Q: Songs are greyed out with a dotted circle next to them and won't sync

You could also add to your colomns BPM. Select all the songs, enter any number to BPM by using cmd+i and wait. After it's done changing the information, all the ghost songs wont have a BPM setting, so, sort your songs by BPM and you'll all have the gost songs either on top or at the bottom. Select them all and delet them.

That worked a treat and now those nasty grey songs have gone.

Thanks for the workaround.

I seriously can't thank you enough for fixing this problem! I've been dealing with this BS for over a month searching YouTube and forums, then finally I found this. fixed it within 5 min. Thnaks again

Thanks Jerrill! This has been bugging me for over a month!

Thank you VERY much Jerrill. I've spent far too long on this already and like everyone else was driving me nuts. Didn't think the solution would be so easy.

Jerrill wrote:

 

I downloaded one of the file explorer programs (iFunbox in my case) for my PC and deleted everything out of the "Purchases" folder on the phone's "Raw File System". After a couple of syncs with iTunes everything was back to normal. It appears that something was screwed up on the iPhone side that iTunes couldn't sort out. I don't think anything could sync from iTunes to the phone, not just the greyed out items.

 

This is why resetting and restoring the iPhone also works for a lot of people. It's overkill though, deletes your app data, and just wastes your time setting everything back up after the restore. Better to use the surgical approach of a file system explorer program on your PC to fix what appears to be a mundane data corruption issue.

I have downloaded funbox deleted the puchases from the raw data. I then try to sync my music it starts then goes to waiting then does nothing. So i still cannot get my music onto my iphone.

That was it!

I've had 40 songs that had the grey circle around them for a while now and could not get rid of them. While the songs actually synced to my iPhone, in the "On This Device" tab, they would be listed twice. Once with the gray circle and once just fine. If I removed every song from my iPhone, the gray circle songs remained.

I downloaded iFunBox and deleted everything from the Purchases folder under Raw File System. As soon as I launched iTunes again and connected my phone, the ghost songs were gone.

Thanks!

- Merg

OMG. After doing a full restore of my own iphone about a month ago for this exact problem, I plugged my fiancés iphone in tonight to do the 7.1 update & realized he had the exact same problem I had!! I was extremely frustrated & almost started the restore process on his phone when I decided to look a little harder on the internet to see if anyone found a solution OTHER then a full restore to factory. I am glad to say the least that I found this post becasue it absolutely worked
I downloaded 'ifunbox' for mac & tried it with my fingers & toes crossed.... & was jumping for joy when it worked, lol I only wish I had seen this a month ago before I restored my iphone live & learn for sure!! My fiancé is happy too; we cleared up almost 2.5 GB of 'other' on his phone. THANK YOU!!!!!

Thank you so much Jerrill!  I was a bit nervous with doing what you said, but all is back to normal & took less than 5 minutes! 

Hello, I tried that method and it did what advertised.  The ghost songs are gone from my iphone.  However if I want to put one of them back it doesn't.

ifunbox is the way to go. It took  me longer to get my Mac to accept and open the program then it did to get rid of those ghost song entries. You are my savior Jerrill. I've been to the genuis bar and got shoulder shrugs when I showed this issue to them. All they wanted to do was reset the phone. I have no desire to get all my settings and apps back to my liking again. Once I found your post and did it for myself I feel like I have a new phone. My playlists work like they are supposed to and my shuffle all feature isn't stuck playing the same hundred songs even though I had 800 + on my phone.

The biggest pain was to redownload the cloud songs and then re-sync with itunes. But well worth it.

Thank you again

Just adding to the Jerrill love here. I still have issues that appear to be related to the mysterious "soft reset" being triggerd during a sync, but the method Jerrill described here has helped immensely.

Jerrill's method worked for me too! I deleted the files like Jerrill said, made sure "sync music" was selected, then "selected playlists, artist,..." and the missing songs appeared on my iphone. FINALLY a solution that works!

I agree a solution that works. This was driving me nuts for the past two weeks.  Thanks Jerrill!

HI I have exactly the same problem & have read this post with excitment.  However I am pc-based (not mac) & need to find a program (like iFunbox) that will let me edit the purchases folder on my iPad3.  Can anyone advise as I too have been unable to find an alternative solution!  Considering a complete reset of iPad but a lot of work would be required presuming I could not just restore from backup as I guess it would simply restore the same problem.