Apple Music smart playlist not updating
That sounds like a playlist definition error. As part of the iTunes update it is possible that your smart criteria got messed up. I found several of my smart playlists which depend on other smart playlists had the "Playlist is ..." criteria altered such the the specified playlist name was nulled out. Once I corrected that, the playlist (and others that depend on it) would update. So check your criteria very carefully, especially if you have playlists that depend on others -- check the smart criteria at all levels of playlists that have a dependency on each other. Although this was a problem for me, it turned out to not be the complete root cause. In my case, my playlists were not updating because iTunes 12.3.3 can no longer handle the 100+ smart playlists I had in my library. iTunes 12.3.2 and earlier handled these just fine, but even though I checked each and every playlist for the error above, I was still not seeing smart playlists update. Once I eliminated some unnecessary playlists then things started working, albeit slowly. I pared down my playlists further and I could see the speed at which they'd update improve. For whatever reason, iTunes was choking on my complex library. But at least it prompted me to do some housecleaning!
I'm having the same issue. I had my smart playlist set up to live update and to sort the songs by most recently added. After the update, my smart playlists on my phone were syncing in random order and were also not live updating. If I set the criteria to "Playlist is music" and sync with my phone the songs will appear in the correct order (sorted by most recently added), however when I purchase a song on my iPhone or on my Mac, it will not live update. I have to sync to get the song added to the playlist. Live updating on an iOS device has largely been broken since iOS 3, only the simplest of smart playlists will Live Update on the device without having to re-sync. Perhaps you updated the criteria of the smart playlist in a way that the added criteria pushed it over the edge and it now requires a re-sync? For example, adding "Playlist Is ..." will definitely break Live Updating, and some others seem to as well. Or, perhaps whatever the problem is has only gotten worse with an iOS and/or iTunes update? Are you using iTunes Match or iCloud Music Library? Either of those could be the problem since they add a layer of complexity to smart playlists & syncing. In my case the problem was iTunes itself not updating and I came to the conclusion that I had too many smart playlists in my library that depended upon others. By eliminating some smart playlists I could see Live Updating slowly get better, where the update would happen but very slowly. I removed a few more smart playlists and I was back in business. I think it was iTunes 12.3.3 at the time, since on the most recent versions I've been able to add back more playlists and haven't had this problem. The weird thing is that it worked on my iPhone 6S, but when I got the 7 and set it up, it suddenly stopped working properly. I don't use iTunes Match, but I think I use iCloud Music Library. I could remove the "playlist is music" criterion but then the playlist includes TV shows/movies that I've downloaded, which is a huge pain. I also noticed that if I set up the rule "media kind is music" it shows up in date added order on my Mac, but when I sync with my iPhone suddenly it changes to alphabetical. I have to change the rule to "playlist is music" for it to sort properly (by most recently added) on my iPhone. You think you use iCloud Music Library? Go to Settings> Music and see if Apple Music is enabled, and if so then look below that to see if iCloud Music Library is also enabled. You can't have iCloud Music Library without also having an Apple Music account: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926 In any case, on-device Live Updating of smart playlists has had recurring issues over the years, such that they will update but only with very simple criteria -- otherwise you have to re-sync to iTunes to get them to update. But if you are using iCloud Music Library then smart playlist behavior could behave differently than not using iCloud Music Library (though I refuse to use it). Funny how this particular workaround has come to the rescue in the past, must be some bit of faulty code that keeps sneaking back into production. |
