iTunes 8 / iPhone / iPod App Sticking problem

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I'll keep it short.

I have iTunes 8 and all my music is properly ripped and has album artwork. I never have a problem with playing music on my computer.

I have an iPod Touch, and about 3 months ago, certain albums wouldn't play, then more albums started not wanting to play. I would choose an album or song and it would go to the album artwork and not play the song and freely let me go back and choose another album, or it would 'freeze' and nothing I did would do anything.

So.

Now I have an iPhone. And guess what? exact same thing, except this time it is on completely different albums! my Abba CD won't fire up at all, whereas on my ipod touch it was about one of the albums that did play.

It's irritating to say the least. All the music is legit and I have spent at least a full day over time making my iTunes library organised and perfect so that I could have it integrate with my ipod and iphone.

Now, does anyone have an idea from my description as to what could be the problem? Google doesn't seem to know, but I am starting to feel like it is either something to do with my apps, of which i have a handful, or my iTunes library.

I have tried a full restore of my ipod to full factory reset and nothing changed.

As usual, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mel
 
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Try removing the album artwork and then re-sync to see if that's what's causing the issues. I don't think so though.

What format is the music in?
 
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maybe it's the choice of music? Your iPod doesn't want to be seen dead playing abba.

Maybe it's the music format. Any of your music in wma? Is all your music ripped or are some them downloaded? Is it just the downloaded not playing? Maybe you need to deauthorize your music? Have you been manually organizing your music and moved around their folders?
 
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melmation
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the music is in 2 formats...

mp3
m4a

I think is because a few years ago I realised you could set iTunes to import music as mp3 instead of m4a. So I changed it.

Well, what I have done is tried to freshen everything up, I went to my iTunes music folder (which is in the default location) and moved the iTunes library file, iTunes Extras/itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb and the iTunes Music Library.xml files to a temporary folder on my desktop and started up iTunes and watched it rebuild the files.

Then watched in Shock as my iTunes had NOTHING in there. good job I saved those files! However, decided to see what would happen if I told iTunes to add my library to itself. So I did and it scanned the files, added them to iTunes, and then did something extra, it re-organized the tunes and folders in my iTunes music folder.

So after getting a few bits of artwork it couldn't find, I am now re-synching my iPod playlist to my iPhone and see what happens!

I will report back if anything has changed.

Mel

Ps, I remade the ipod playlist. basically, the only things my itunes has reference to are my ipod backups (but I don't think they get used unless you restore your iPod right?) and my music and Artwork. Everything else seems to have been rebuilt and reorganized by iTunes.
 
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melmation
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Hi Fash,

Yeah, Abba on my ipod. good for when long journeys get boring and tedious!

I did move around some folders and organise stuff aout one month ago, but this problem happened before that on my ipod touch, but iTunes seems to have wanted to re-organize it itself there now so I am hoping it somehow wipes out the mysterious freeze.

As for wma (spit) not a chance. Music is a mixture of ripped (95%) and about 5% downloaded either due to being bought off iTunes for work or because my cd's have been scratched to death.

There doesn't seem to be any reason or rhyme as to which songs / albums don't play. It is weird.

Synching is almost done!
 
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melmation
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Gah!

It hasn't worked. Yep. it's pretty much 50% of the albums and songs that won't play. I think a genius bar meeting is in order. If both my iPod touch and iPhone are doing this, there must be something up with my iTunes.

If I find a resolution, I will let you know.

Mel
 
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melmation
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Well, seems I uncovered an unknown fault on the iPod Touch and iPhone.

If you happened to rip CD's with an older version of iTunes on a PC (whichever version of iTunes was out in 2005) and then burned the mp3 or m4a files to a Disc to transfer them into iTunes on your new Mac, then those files might not play on your iPod Touch or iPhone. All other iPods seem to be fine with those files.

They also play fine in iTunes just not the touch pods.

Went to the Genius bar and the guy was stumped, he had never seen a music track freeze up an ipod the way some of my albums did. Anyway we narrowed it down to the files (after 45 minutes of sleuthing) and I went home

I loaded every album I had onto my old iPod Touch as it has the same symptoms as my new iPhone and went through album by album checking the ones that would freeze the iPod and when I looked at my list I seen it seemed to be all the albums I ripped to my PC when I first ever installed iTunes.

So, I am re-encoding them using an app called switch and loading them back into my iTunes library, and you'll never guess what? It only works!

Yeee-haaaaaa.

Abba here I come!

Mel
x
 

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