Q: Why are some songs greyed out on iTunes?

Pretty sure that this means that the song is added to "My Music", but not downloaded (available offline)

Hi,

I think I have figured this out by accident, however if I am right it's annoying and will drive users mad. So while trying to solve this I decided to build a playlist on my Mac and use it on my iPad, based on the fact that tracks remain greyed out on the mac. What I noticed was that some tracks actually did appear on the mac (iTunes 12.2) in the playlist and could be downloaded/played, but some remained greyed out. As a reference all appeared on the iPad/iphone and can be played.

So I looked up the new Florence and the Machine album (How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful - Deluxe) and saved it to my music. I picked this because it's heavily featured on iTunes. And sure enough it appeared in 'My Music' (MacBookPro iTunes) with a previous Florence album I had purchased, and yes it can be downloaded and played in iTunes 12.2.

Next I found the newest Chicane album (The Sum of its Parts), I repeated the process and saved it to 'My Music'. Yep it appears and plays in 'My Music' on the iPad/iPhone. I then checked in my MacBookPro iTunes 12.2, and sure enough it is greyed out and won't download or play.

My conclusion is that there is either an issue with the updated iTunes 12.2 or there are licence issues with an awful  lot of music out there preventing them working on iTunes 12.2 (desktop). All the music mentioned and everything I have moved from Spotify works on my iPhone and iPad, and I'm really pleased with it. Apple need to sort this because none of the other streaming services have this issue. If it's not sorted by the time the trial is up, I'll be going back to Spotify and that will really annoy me as the streaming integration with my own music is perfect and just what I wanted. Sad.

Hope this helps guys

Guys and gals, you may need to do the steps outlined below to get your music libraries in sync. I know it worked for me.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7104446

1) Log out of iTunes (Account > Sign Out)

2) Quit iTunes

3) Launch iTunes. Re-login to iTunes by going to the For You tab and logging in through Apple Music.

After you go through these steps, let the updating to your iCloud Music Library finalize (notice syncing loop in top right corner of iTunes window).  It is then that you will see your album covers and tracks available for streaming through iTunes on your Mac.

Perfect thank you! All working now.

I did have some issues while following your instructions, that was purely because iTunes kept crashing. While following this process I logged in to my account and discovered that there was a button asking me to add my mac to iCloud sharing, once connected this button vanishes. That in the end did the trick. Thank you again for your advice ohneSchatten.

That worked.  Thanks for your help!!

That worked perfectly for me - thanks ohneSchatten!

I had the same issue on albums. Some were available and some weren't. Simple fix, while in iTunes select Accounts then Update Genius. On the far right you will see your Search bar shift to the left and a rotating circle will appear. If you click it you will see the progress. Once done you will see all the songs. The only one that didn't work for me was one that they don't have license to have on Apple Music.

If you log back in and all your Apple Music tracks are gone, go to Preferences -> General and check the box for iTunes music library. I signed back in and mine got unchecked so I freaked out cause I thought I was going to have to remake my playlists but noticed it was still on my iPhone. Do this and your tracks will be back.

It worked for most of the greyed out songs I noticed, but there are still a few that still cannot be listened to — and some are good in iTunes on my Mac but still greyed out on my phone. Hopefully Apple will update its iPhone app with this bug fix. By the way, good to find this answer here. @AppleMusic on twitter is TOTALLY unresponsive...they just don't seem to "get" social media — I know, a whole other issue, but is kinda surprising.

I'm not sure if this is the same problem, but I have noticed that iTunes 12.2 isn't playing nice. I am beginning to see where the threads about it being buggy are coming from. For example Kasabian's 48:13 (Deluxe) won't play from iTunes music, it wasn't greyed out either. I went through the login out process and still nothing, however my IOS devices played it with no issue. Today the album plays on iTunes, its a random problem as other tracks have always played.

I also did suddenly lose all Apple Music tracks (including playlists) a week ago. No warning just gone, the IOS devices were ok so the tracks and playlists had't been lost. It lasted a couple of days then started to come back bit by bit, again IOS was unaffected. I heard that there was an outage on iTunes Music so I assume (and this doesn't make sense) that it affected OS X and not IOS. I'm just waiting for the next OS X update as I assume all the issues will be resolved, ever the optimist.

I do still think Apple Music is the better streaming system, certainly for me. Mixing my own music with new discoveries is excellent and something that is tricky elsewhere, I have rediscovered my own music library. Streaming my own tracks from the cloud through Music is way better than i tunes match, which was just a non starter on IOS.

Thank you man!

Extract from Songs listed in Apple Music, but unplayable

"Just talked with Apple support on the phone and they confirmed that a lot of songs are still not licensed for streaming on Apple Music but they are available to buy in the iTunes Store."

That would explain it

Johnny

I followed the steps in the "answered" post to troubleshoot the greyed out problem and now entire albums are missing!!

Ah ok, I had to reconnect with iCloud match. An additional step!

but same tracks are still greyed out.