 Smart Playlists do not sync over Match.

I can delete them from iTunes on any device and they will delete from the rest of my devices, but when I try to create them, they remain local to that device. Thoughts?
All the devices I'm using are running the most up-to-date version of iTunes.
I've got Win8, Win7 and OSx computers and an iPhone 4S. I've been trying to get Smart Playlists to sync over iTunes match, but I can't seem to get it. I can delete them from any one of the devices, but when I try to create one on one of the computers (you can't make a smart playlist on the iPhone) they don't sync across to any other device. I wind up making temporary playlists using the contents of the smart playlist right now, but that's not really the point.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

I have the exact same problem. I like to order podcasts shortest first. This has happened every time there is a new iphone or ipod OS whole number release. Usually gets fixed by a point update. Turning off live update solves the problem, but then how do you update the playlist? The only way I can find to do it is "edit smart playlist", turn live update on, go back, then turn live update back off. Totally cumbersome.

BPM Smart Playlist Rules not Syncing

I noticed the following behavior. I created 3 smart playlists, all 3 containing many rules including some to match specific BPM (Beats Per Minute) rules. Only the Smart Playlist names appear on my iPhone 5s, none of the 3 lists is populated.
However, when I remove the rules referring to BPM and leave the other rules unchanged, all 3 playlists appear populated on my iPhone.
Has this issue with BPM been reported previously?
Bernard
iTunes 11.2.2.3 on Dell with Windows 7 Professional SP1 and iPhone 5s 64GB
"All the Way from South Africa..."

im in the same situation.. i recently switched over to the 3.1.3 version and what a mistake that was. i wish we could go back because half the things dont work anymore. like the smart playlists... it says i have them correct on both itunes and my ipod but i check it ON my ipod and its random songs...

Podcast smart playlists no longer syncing to iPod nano?

I've been a long-time iPod podcast listener, despite the obvious intent to push this product into oblivion. I am no longer seeing smart podcast playlists on my iPod. This is a HUGE bummer to me, as I listen to podcasts while I run. And I hate running with my iPhone.
Anyone else not seeing smart podcast playlists syncing to their iPod anymore?

Here is the solution: After five hours of endless error messages and incomplete re-syncs, it all boiled down to this: Restore the iPod Touch via iTunes. Everything was first erased from the iPod but then everything- contents (photos, music and settings) were restored from iTunes perfectly. Finally now MobileMe is also on all my Apple products - including the heretofore frustrating iPod.
Hope someone can save themselves a lot of aggravation by trying this fix should the updates prove to be less the "seamless"!
Cheers!
john

After I did the new update to my phone, all of my "smart playlists" no longer sync.

It's so annoying because now I can't listen to my recently added. Any way to get it back?
The playlists such as "Recently Added" "Top 25 Played" "Recently Played" and "My Top Rated"
Anyone know what to do, please?

Uh been a while since I've had this question ask. From memory, right click playlist, edit playlist.
Where it has playlist rules, click the plus button to add a new rule
Change it to "Playlist IS music", that should work. If not, play around with the rules, changing it to something to do with standard music will allow it to sync.

Smart Playlists not syncing correctly

All of my iTunes smart playlists are not syncing correctly on my 3rd gen. iPod touch. I have iTunes 9, and the latest iPod touch software (3.1.2) and nothing is correct.
For example on my "Top 25 Most Played" there are songs that I have listened to only once, and some, zero times! In the "Recently Added" playlist, there are songs that I added years ago!
How will this get fixed? I thought maybe 3.1.2 would fix it, but obviously it didn't. I remember this happened to me when I first got my first gen. iPod touch, but that sorted itself out in about a week. I've now had the third gen. iPod touch for a month now.

thanks for posting this link to Apple officially responding to this issue. although these are good workaround solutions, they are still just workaround solutions. it seems there remains a bug when the "live updating" option is selected for a smart playlist. this is one of the most obvious/major bugs I have seen in Apple software (and it's not that big of a deal, so that says a lot about the quality of Apple software).

Smart Playlists Out of Sync

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