iTunes play count problem

It's not the biggest problem I'm facing, by far, even if we limit the scope to problems relating to music, but it's pretty damn annoying: iTunes 12.7 on my computer has suddenly stopped updating play counts and last played dates.

I was listening to Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, complete with finale reconstruction by William Carragan, when I decided to convert some other tracks to AAC to send to someone. Normally, I pause playback before asking iTunes to convert anything. This time I didn't.

Maybe that's what messed up the play count logging feature, I'm not sure. iTunes logged that I listened to the first two tracks of the album last night, but not the last two tracks, even though I listened to each of them all the way through to the end and had iTunes repeat the last couple of minutes of each of those tracks.

All the tracks played alright, but the last two tracks that I definitely listened to last night were supposedly last played back in February. I tried playing some shorter tracks (three to four minutes each), beginning to end, over and over again, but iTunes also refused to update either their play counts or their last played dates.

I have quite a few Smart Playlists which depend on play counts or last played dates. It's a feature I find very useful. For example, a couple of my Smart Playlists are for tracks with zero play count, so that tells me which new (or newly imported) tracks I haven't listened to yet.

Like most people, I have a few favorite tracks (or "songs") that I listen to on a fairly regular basis. Those are on the Top 25 Most Played list, a playlist which I believe iTunes comes with by default.

But I also like to be reminded of a track I haven't listened to in months, so I made playlists for that. Then I listen to those tracks and some of them become new favorites of mine, others I might decide to delete. Most of them, though, I listen to once, they come off the playlist, and then a few months later they get on the playlist again.

I'm still running Windows 8. I've never liked Windows Media Player all that much. iTunes  has always made sense to me. So after I bought my current computer and hooked it up to the Internet a few years ago, one of the first things I did was download and install the current version of iTunes for Windows.

However, I've been annoyed at how frequently the program asks to update itself. Though it's not nearly as annoying as with Adobe Flash Player, which seems to want to update itself every damn week, it seems.

Don't ask me at what point I upgraded to iTunes 12.4, I don't remember. Aside from a few minor occasional annoyances with the Play Next feature, I was pretty happy with it. So when iTunes kept bugging me about versions 12.5 and 12.6, I declined.

Then, the notification for version 12.7 came to me at a convenient time last week, so I decided, what the hell, might as well upgrade. The interface was noticeably different, but for the way that I use iTunes, it was the same old program that I have enjoyed for all these years now.

All my playlists that depend on play counts or last played dates were working normally. Then, on September 19, 2017, at night, suddenly play counts and last played dates stopped updating.

Apparently this is a problem lots of other people have had at various times throughout the history of iTunes. This is the first time I'm experiencing it. Some have reported that turning off crossfading fixes it. I don't have crossfading on, but I thought I would try turning it on and then turning it back off. It made no difference.

I'm willing to try just about anything, provided it's not too drastic. Downgrading to an earlier version of iTunes? Maybe. Deleting and re-importing my entire iTunes library? Hell no.

Those of you who've also had this problem with iTunes 12.7, please let me know what you've tried and if it has worked for you.