Play music on iPhone, does not update plays or last played on Apple Music for Mac

I'm having the same issue after update to iOS 17. Play counts are not updating on other devices from iphone or ipod touch.

At the moment, itunes music doesn't seem to recognise that I'm using it on multiple devices. In the past, if I tried to play music on my iphone (for instance) while music was already playing on another device, I would get a warning message and music would stop playing on one of the devices.

However, this morning I tried playing music simultaneously on four devices (iMac, iphone, ipod touch and apple music on a PC) and had no messages and music kept playing on all devices at the same time.

I wondered if my apple ID was not working properly, but checked and I seem to be properly logged-in on all devices.

Furthermore, If I add a new album on one of my devices (all four), it appears on all my devices (all four), so apple ID is presumably fine. And if I manually update the music library on my Mac or PC (file/library/update icloud music library) the libraries update properly on my phone and ipod (and MAC/PC).

It just seems to be the play counts that don't update properly to icloud from my iphone or ipod. Up to installing iOS 17, the play counts updated automatically at least once a day, usually after the first play on iphone/ipod. So far, neither the plays from iphone or ipod have synced for two days.

I tried un-toggling the "Sync Library" on my iphone and then turning the "Sync Library" on again, hoping this might force a fresh sync. But it didn't.

I installed another update this morning that claimed to solve some bugs (icloud music problems was not listed as one of the issues), but, so far, there is no evidence that this update has helped.

One thing I did note this morning while looking at icloud settings on my phone, was that it asked me to agree to new terms and conditions for icloud. Again, no evidence yet that this has helped solve the play count issue.

Same here. I'm pretty sure there was a checkbox somewhere to synchronize playcount between iOS devices and the MacOS Apple Music library, but that option seems to have vaporized somehow. My best guess is that the whole issue has something to do with this:

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/17/apple-music-fraud/

Using Dough AppleScrips on the MacOS Apple Music playcount it is possible to manipulate playcount, for instance. I can image this route also can be used to beef up playcount for Apple Music Streams. One again, I don't know but it wouldn't surprise if this challenge for Apple to prevent playcount fraud on streams has something to do with this.

Nevertheless, if Apple introduces features it's aways with fireworks ans fanfare but when they ditch functions it keeps deadly quiet leaving users in the undocumented dark. Spending hours finding out what's going on, if it's a bug or user mistake or whatsoever and finding out it might be another undocumented change isn't what Apple famously promotes as 'user friendly' in my opinion.

Steve Denton wrote:

Does the next update solve the problem completely. That is - I currently have the very same playlist, one which should remove a song from the playlist after it has been played, on iMac, iPad, Apple TV and iPhone. And all are at different 'positions.' The only one that does update the playlist, is on the iMac. If I play any of the others, nothing happens, no updating.

I thought iCloud meant that each unit could update the playlist and accessing that playlist from another unit, would access the updated central playlist. Play a song on one, it is removed from the playlist, open the playlist on another, the playlist is minus one (as it were) on startup.

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[Edited by Moderator]

I can't comment on whether playlists using play counts are totally fixed because I don't have any. But for me it does look like the problem of iOS plays not getting counted in the macOS Music app has been resolved. It would seem like that would take care of the playlist count problem, too.

This still isn't working. My phone smart playlists are completely different than my Macs, and songs played on my phone take at lest 8 hours to show up on recently played, if at all. My legacy play counts in my Mac library don't seem to affect smart playlists on my phone.

Reading the most recent comments, it seems that for some this issue is resolved. The last time my iPhone SE synced play counts to my Apple Music library was 9/23/23. I tried the methods again that were recently posted but my play counts still haven't updated. I'm almost certain the counts are stored on my phone, it's just so frustrating that after a decade of listening and syncing that this still isn't a resolved issue. I did contact Apple and gave them exact dates and screenshots, but it seems like they've known about this for a while. If anyone has a real solution please reach out! Thank you!!

Indeed. Apple is not going to fix this. I suspect their software architecture cannot easily accommodate updating play counts. Before Apple Music, with iTunes Play counts used to update by using an XML file that was transparent to the user. With apple music, everything goes through the cloud so they don’t know how to handle it, or don’t want to handle it.

the engineers erroneously think the Replay feature makes play counts redundant but it does not.

I need to follow up on my post because there’s an important detail that I missed initially.

Apparently, when you add Apple CarPlay into this equation, it doesn’t always work. Oddly, when plugged into CarPlay, you can access your music library either through the car’s interface (mine is a 2021 Subaru Outback for reference) or through the phone itself and you will get two different results. I find that if I play music from my library using the CarPlay interface, the last song I was listening to won’t be the last song that appears on my phone’s Music app when I unplug from the car. Instead, it’ll be the last song I was listening to when using the app directly. So the way CarPlay accesses your music library and the way the phone’s Music app access your music library are complete different. And one updates your library’s play count and the other doesn’t.

Anyone else found this to be the case?

This worked for me too. iOS 17.6.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.6.1.

My process was:

1. Hard restarted iPhone 15 Pro.
2. In Apple Music on the Mac, File > Update Cloud Library.
3. In Apple Music on the iPhone, played a song from my library.
4. After song finished, I checked back with Apple Music on the Mac and that song had updated. I didn’t even have to choose Update Cloud Library.

Seems like a success. I have an Apple Music Family Plan, but I tried this with both devices logged into the same Apple ID.

Thanks, Brandisfender!

My phone stopped syncing to my Mac as of 11/22. Plays from my Apple TV still sync play counts.

I updated all software on all devices and the playlists is updating again, some delay but they eventually show up.

Frustrating - i like to track # of plays of songs regardless of device. iPhone "plays" do not register on my Mac's play count even though i (think) i have all the correct settings.

There’s no option for a ‘forced sync’ from iPad/iPhone, is there?

I’ve tried sync-ing my iMac version to iCloud, then logging out of Music on iPhone, then back in, but the play-count-based playlist I was trying to update, came back in exactly the same as the previous iPhone version had been.

I wondered, if you delete Apple Music from your iPhone (in my case), then re-load everything, would that come from the Apple Music ‘in the cloud’?

but that’s not, even if it was likely to work, given my aforementioned problem, a generally useable solution.

Apple needs to look at its claims for Music, sync across devices and either remove that lie, or make it work.

At a guess it’s Settings >> Music and just allow anything with the slider button thing.

Doesn’t matter though, as I’ve got anything that can be allowed, allowed, and it’s still up the ying-yang.

And it wasn’t the new update changing anything, it was broken long before that.

Well, let's hope the update means they will finally be able to justify the "...and changes you make to your library will sync across all your devices" part.

And instead of having the same playlist in four different versions, they will each update just the one.

Things still not right at my end either. I've got 4 Apple things - iMac, iPhone, iPad and ATV - all with their own version of the same play-count based playlist. The 'closest' are the ones on the ATV and on the iMac, though still several songs off.

(For new readers) The playlist is a simple one, (currently) if it's been played less than 4 times, it's in the playlist, when it gets a 5th play, it is removed from the playlist. In theory, automatically.

I'm running the latest and greatest versions of all relevant software, logged in to the same, the only, account I have for Apple Music.

The latest problems I've identified that may have something to do with it are: the 'recently played' folder on the Apple Music on iMac, only seems to show recently played on Wi-Fi, I can check as (now) Last.fm actually updates and shows songs played while out of the house. And, I'm wondering if a song or two have got the playlist 'stuck' on iPad, iPhone, ATV. There was one time a while back, where I physically deleted a song that had been stuck at the top of the list on iPhone for months, despite repeated plays, and it updated the list...for a while anyway.

All this comes a long way down The List - after world peace, ending world hunger - but, is insanely irritating none the less. And, goes directly against Apple's 'update across your iDevices' claim.