Q: Why are some songs greyed out on iTunes?

Same here, I followed the instructions and they are still greyed out. My matched Wall album by Pink Floyd has one album black text and one grey text.

I can play a track one by one by right clicking a grey track, but cannot just play the album - anyone seeing that?

I'm running OS X 10.10.4, iTunes 12.2.2.25

I was fed up, I noticed that most if not all the greyed out songs were ones that came from CD's I imported years ago or songs purchased on Amazon and other sites.

After I signed up for iTunes Match I deleted a lot of my library in order to save space on my hard drive.

What I understand now is that the greyed out songs are the ones that iTunes was unable to match. And since I deleted them there was no file to reference. My solution was to delete all the greyed out songs so that they didn't annoy me anymore or interrupt playback and replace what I could from my backups (I no longer have the CDs but backed up all the music from the CDs onto external hard drives). I couldn't recover all the songs but I was at a point where I didn't care and I just wanted a more organized and synced library of music.

I'm in Australia, and I've tried all possible methods of logging out of my iTunes account on all my devices (iMac, MBP, iPad, iPhone), then rebooting all devices and signing back in. To no avail.

All of the greyed out tracks that I'm seeing align with "Album Only" tracks on the iTunes Music Store. i.e. Any track that cannot be purchased independently of the album, is not available to stream via Apple Music. Which means that in the short term - until these tracks are reinstated for streaming - Apple Music does not really live up to its promise for a lot of classic albums.

It is frustrating as a customer that, first, these things don't get sorted out by the monolithic companies doing these deals, and, second, that we have to hunt on the web for explanations, wasting time and effort, when it would be so much easier for us - the customers - if the service providers gave us clear and obvious explanations directly within these services.

Please, Apple... Please, music companies... Look after us. We want to use your services, but you need to make it not frustrating if we're going to stay with you!

No...its because the track is "Album Only". So Apple Music shows the track as grayed out. I just launched the same album in iTunes Store and then realized this is what's happening!

For me, the issue occurs when I activate iTunes Match on the computer.  I can't figure out how to solve the issue.

Thanks so so much TPick43 - this really, really helped me - works perfectly...was driving me nut as it worked at first and then suddenly...nothing! Preferences -> General and check the boxlinking to iCloud and all works fine across all my devices. Now need to check it works with Family Sharing too...

I tried to find my issue in here, but I am not sure it is or maybe I have just overlooked my answer.  I have an album that has the majority of the songs greyed out in the iTunes library.  I can play them from the library, but when I try to make a playlist out of songs in the album, only the non-greyed out songs will burn to a CD.  In other words, when I move 6 of the songs to the playlist and try to burn them to a cd, only the ones that aren't greyed out will record.

What am I missing?

Thank you,

Jim

oh my gosh really I had the same darn thing happen to me! I had collected a good set of music over the summer then when the trial ended the music had disappeared from my phone, computer, and iPad.

I was surprised to see that some of my songs were unchecked. A real "duh" moment for me.

For those of you who this did NOT fix the issue, after some poking, I found that numerous songs had an option at the verry bottom of the drop down menu (after right clicking) "check selection" or "uncheck selection". After clicking this option the song now shows up normally and allows it to be burned, added to playlists, etc. Hope it helps!!!!

Thank You!! After trying all other methods, this was the only one that worked for me.

Sorted at last! thanks fisholito01

This worked perfect.  I right clicked on each song scrolled down to the bottom to check selection clicked on it and now the songs are not greyed out and the album plays from start to finish without having to click on the next song.  Thanks so much for the info.  I have only done this on 1 album but I have several with this problem..so now I can fix it.

Notice that most of the songs greyed out are the most famous ones. In my repository it happened on the La Traviata's Drinking song from National Philharmonic but not from the Berliner one, and some other pieces that are famous but not that wide-known or not presented by a top-class performer. Companies may charge more for the copyrights for some of pieces in an album and Apple may think it doesn't deserve to buy.

Found a solution to my problem. When you are looking at "My Music", look on top right of iTunes under search, there is a dropdown where you can choose songs, albums, artist etc. Click on Songs and you will notice that the greyed out songs are not checked. I'm not sure how this defaults, or gets set, but if you check the box, the songs will now appear and be playable. If somone finds out how to ignore this checkbox or can find out how to select all without having to click each song, it would be appreciated