Can delete, can't add music to beaTunes playlists
I used Beatunes to put BPMs on a couple dozen playlists that I found on Apple Music (e.g. "Top 100 Alternative Workout Anthems").
I've then sorted each of these by BPM, and I want to add some from each playlist to a new playlist ("Running X-Y BPM").
I right-clicked on the first batch and created the Running X-Y BPM playlist from that selection.
It appeared shortly thereafter in Music on my mac.
I added two more songs to the playlist in beaTunes, and they never appeared in Music on the playlist, instead they disappeared from beaTunes a bit later.
So I went into Music and added two different songs, which were promptly populated to Beatunes.
Back to beaTunes, added two again and this time also deleted two. The two I deleted on beaTunes were deleted on Music, but the two I added were not added to Music.
So net these things work for me:
Removing songs from a playlist in either Music or beaTunes deletes them from the playlist in both.
Adding songs to a playlist in Music adds them to beaTunes.
Adding songs to a playlist in beaTunes does not add them to Music, rather they are removed from the beaTunes playlist when the system syncs.
Can you help?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by hendrik on 22 Jan, 2024 10:55 AM
Hi,
Usually changes in beaTunes are communicated to iTunes/Music.app right away (via AppleScript). Change from iTunes/Music.app are only imported during synchronization. Synchronization happens either when you trigger it manually (
File->Synchronize) or automatically, when you switch from some other app to beaTunes (i.e. when it becomes the app in the foreground, the active app).This difference in "speed" (either instantaneous or delayed communication) probably leads to the effects you observe. I recommend to stay within either beaTunes or iTunes/Music.app when building playlists and at the end actively synchronize via
File->Synchronizeto get a consistent view of what's going on. You can turn off the sync on window activation behavior of beaTunes in its general preferences.Hope this helps,
-hendrik
2 Posted by Ben on 22 Jan, 2024 11:53 AM
Thanks, Hendrick. This is not the behavior I am experiencing.
I repeated the experience I described above on a clean Mac after you posted. Here's the specific steps, in case any of this triggers something in your mind.
- Install beaTunes
- Have beaTunes populate 10 "greatest hits of ABC" playlists with BPM
- Sort the first list by BMP and select those between X and Y.
- Create a new playlist in beaTunes called "Running X to Y" starting with that selection.
- Check Music, it synced immediately. New playlist "Running X to Y" is in Music.
- Add a few songs from the beaTunes library to the playlist in beaTunes.
- Let beaTunes continue adding BPM to other songs in the background.
- Check Music, verify it's synced. The new songs also showed up immediately.
- Add a couple hundred songs from the rest of the still-arriving data.
- Nothing changes immediately.
- A few minutes later, they're deleted from the beaTunes playlist as if I'd never added them at all.
This is exactly what happened on Mac #1, so I tried it again on Mac #2 and got the same result. It looks like it's working for a bit, then it turns into a one-way street, where Music deletes my changes to the beaTunes files and beaTunes can only delete, not add, to playlists.
One last note, it seems that once this has happened to a playlist, it's stuck that way. I just deleted everything from my playlist in beaTunes, and it instantly deleted everything from the playlist in Music. Then I added a single song to that playlist in beaTunes, and it did not update Music. In the space of the time I typed the last two sentences, I watched it go through "Updating Library" during which it deleted the single new song I'd added to the playlist in beaTunes.
It's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding something about how this is supposed to work, but I don't think so and I don't think it's working as designed.
Beatunes 11.0.21
Music 1.4.2.83
MacOS Sonoma 14.2.1
Appreciate your help troubleshooting this.
Support Staff 3 Posted by hendrik on 23 Jan, 2024 10:43 AM
In your beaTunes general preferences, is Synchronization on window activation turned on or off? If it is on, please try turning it off. This means that changes from Music are not directly mirrored in beaTunes, but only the other way around. Perhaps this works better for you.
When you eventually need to sync from Music to beaTunes, please use
File->Synchronize.4 Posted by Ben on 06 Feb, 2024 10:03 PM
Hi Hendrik - Thanks for helping.
It was initially on, I have turned it off. It did not change this behaviour fundamentally, although it did allow me to add many more songs before it deleted them from BeaTunes.
I believe that there is something fundamentally broken between my integration of BeaTunes and my integration of music. I cannot identify what it is. I have deleted the application, but suspect I need to do a clean reinstall of BeaTunes.
Can you point me toward how to do that?
Or alternatively, do you have any other suggestions? I can't imagine this is unknown.
In particular, I want to make sure you don't have some insight that might be helpful in my particular sitaution, and second I think we should see if it is a database issue by having BeaTunes start completely over with a clean install.
I have a couple dozen 100+ song playlists from which I am picking, each of which is an Apple Music playlist, not music that I have physically downloaded.
Are there any requirements to use this to NOT use publicly available playlists as a source that I am overlooking?
Anything else that you can think of?
Thanks,
Ben
5 Posted by Ben on 06 Feb, 2024 10:05 PM
http://help.beatunes.com/discussions/problems/58403-playlists-not-syncing
Andy's problem does not sound dissimilar so I'm going to try rebuilding my Music library before anything else.
6 Posted by Ben on 07 Feb, 2024 04:36 AM
Rebuilt, reinstalled, just about everything. I have a solution, and will use it this way, but want to double check this is working as designed.
Essentially, I can get BeaTunes to add BPM count to playlists that I find on Apple Music ("Top 100 Workout Songs of the 80s") but I cannot *add any of those songs* to a new playlist within BeaTunes, they never appear in Apple Music on the playlist and are deleted from the playlist in BeaTunes upon sync.
But if, before I get the BPM count on a playlist I find, I instead add the entire contents of that playlist to my library, then when I get BPM on the library list, I can add them to a playlist that syncs correctly from library/music.
Anyway, this took a LOT of troubleshooting, and I imagine you're going to tell me it's working as designed. If so, hoping this thread helps somebody else out too.