Is There a Better Music Player to Sync Mac Library with iPhone?

[landshark2]

Once again, I am super annoyed with the seriously messed up non-syncing between my M1 Mac Mini and my iPhone 14 Pro. The short story is that I want a music player/organizer that properly syncs between my two devices. Below are some details and some venting.

On the Mini, I have my 500+ album collection arranged just the way I want it; alphabetical chronological, with the original cover art. And that took work for nearly every album that was loaded into Music. The Apple database doesn't have every album's original artwork, and many albums end up with incorrect artwork, so I've loaded dozens of cover art images (Get Info/Artwork/Add Artwork). On my iPhone, some of the album art images are randomly jumbled.

An alphabetical example is me wanting my Brian Auger's Oblivion Express albums to be sorted in the A's (Auger). I navigate to the 'Get Info' window's 'Sorting' tab and enter 'Auger, Brian' in the 'sort as' boxes for both 'album artist' and 'artist' for each 'Oblivion Express album. Evidently, since two of my 'Oblivion Express albums are digital only purchases from the iTunes Store, all my 'Oblivion Express albums are sorted in the B's on my iPhone. This happens for multiple artists.

And when I say chronological, I mean by recording date, not release date (when possible). That means Jimi Hendrix' Radio One sorts before Electric Ladyland, and Live at Woodstock sorts before Band of Gypsys. So for most multiple album artists, I again navigate to the 'Sorting' tab and enter recording year before album name in the 'sort as' box for 'album'. It gets a bit more complicated for some artists with multiple albums in a year or years. With Hendrix, the same year titles alphabetical sorting follows the recording date sorting, but that coincidence is rare.

My Frank Zappa collection is the most important to me, and it's the one most F'd up on my iPhone. Take 1972 as an example; without additional adjustment, The Grand Wazoo sorts before Waka/Jawaka. On this, I defer to the release date, so I enter '1972b The Grand Wazoo' in the 'sort as' box for 'album'. Followed by entering '1972c Imaginary Diseases' in the 'sort as' box for that posthumous release. And I still haven't figured out why about half the Zappa albums are sorted in the F's, while the rest, including an iTunes purchase, are sorted in the Z's.

There are also some iTunes purchased albums which for some reason show each individual song as an album on the iPhone, and the newest glitch I found today is on a 3-disc compilation set; Guitar Heroes. I've loaded the discs as individual albums, which show up on the Mini under Compilations, at the bottom of the Album view. On the iPhone that category is labeled '?' and one song on each disk didn't sync (not allowed in my region?!?).

In the past, I've consolidated the individual song album entries by deleting all music files from the iPhone, deleting the Music App from the iPhone, reinstalling Music from the App Store, and then syncing with the Mini, but that syncing for 500+ albums takes many, many hours, and eventually subsequent iTunes Store purchases seems to corrupt the album view on the iPhone. I am in that hours long syncing process now, between my recently fully updated devices, but I know that the most I can hope for is some consolidations.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

tl;dr

Pay for iTunes Match - it’s only $25/year. Everything is everywhere after that.

 

[landshark2]

I own all the music, I own the iPhone, I own the Mini; $25/year to organize and play my music through my devices seems ridiculous to me. I'd buy an App, but if I was into subscriptions I'd just stream music.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

If that’s where you draw the line, then Vaya con Dios.

Personally, the $25/year is a blip on the budget and having all the music (that I own) on all my devices - 3 Macs, iPad, and iPhone is simple & seamless.

 

[wonderings]

I own all the music, I own the iPhone, I own the Mini; $25/year to organize and play my music through my devices seems ridiculous to me. I'd buy an App, but if I was into subscriptions I'd just stream music.

I think of the $25 as a backup of all my music. It does not have to be in the Apple Store for it to work, I have tons of lectures and things that are not out there and everything is synced.

 

[UKenGB]

I have exactly the same problem as the OP. All the music is mine and it is organised how I want it (as it should be). With about 1500 albums it has been a lot of work, but taken place over many years and in iTunes, now Music.app it is all as I want it. In Music on the Mac, all is absolutely 100% correct. However, in Music.app on the iPhone - oh boy.😱

Please don't suggest the use of any other Apple service. Not only are they the perpetrators of the problem in the first place and so entirely untrustworthy, but I would never pay a subscription to use what I already own. I keep hearing the "It's only …" justification, but however small it may be, it is still IN ADDITION to what I've already purchased and anyway, subscriptions are not singular. Everyone wants you to pay them some 'small amount', but if I simply subscribed to everything that is demanded of me, I'd be in a net loss position every month. So no. No subscriptions from me. Ever.

As the OP, I use the 'Sort' versions of the tags to get the sort order correct and reverse the Artists' names to sort e.g. Eric CLAPTON under 'C' by using CLAPTON•Eric as the 'Sort Album Artist' tag. The problem seems to arise when Apple find a supposed match for the Artist. Fortunately it is not common, but when it thinks it's found a match, it then replaces the Artist name that you have used i.e. Eric CLAPTON with Eric Clapton.

Small point maybe, but I have my reasons for using that format as it helps my eye scan the list of artists and assists my brain seeing the alphabetical order. More importantly though, the app seems to now also use that for sorting, so Eric Clapton then gets sorted under 'E', exactly as I do NOT want and have put so much effort into tagging all my music to get it correct.

It's not only that they have now f***d up my carefully curated sort order, but exposed their total arrogance in believing that they know best. Not only do I believe they mostly have no idea what they're doing these days, but it is unacceptable for them to simply change what the user has set. No developer, and I mean NO, can understand what all their users want and even if they could, it would be impossible to satisfy all users as they each want something different. The solution it to give the users the choice, so they can all be happy.

This has been provided since the early days of iTunes with the inclusion of the 'Sort …' tags. Don't use them and you just get the default which will no doubt satisfy many. However, for those with more exacting requirements, they can arrange for the their music to display and sort however they like. All at the control of the user. Perfect. 😃

Then Apple produce the execrable Music.app that clearly demonstrated Apple have no idea what their users actually want/need and was so bad it required huge changes to be usable. Now, many years later, it's still dreadful and prioritises their streaming service over the user's own music library, to the extent that when they can, they ignore what the user has set up and replace with their own version of the data taken from that streaming service that they even thought was cool to call the same name as the actual software apps that use it. Try googling anything about the Music.app and all you get is irrelevant stuff about the Music service. Well done Apple, that's made it all nice and clear hasn't it. 🤬

Rant aside, I am therefore also on the lookout for a better app that recognises the 'Sort…' tags and simply allows me to play MY music which is actually ON the iPhone and is CarPlay compatible so I can use it in the car as that's where I will almost exclusively play it.

Failing that, is there any way to tell Music.app on an iDevice to NOT try and link to the streaming service. Just use the exact data as provided in the media file tags?

Any suggestions?

 

[UKenGB]

I have another music playing app on the iPhone, called Prism. I got it for playing from my Plex server, but I had forgotten it also can play local media on the iPhone. Then I have just discovered that it is CarPlay compatible which means I will see how it works with that. On the whole it's easier than Apple's Music.app, but not tested its CarPlay abilities yet.

What I have already noticed however is that the matched Artists (in fact that seems to mean any Artist with some music I have purchased from the iTunes Store) for which Apple helpfully discard my tag data and insert their own instead and ruins my sorting, is also evident on Prism. I think this is because the data has already been created on the iPhone (along with the munged tags) by the sync process and Prism just accesses that data. In fact, I think this is how any music playing app has to function as I suspect Apple do not allow an app to access the media files directly. In which case, no app will be able to avoid this cavalier disregard for a user's carefully created metadata and they will all have to accept and use what Apple have created when sync'ing.

However, that is speculation and I will continue to try and find a way around the problem.

 

[UKenGB]

Further thoughts about the sync process has me wondering if in fact for any 'purchased' Artist, the music is downloaded to the iPhone from the Music Store rather than uploaded from the Mac and hence the tagging is simply what Apple have set and so any changes made by the user are simply lost.

In which case, perhaps temporarily cutting off the Internet connection while sync'ing would prevent the problem? Or maybe it just wouldn't sync that music? If the former, then would it remain as the user wants once the Internet connection was established again or would Music.app 'helpfully' download what it wanted and screw it up again?

Worth trying.

 

[UKenGB]

It gets worse.

I have grabbed a few of the problem tracks back from the iPhone and for the 'matched' Artists (i.e. I've bought something of theirs from the Music Store) the sync process CHANGES the Album Artist tag to the Store version, overwriting the file's metadata. So they are purposefully changing the user's data. Bad Apple. Very bad.

However, they then seem to use that Album Artist tag for the sort, ignoring what actually exists in the files Sort Album Artist, despite the Sort version being correctly used for all 'unmatched' Artist's media. Hence the Artist now being incorrectly sorted. However, that seems to be done within the database as the files' Sort Album Artist tags are not modified, simply not used for the 'matched' Artists.

It then appears to be somewhat random as to whether the displayed Artist Name is taken from the files' now modified Album Artist tag or the original Artist tag. There may be a reason why one or the other is chosen, but I've not figured that out.

The next step is to figure if the unmodified files can be uploaded to the iPhone (overwriting the Apple modified ones) without getting the tags munged and if the database can be updated to reflect that and get around this highly infuriating and unacceptable behaviour that Apple foist on us.

 

[landshark2]

Thanks UKenGB, I was 99% positive I wasn't alone with my Apple Music pet peeves.

I may do the summer special 3-month free trial of Apple Music, just to try out a hunch. The iCloud Library builds your library from iTunes when it can, rather than physically uploading all your songs. And those iTunes matched songs are 256 kbps DRM-free AAC files, no matter what the physical library's files are. I've been lazy about my CD ripping to computer, so I'm certain the majority of my songs aren't as high a quality as 256 kbps DRM-free AAC. Many Apple pages repeat that the iCloud Library isn't a backup, but on the Use Sync Library with your Apple Music subscription page, multiple images show an Automatic Downloads box that is never enabled, and never mentioned. Its description is - Automatically download music when added to your Library so you can play it offline. Kinda seems like they don't want us to up-res our library to our other devices, but we can, and it really is a backup.

But back to reality; my situation got worse after I deleted the music files, removed the Music App, reinstalled the Music App, and went through the syncing process. Complete sync fail; only less than half the songs on the iPhone, many of the missing songs due to incomplete albums, and most of the recent iTunes Store bought albums show each song as an album.

I'm going to do a factory reset, as soon as I've transferred all the iPhone's photos and videos. Then start over like it's a new iPhone and hope that the initial Music sync works something like it oughta.

 

[UKenGB]

I have had the same sync'ing shenanigans. Just yesterday I tried to sync after having deleted all the media on the iPhone with 'matched' Artist, to see if it was an old problem and now wouldn't occur. Well the first sync completed rather quickly and when I checked, none of those albums had been added again, so complete failure of the sync process. No error though. Changing nothing I sync'd again and this time it took longer and the albums had now been added. This is simply badly written software.

Someone (Einstein I think) said that repeating the same process expecting a different result was a sign of madness. He'd never experienced Apple software though. 😕

My main problem is the overwriting of my tags during sync. I just want MY music, with MY metadata on my iPhone and not have someone else's code change anything. It angers me beyond belief that Apple determine they have the right to change MY data. In fact, it's not just that they change it, but they make mistakes. I have an Album by Dion (of Runaround Sue fame from the 60s) and in their infinite wisdom (i.e. stupidity) they have matched that to some modern female singer of apparently the same name and I'm stuck with that. No way to correct their mistake. I would be embarrassed to write such poor software, let alone release it for all the world to see.

I'm going to again delete a 'matched/purchased' Artist's music, disconnect the Mac from the Internet and sync again. So the Mac cannot get hold of any alternative metadata and overwrite it in my media files. I'll leave the iPhone connected to the 'Net though as the sync process is handled by the Mac so I think that is doing the tag munging, but if they still get munged, I'll repeat with the iPhone also isolated. So one way or the other, I should end up with unchanged metadata on my iPhone. Then I'll see if running Music.app on the iPhone changes anything.

There is another piece to this puzzle.

I have the iMazing app. This gives access to the iPhone in ways that Apple do not. With that I can (amongst other things) upload and/or download media files. Individually or in bulk. Using this I can see that Apple's sync process simply modifies that Album Artist tag, but otherwise it is my actual file, as shown by all the other tags still containing my special data. However, I have not yet determined if iMazing makes the same change when uploading. I suspect it won't as it is only concerned with moving files in this process. I will have to test this.

If I am unable to get Apple's sync to work without any tag munging for the 'purchased' Artists, maybe iMazing will be the way to upload those - assuming the iMazing devs are more honest in their dealings with my media.

I am only using iMazing v2 at the moment and v3 is now available. Not free but worth it if it solves the problem.

More testing required.

 

[UKenGB]

More oddities.

I have one album by Caro Emerald, a CD I ripped into iTunes (as it was at the time). Also a couple of additional tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store so she counts as a 'purchased/matched' Artist and sync'ing has changed the Album Artist tag from Caro EMERALD to Caro Emerald as happens with such Artists. A convenient test Album as there's only 1 so quicker to get results.

In Music.app (on the iPhone) she is listed in Artists under 'C' which is a big part of the problem. However, looking in Settings/General/iPhone Storage/Media (or similar), although displayed the same as in Music.app, she is listed under 'E'. So although Music.app ignores the Sort Album Artist tag for these problem Artists (while using it for others), the straight listing in Settings does use the Sort Album Artist tag for ordering the list.

Astonishing lack of consistency.

 

[UKenGB]

Not good news.

I deleted Caro Emerald from the iPhone and then copied a single track (from CD, not actually one purchased from the iTMS) up to the iPhone using iMazing 3. I then downloaded it back again (to a separate location) to compare.

The attached screenshots show it has been changed as I've previously stated. 🤬

So either iMazing is doing the same tag munging, or the iPhone is somehow responsible for it.

It occurs to me that there could be some record of this Artist being maintained on the iPhone, even after deleting all their media. However, software is editing the media file and altering the tag. Is that actually being done by the iPhone? In which case is it simply using that left over data or is it checking on-line in iTMS and updating the file with what it finds there?

None of this should be happening. How dare Apple modify MY metadata.

 

[MBAir2010]

this is more of a gripe than constructive or helpful:

Since 2004 I started consolidating my 1000 plus CDs into MP3 and the older the iTunes.... the better!
this also is true with iPods and players as my itouch is more reliable, longer battery and better sound
than the iPhone 12 mini. while "Music" only plays 3 songs from an album then stops
on Monterey-sonoma on a Mac mini and MacBook Air M1 chips.

I gave several music caps a chance like FOOBAR and in 2108-19 a slew of 3rd party music apps that are limited as they wanted a dollar to play or transfer a song via their software.

now I am listening to Acoustic Alchemy "Against Th grain and right as rain, stops on "Lady Linda" track 4.
thus never happens on my EARLY INTEL MacBooks even with those nice  HomePods mini speakers.

we are not going to win or enjoy our music on any current  device unless they own
or get pebbles nontly the song.

pure and simple,  only appeases themselves every year.!

 

[UKenGB]

It gets worse.

I deleted Caro Emerald from the iPhone. No trace left that I could find. I then enabled AirPlane mode on the iPhone (WiFi OFF) and disabled all network connections on the Mac so no connection to the Internet.

I then uploaded to the iPhone another Caro Emerald CD track (not purchased) from Music.app on the Mac, using iMazing. Then downloaded it back to the Mac and as before the Album Artist tag has been changed. WTF?

So is there hidden data left after deleting an Artist that gets used when re-uploading media, or is this just the iPhone simply changing the case of the tag text to normal capitalised?

I guess I can check that…

 

[UKenGB]

So after deleting all Caro Emerald from the iPhone, on the Mac I changed the Album Artist of one track to Carol EMERSON and with both devices still totally disconnected from the 'Net, uploaded this modified track to the iPhone using iMazing.

In Settings/Storage/etc and also in Music.app, it showed this as Carol EMERSON, so unmatched (confirmed by no Artist icon) and unchanged. It would appear then that the Album Artist is used to try and match, but how was it doing that for Caro EMERALD without any Internet connection?

Oddly though, in iMazing (which has a similar music browser to iTunes etc) it also showed the Album Artist as Carol EMERSON, but the Artist as Caro Emerald, capitalised like that. Where does that come from? It does not change the case of the Artist tag for any other 'unpurchased' track so this is not just the way it displays everything. That Caro Emerald Artist has come from somewhere, yet all had previously been deleted and it is NOT like that in the actual file's Artist tag.

I need to try this with a 'purchased' Artist that's never been on the iPhone so there can be no trace. Apart from that, I'm struggling to make sense of this.

Ah,just had a thought. I have a new iPad that has never had ANY music on it. So I can try uploading one of these tracks to that. With no Internet at either end of the transfer and no previous record on the iPad, it surely cannot make any match and munge the metadata. Can it?

Watch this space…

 

[UKenGB]

That was a bust. Even on a new iPad. Music.app starts off with all the purchased music. Not local media files, but it lists the music and obviously has the metadata. So no matter how the sync process is isolated from the 'Net, there will always be a reference to the iTMS metadata for those Artists.

Currently I'm stumped. ☹️

 

[bzgnyc2]

tl;dr

Pay for iTunes Match - it’s only $25/year. Everything is everywhere after that.

It's been my understanding that iTunes Match replaces library versions with current iTMS versions of a recording. Which may or may not be identical to the original. So if an artist recorded a particular song multiple times and released it on different albums, Apple picks one as the "best" and then Match replaces any matching song with that track. That is one doesn't always get the same recording/mix back. Is that still true?

 

[bzgnyc2]

That was a bust. Even on a new iPad. Music.app starts off with all the purchased music. Not local media files, but it lists the music and obviously has the metadata. So no matter how the sync process is isolated from the 'Net, there will always be a reference to the iTMS metadata for those Artists.

Currently I'm stumped. ☹️

I think what you are referring to is the iOS/etc's predilection to enable "Show All Purchases". I've noticed that Apple forces that on after an iPhone restore/reinstall even if it was off during the backup prior to the restore. If you turn that off as soon as you restore/etc, it should remove the purchased music from the device's Apple Music unless it comes through via the sync.

 

[UKenGB]

That's a good point, although on the iPhone I've been testing, all references to Apple Music have been turned off, but probably were not on initial sync so still it finds a references.

Anyway, on the new iPad I turned off those settings and Music.app shows empty. With Mac and iPad connected to the 'Net I then used iMazing to copy some tracks up to the iPad, including some for 'purchased' artists, as I've been doing.

Wonder of wonders, the Artist name has not been changed, so displays as I have it set. But…

First of all, I can see Music.app on the iPad is sorting the artists by the Artist tag and not the Sort Artist tag. This is not uncommon as many developers simply don't get what the Sort tags are for and ignore them. However, Music.app on the iPhone DOES use the Sort Artist tag, except for the purchased artists.

I also see that when an artist's albums are sorted by Title, it is using the Album tag and not the Sort Album tag, yet again, this works correctly with the Sort… tag on the iPhone.

I dragged a few tracks back to the Mac to check their tags and although most of them had not been modified, one of the tracks had lost the Sort Artist and Sort Album tags.

So it all seems just an utter mess. Each time you do something that involves Apple's music ecosystem (i.e. NOT the streaming service), it acts differently and usually screws something up. This is not good. Not good at all.

The only solution might be to ignore Apple's system and directly upload music files, NOT to the iDevice's Music.app, but just to storage (and hence should remain unmolested) and find a music playing app that can read the media files directly and not do it through the Apple music system. I think Prism can read local media files directly, but not 100% on that so will look into that some more.

 

[landshark2]

A sad update to report - I did a factory reset of my iPhone 14 Pro and at first glance, just with music purchased from iTunes, the Apple Music App seems buggy. I spent over 3 hours at the local corporate AT&T store, and most of that time was because nearly 2 hours of DashCam video took over 2 hours to upload to the Cloud. Couldn't even surf the web during that because the store's WiFi was so weak (every display phone connected).

Kinda seemed like the Music App wasn't completely purged before iCloud backup, because there were some iTunes purchases showing immediately after iCloud recovery finished. But if that had been the case, I thought there were also some of my CD rips? After a few minutes of iTunes downloading it appears to just contain my 213 songs from iTunes.

Now for the initial album view mistakes in Music - all but the last song of Frank Zappa Imaginary Diseases shows as and album in the Fs; the last song shows as an album in the Zs. All but disc one, song 12 out of 13 of Frank Zappa Road Tapes Venue #2 shows as an album in the Fs, immediately after Imaginary Diseases, followed by the albums Sleep Dirt and Trans Fusion; then the missing song from Road Tapes Venue #2 shows as an album. Most of Soft Machine Bundles (Remastered and Expanded) shows as an album, 1 song from each disc shows as another Bundles album, and 1 song from disc 2 shows as the third Bundles album.

It seems like I have to do this again, making sure there are no music files before the iCloud backup.

 

[UKenGB]

As @bzgnyc2 said, the standard setting is for I(Pad)OS Music.app to show all purchases even when nothing is actually stored locally. Turn that off in settings and you can obtain a truly empty library. Then, uploads don't get to reference the purchased music data and overwrite your own file's metadata.

The downside of the above though is that I found it mixed up Artist and Album Artist and sorting was basically wrong, so not really a solution.

Apple's entire music eco system is a mess. It not only gets so much wrong, but it even manages to do that inconsistently. The Internet is awash with people complaining about this and asking if there's any alternative. It's not just us.

There are 2 problems as I see it. First is that the sync process actually modifies the media file's metadata which IMO is completely unacceptable. A user's data should NEVER be tampered with when simply moving between devices.

Secondly, the actual data displayed in the app and how it sorts etc is all from the music library database, as it was in iTunes. This makes sense as it's much faster than having to extract metadata from the files every time. The problem is, that database needs to be created correctly and maintained in sync with what's in the files. iTunes did that very well, until for a few years it didn't and would forget to write changes down to the files (as I had occasion to demonstrate to Apple support, so they were certainly aware of it), but that seems to have been fixed in Music.app in MacOS.

The trouble is that the music database in iOS is 'out of bounds'. Apple deal with this when importing the music and the user doesn't get a look in. It is what Apple decrees and unlike in MacOS, there's no way to change it. Not only does it create the data according to bad decisions by Apple but it makes mistakes.

I don't really understand why Apple have managed to so comprehensively f**k this up. Even Music.app on MacOS basically gets it right. You can access and edit a file's metadata and then it is used correctly and doesn't overwrite your metadata with its own version. There are many other problems, but that basic operation works well and the Smart Playlist facility is second to none. Yet in I(Pad)OS it's a disaster with even the method of sync'ing the 2 fraught with problems, even as basic as simply not doing it.

There are 2 solutions to this problem:-

1. Get access to the I(Pad)OS music library database and edit it to correct Apple's mess. I believe Apple have always used SQLite for this but I'm not sure and anyway I suspect it won't be possible to access it in any way in order to edit it. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of that.

2. Write a new music system. A player for I(Pad)OS to access music media files in the iDevice storage (i.e. NOT in Apple's music system which will therefore have no opportunity to munge any data) and a method to sync the music and playlists to the iDevice's storage (again, not to its music system).

I suspect 1. is not possible, which leaves 2. and I'm not sure I'm up to that. I'd like to think I am, but I've been out of the coding game for quite a while and time is not on my side.

I will think about it some more though.

 

[landshark2]

At this point, I'll try again to see if Apple Music restarted with a truly empty library can work properly the dumb way they intended it to work; alphabetical by first name, complete albums.

Then back to truly empty to do the disconnected from the internet sync, and see how close that comes.

 

[UKenGB]

The problem I have found is that it is inconsistent. When syncing everything, the artists are sorted by Sort Artist tag as they should be - except those 'matched/purchased' artists which not only display a different name, but sort by that also. Then when starting from a totally empty library, the few I uploaded to test were all sorted by the Artist tag and Sort Artist was ignored - even non 'purchased' artists.

So totally different behaviours. One was iPhone and other was iPad, but that should make no difference, although I believe Apple is quite capable of getting that wrong and ending up with different behaviours. Annoyingly, seems to be though that every time I try something, I get a different result.

This inconsistency is what makes me want to give up and find an alternative solution. Particularly as Apple seems purely focussed on their streaming service and no longer care about personal music libraries and local storage, so I doubt it will ever improve.

 

[bzgnyc2]

As @bzgnyc2 said, the standard setting is for I(Pad)OS Music.app to show all purchases even when nothing is actually stored locally. Turn that off in settings and you can obtain a truly empty library. Then, uploads don't get to reference the purchased music data and overwrite your own file's metadata.

The downside of the above though is that I found it mixed up Artist and Album Artist and sorting was basically wrong, so not really a solution.

Apple's entire music eco system is a mess. It not only gets so much wrong, but it even manages to do that inconsistently. The Internet is awash with people complaining about this and asking if there's any alternative. It's not just us.

There are 2 problems as I see it. First is that the sync process actually modifies the media file's metadata which IMO is completely unacceptable. A user's data should NEVER be tampered with when simply moving between devices.

Secondly, the actual data displayed in the app and how it sorts etc is all from the music library database, as it was in iTunes. This makes sense as it's much faster than having to extract metadata from the files every time. The problem is, that database needs to be created correctly and maintained in sync with what's in the files. iTunes did that very well, until for a few years it didn't and would forget to write changes down to the files (as I had occasion to demonstrate to Apple support, so they were certainly aware of it), but that seems to have been fixed in Music.app in MacOS.

The trouble is that the music database in iOS is 'out of bounds'. Apple deal with this when importing the music and the user doesn't get a look in. It is what Apple decrees and unlike in MacOS, there's no way to change it. Not only does it create the data according to bad decisions by Apple but it makes mistakes.

I don't really understand why Apple have managed to so comprehensively f**k this up. Even Music.app on MacOS basically gets it right. You can access and edit a file's metadata and then it is used correctly and doesn't overwrite your metadata with its own version. There are many other problems, but that basic operation works well and the Smart Playlist facility is second to none. Yet in I(Pad)OS it's a disaster with even the method of sync'ing the 2 fraught with problems, even as basic as simply not doing it.

There are 2 solutions to this problem:-

1. Get access to the I(Pad)OS music library database and edit it to correct Apple's mess. I believe Apple have always used SQLite for this but I'm not sure and anyway I suspect it won't be possible to access it in any way in order to edit it. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of that.

2. Write a new music system. A player for I(Pad)OS to access music media files in the iDevice storage (i.e. NOT in Apple's music system which will therefore have no opportunity to munge any data) and a method to sync the music and playlists to the iDevice's storage (again, not to its music system).

I suspect 1. is not possible, which leaves 2. and I'm not sure I'm up to that. I'd like to think I am, but I've been out of the coding game for quite a while and time is not on my side.

I will think about it some more though.

Back to option 1, could you use iMazing to copy the SQLite databases to your Mac, edit there, and then copy back? That appears possible with iMazing 2 and I assume something similar is possible with iMazing 3.

On 2. have you looked at any of the free (e.g. VLC For Mobile) or paid music apps?

Not that we should have to do any of these things. It's feels like we're buying downgrades every year now...