Frustrated With ITunes/Apple Music

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So I've read several threads here on the site, and I get that there seems to be some confusion regarding ITunes, IMatch, and Apple Music. I'm feeling fairly frustrated myself.

I have an iMac with 10.10.5. I have iTunes 12.2.2.25. I do not have iMatch. I also have a newer iPad iOS 8.4.1. I have enable iCloud, so I thought what was happening is that I could access anything from any device. In fact, I'm getting ready to buy a new iPhone because of that feature. A month or so ago I did the free trial to Apple Music. I like the service, and have downloaded some of their playlists to my iMac. It appears without being too anal about it, that everything I have on the iMac, also appears on my iPad.

EXCEPT, I created a playlist (my first) on iMac. I assumed that it would be synced via the cloud to my iPad. But that didn't happen. After a lot of googling, and several hours, I've been unsuccessful at moving the playlist I created to the iPad. Basically I connected the iPad to the iMac, then selected iPad in iTunes. I then tried to move the playlist to the iPad. This has not worked, I can move the playlist, but I can't drop it into the iPad or Music. Frankly, I'm not sure why I would have to do that since that is supposed to be the advantage of the cloud to begin with. And again, the Apple Music Playlists that I have downloaded to iMac, also appear on iPad.

Any thoughts on what I need to do here, or what the issue might be?

Thanks for your help.
 
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J
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chas:

Thanks for replying to my post. As much as I hate to admit this, I cannot produce the screen that you show. I'm using iTunes 12.2.2.25.

If I open iTunes on my iMac, I see the "Music" page. Down the left column i see a section for "Devices". Under that I have James iPad. Below that I have Apple Music Playlists, then Playlists, the last of which is James Playlist.

In the left upper corner I can select Music, Movies, TV Shows, a dropdown box (with various things like podcasts, audiobooks, etc), then James iPad. When I select James iPad, down the left column under James iPad are Settings and On My Device. Under Settings I can select Music. When I do that a page comes up titled iCloud Music Library is On. Then it says "James iPad can access your iCloud Music Library. Songs can be downloaded and played via Wi-Fi or a cellular network." Just below that is a check box (which is checked) that says "Sync voice memos". Next to it is a dropdown box that is grayed out. It has "All" shown, but I can't operate the dropdown box. I also have a button on the lower right of that page that says "Sync". When I press that, then check the iPad, the James Playlist is not there. All the other play lists, to include Apple Music Playlists are there.

At the top of my iMac screen, if I select iTunes, then Preferences, what pulls up is various preferences. When I select "Sharing" I see a box that looks similar to yours except it uses the word "Share" as opposed to Sync. I can check the box James playlist as you have done. When I do that James playlist does not appear on my iPad. Alternatively I can also select "Share my library on my local network", then "Share entire library". Nothing changes on the iPad there either.

Btw, I have my iPad connect to the iMac.

It makes sense that I would have a screen that looked like yours, but I'm damned if I can find it.
 
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I do see a symbol that looks like a cloud with a line drawn through it next to James Playlist. When I click on the cloud a box comes up that is titled 'The playlist “James s Playlist” can’t be added to your iCloud Music Library'. It goes on to explain "iCloud Music Library playlists can only include music from your iCloud Music Library. This playlist can’t be uploaded because it includes other media kinds or songs that are not eligible." My playlist does include some music from Apple Music. And voila, when I create a playlist without Apple Music on it, it syncs to my iPad. Turns out it syncs all on it's own.

Sorry for all the confusion. The Cloud does what I would have thought it did.
 
C

chas_m

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I haven't tested it myself, but yes in these early days I'm not surprised to hear that you can't mix (paid) Apple Music songs and (your) local music in a single playlist. I imagine they'll get that sorted out eventually, but you might try taking the songs saved from Apple Music and changing the status to "save for offline listening" and see if that fixes the issue.

Otherwise, just make (at least for now) separate playlists for Apple Music and local music content. All my old playlists, which of course included all local music, work fine on my iOS devices.
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
You can mix Apple Music and your local music in a playlist and have it sync to your iDevice.

I'm not sure what James may have that is not "eligible". The only things in My Music that are not eligible are things like the "digital booklets" that come with some albums (like the free U2 album they gave away - typically pics, lyrics and other info) and some free iTunes "samplers" that came with a DVD like interface you could use to interact with the music. In those cases - the individual songs can be added to the playlist and have it sync across devices - but not the "album" which includes the booklets/other media that came with it.

iTunes also gives you a popup when you attempt to add something to a playlist that is not eliglble, telling you if you proceed that playlist will be removed from iCloud and be an iTunes only playlist.

I also have some old blues with no idea of the artist - those are not eligible either.

James, you can pretty easily find the items that are not eligible by switching your view in 'My Music' to songs and scrolling down the list to find those that have the 'no icloud' symbol next to them.

When most of the time the syncing between devices is almost instantaneous, it can be frustrating when that does not happen.
I've seen the forced syncing be as easy as powering your iDevice on and off.
As hard as turning off iCloud syncing in iTunes preferences and back on, then waiting through it resyncing "everything" again.
It could be up to waiting till the next day - sometimes two days later when it all suddenly appears and no amount of trying to force a sync would work.
And of course, Apple has not put a "sync to iCloud" button available anywhere to quickly force sync - so instead you have to play the above games.
 
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