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iPhone music problem: song shows different artist than in iTunes

P

PCFan

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2008
74
5
Hi all,

I'm having an issue with music on my iPhone 5s. Take the song All Day by Kanye West for example. The artist, album artist, as well as the "sort as" field for both are all under Kanye West. On my iPhone however, when I play the song, the artist is Kanye West & JAY Z. What's even weirder is that when I turn on "Group by Album Artist" in the music settings, the song is under the Kanye West artist list, but still shows Kanye West & JAY Z when I play the song. I attached images to show you guys what the song looks like on iTunes as well as on my iPhone.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? I tried restoring my phone, as well as starting a completely new iTunes library (new iTunes Library.itl & iTunes Music Library.xml files) and still nothing. This is happening to many Kanye West songs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Despite whatever your iTunes library shows, if you downloaded this directly to your iPhone the tag may very well differ. This can happen if you re-download the song from the cloud (i.e. tap the cloud icon, or if you're using iTunes Match), or maybe if you originally purchased it directly to your phone but did not remove the download after transferring the purchase to your library (and sometimes this leaves you with two versions of the same song -- iTunes version and original download that never got cleared).
 
Thanks for the replies.
I actually bought the song on my Mac. Is there a way to change these "unchangeable" tags?
I feel like the music cache in my iPhone is corrupt, because I actually do have "Kanye West & JAY Z" songs. I feel like it mixed up.
 
PCFan said:
I actually bought the song on my Mac.
Click to expand...
You can still be in a situation where the copy on your iPhone is not the copy from your library, i.e. iCloud (re-)download to your iPhone even though you have it on your Mac.

Is there a way to change these "unchangeable" tags?
I feel like the music cache in my iPhone is corrupt, because I actually do have "Kanye West & JAY Z" songs. I feel like it mixed up.
Click to expand...
If you auto-sync your iPhone, try to alter your sync settings such that the song is no longer synced to your iPhone (e.g. uncheck the song in your library). Then sync the iPhone to remove the song, then change sync settings back and re-sync. You can also delete directly from the iPhone, but it may be "cleaner" to remove the song via sync methods.

If you manually manage the music on your iPhone, that can be another cause of the difference. If you drag and drop a song from your library to your iPhone, then later make changes to the song's tag in your library, those changes will not be applied to the original copy you placed on your iPhone. To force those changes, delete the song from your iPhone and drag over a fresh copy from your library.
 
Oh trust me I've done that countless times. Deleted all the music on my phone and recopied it. The weird part is that even when I add new Kanye West music, that new music also shows under the Kanye West & JAY Z artist.

I'm thinking it's some sort of corruption in my music app cache...is there anyway to clear that cache without having to restore the whole phone? Maybe using an app like i-FunBox?

Thanks for the replies I really appreciate it :)
 
Oh and I don't use iCloud downloads on my phone, I turned that off. It's all straight from iTunes. That's why I strongly think it's a cache issue inside the iPhone.
 
I have this issue....on both my iPhone 5S and iPad Air 1. I also have iCloud music on my devices off.

Changing the artist makes no difference after the sync (yes I still hard sync all my music from iTunes). Changing the name of the songs syncs, but not the artist.
 
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Viper3773 said:
Changing the name of the songs syncs, but not the artist.
Click to expand...
Strange, I have several album purchases from iTunes where some of the songs had "feat. xyz" not only in the song title but also Artist field. I remove the "feat. xyz" from both tag fields and typically put it in Comments.

I just checked one of these albums ("Mind Control") and the Now Playing correctly shows my edits (Stephen Marley's name only, unlike how it's shown in the iTunes store). If it matters, I'm using an iPhone 6+, with the latest versions of iTunes, iOS, and Yosemite. I also hard-sync from my library only.

Just for kicks, check to see if the "Part of a Compilation" flag is still set, I typically remove that once I strip out the extra names in the Artist field, so maybe that's the secret.
 
Part of a compilation isn't ticked for any of them :confused:
I have the exact same issue as Viper3773. I feel like the only solution unfortunately is to restore from a new iPhone
 
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PCFan said:
Part of a compilation isn't ticked for any of them :confused:
I have the exact same issue as Viper3773. I feel like the only solution unfortunately is to restore from a new iPhone
Click to expand...
I don't even know if that will work - happened on both my devices after the first with iTunes after the upgrade to 8.2. If it was a device problem I'd assume it would only be a problem with one, not both.
 
Viper3773 said:
I don't even know if that will work - happened on both my devices after the first with iTunes after the upgrade to 8.2. If it was a device problem I'd assume it would only be a problem with one, not both.
Click to expand...

Same, I only noticed this a couple days after updating to 8.2. You think that's the reason? If so I hope it gets fixed in 8.2.1 or whatever the next release is.
 
PCFan said:
Same, I only noticed this a couple days after updating to 8.2. You think that's the reason? If so I hope it gets fixed in 8.2.1 or whatever the next release is.
Click to expand...

That is what I'm thinking. Probably doesn't affect many users since not many plug in to sync anymore..
 
Didn't see this post until just today, but this is the same issue I encountered too. I thought it was strange too and tried a variety of things to fix it with no success... Removed all songs, manually managed, checked metadata tags, etc.

What's really irritating about this issue for me, is that I'm not using the "Sort By" fields at all, but my tracks wind up being displayed under a completely different Artist name which throws things off when browsing for tracks via Artist on the iPhone. The same track in iTunes does display and sort by the Artist name I expect, however.

I hope there's a fix for this though, because it's really irritating. AFAIK, only a small handful of tracks in my library seems to be affected where they don't show up under the correct artist but I hope it's not too big of an issue.

Glad to know it's not just me though... I'll post any solution I come across if I find one that works.
 
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Decept1k0n said:
Didn't see this post until just today, but this is the same issue I encountered too. I thought it was strange too and tried a variety of things to fix it with no success... Removed all songs, manually managed, checked metadata tags, etc.

What's really irritating about this issue for me, is that I'm not using the "Sort By" fields at all, but my tracks wind up being displayed under a completely different Artist name which throws things off when browsing for tracks via Artist on the iPhone. The same track in iTunes does display and sort by the Artist name I expect, however.

I hope there's a fix for this though, because it's really irritating. AFAIK, only a small handful of tracks in my library seems to be affected where they don't show up under the correct artist but I hope it's not too big of an issue.

Glad to know it's not just me though... I'll post any solution I come across if I find one that works.
Click to expand...

Anyone try restoring their phone or a different version of iTunes?
 
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PCFan said:
Posted this on the Apple Support Discussions. Maybe I'll find a solution and/or other people who are experiencing this too. If you guys want to follow it: https://discussions.apple.com/message/27850061#27850061
Click to expand...

I've done this as well too, so far haven't seen any responses to it yet either... It does seem to me like the issues popped up ever since the update to iOS 8.2 though, as I encountered different issues and with a different iPhone 6 Plus before it was replaced for a hardware issue.
 
Decept1k0n said:
I've done this as well too, so far haven't seen any responses to it yet either... It does seem to me like the issues popped up ever since the update to iOS 8.2 though, as I encountered different issues and with a different iPhone 6 Plus before it was replaced for a hardware issue.
Click to expand...
Relieved that it's not just me. I thought maybe my iTunes library became corrupt / files edited with hidden tags. Doesn't seem to be the case, seems to be an :apple: problem.
 
Viper3773 said:
Relieved that it's not just me. I thought maybe my iTunes library became corrupt / files edited with hidden tags. Doesn't seem to be the case, seems to be an :apple: problem.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this issue really sucks a lot. The worst part is that I had what seemed to be a legitimate hardware issue that actually caused music sync issues that manifested itself as iTunes constantly re-syncing tracks that were thought to have already been transferred to the phone or album art was missing for no reason.

It was really frustrating to deal with, and then now this issue comes along... Haha. I really thought I was going crazy and tried literally every fix I could think of. I am however curious to see how Apple addresses this.
 
Decept1k0n said:
Yeah, this issue really sucks a lot. The worst part is that I had what seemed to be a legitimate hardware issue that actually caused music sync issues that manifested itself as iTunes constantly re-syncing tracks that were thought to have already been transferred to the phone or album art was missing for no reason.

It was really frustrating to deal with, and then now this issue comes along... Haha. I really thought I was going crazy and tried literally every fix I could think of. I am however curious to see how Apple addresses this.
Click to expand...

I restored from a backup, so I guess restoring from new is a possible solution. I only noticed all this a couple days after updating to 8.2. I'm running the latest version of Yosemite (10.10.2) as well as the latest version of iTunes. Oddly enough, this only happens to all my Kanye West songs.
Click to expand...

I have the same problems with Eminem and Rihanna songs, mostly because those are the newest songs in my library.

But have you tried starting from fresh (temporarily) to see if a future sync resolves it?

edit: I should also mention, I had a local backup of my music files. I restored the backup thinking it was a file/tag problem. No success.
 
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Viper3773 said:
Anyone here have an update? :(
Click to expand...

Nope, the last thing I've seen in the Apple Support forums is that a few others have chimed in & said they are also experiencing this same issue with iOS8.2.

Unfortunately, what that really means for us is that this music bug is pretty widespread for users of the latest iOS update... Is Apple going to acknowledge it and/or do anything about it anytime soon? I hope so, but the reality is they may not do anything about it until the Apple Watch is launched, which I'm thinking will also coincide with an iOS point update(ie, 8.2.x)...

With that said, if they do release a point release, hopefully it doesn't break something else. It seems like every single update for iOS or OS X results in new issues cropping up... Pisses me off to be honest, since it makes the updates feel half baked!
 
Decept1k0n said:
Nope, the last thing I've seen in the Apple Support forums is that a few others have chimed in & said they are also experiencing this same issue with iOS8.2.

Unfortunately, what that really means for us is that this music bug is pretty widespread for users of the latest iOS update... Is Apple going to acknowledge it and/or do anything about it anytime soon? I hope so, but the reality is they may not do anything about it until the Apple Watch is launched, which I'm thinking will also coincide with an iOS point update(ie, 8.2.x)...

With that said, if they do release a point release, hopefully it doesn't break something else. It seems like every single update for iOS or OS X results in new issues cropping up... Pisses me off to be honest, since it makes the updates feel half baked!
Click to expand...

Wonder if 8.3 fixed? Not hopeful though.
 
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