My iPhone loves STP and Toad the Wet Sprocket
For about the past 4 months or so, I have noticed some somewhat bizarre syncing behavior with my iPhone. No matter what files I am syncing, adding, subtracting, the iPhone will always recopy 2 songs that (in theory) are already on there. The song “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots, and “Hold Her Down” by Toad the Wet Sprocket will always be “updated”, even if nothing has changed (play count, artwork, rating, etc.). For example, both these songs are in a smart playlist in iTunes called “4 Stars”, which, as you may have guessed, contains songs I have ranked 4 stars or better. That playlist is set to autosync with the iPhone. However, the problem is (and it is really more of a quirk than a real problem) is that if I hit “sync”, these two songs are copied to the iPhone, even though they are presumably already there. It only happens once per session, meaning each time the iPhone is plugged in, this will only happen the first time I hit “sync”. After that, syncing won’t cause this. However if I eject the iPhone, re-plug it and hit sync, those 2 songs are again copied (or updated).
I have examined the songs, and can find nothing wrong with them. A search on Apple’s discussions reveals others are having similar problems with both iPhones AND iPods, both on Windows and Mac systems. I suppose I am fortunate, as some of these people have 5 GB worth of songs that will recopy each sync, and that can become time consuming now that Apple hates FireWire. Unfortunately, the only success anyone has had in fixing this problem involves recreating the iTunes library (although it does not work for everyone, apparently), and that’s just not gonna happen, as I have over 11,600 songs and 1000 videos.
So, for the moment I can live with this “two song” recopy issue, and I post this only so others will not feel so alone should they run into this problem. The good news is it seems to be a software issue with iTunes more than a hardware bug with iPod and iPhones, so perhaps this will all go away in a new iTune. They are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.s update.
Or get horribly worse. That’s the fun part about updates.
I’ve had exactly the same behavior with seven songs syncing to my iPhone.
have you tried manually managing your music and videos?
Jim,
No, that would be far more trouble than it’s worth. I have a bunch of smart playlists set up specifically to accommodate the 8 GB of storge I have on the iPhone, and I can live with watching the iPhone updte those 2 songs each sync for 10 seconds instead of spending 10 minutes a day weeding through and manually adding and removing songs.
-The Doc
so…noob question, how does a smart playlist work?
yeah I have the same situation with I think 4 tracks on my iphone… I thought it might be cause I added lyrics or album art although it keeps happening, but it doesn’t seem to affect functionality or anything for that matter…
Exactly the same problem here with 22 songs!
I can live with it, but it’s kind of annoying…
Do you see any “pattern” for the songs being sync’d? Mines are all from the same artist, different albums…
Maybe your iPhone is trying to point out how out of date your music library is by repeatedly drawing your attention to a couple of the more craptacular relics of the 90s? Get thyself to 3Hive and Stereogum post-haste!
Jason G,
Rest assured I thought long and had before posting this, knowing full well I was opening myself to rampant musical criticism.
Thanks for your suggestions.
-The Doc
I had the same issue. I also found that there was a difference between the problem songs and the remaining songs on the album with the Album artist. Try updating the Album Artist or the Artist for all songs to see if this stops.
You might also notice that these tracks appear in their own album.
I had this problem with my iPod Touch and fixed it by unchecking the box ( I tell my iPod to not sync unchecked songs). I then synced the iPod so the songs were deleted from the iPod. Then after an unplug of the iPod and checking the songs back, and then plugging in the iPod and syncing them back over, they no longer wanted to copy over during every sync as described above.
I might have closed and reopened iTunes while doing this, but these are basically the steps i used to get rid of the problem.
Luckily only 25 songs had this issue, so while it may have been tedious, it was do-able. For people whose entire libraries have this issue….. maybe tell the iPod or iPhone to not sync music and wipe the iPhone? who knows….
You can fix this yourself. I did. There is something about the info attached to that file that needs to be adjusted. Fool around in the Get Info area on those songs and you will be able to stop them from syncing every time.