Why do songs become unavailable on Apple Music?

Hi all


Having some issues with Apple Music. I get the message "This song is not currently available in your country or region" when it's added to a playlist. However, searching for the song in Apple Music allows me to play it.


The playlist is fine on iTunes on MacOS, don't have any issues playing from there. I haven't changed region, but I have just re-subscribed to Apple Music after having about a year off from it.


Any ideas?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone XR, iOS 12

Posted on Apr 5, 2019 5:06 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 20, 2019 9:22 AM

OP and everyone else having this problem, I think I may have fixed it. I was having the same issue. The song is having an issue in how it saved to your library for some reason. I fixed it by doing the following:

Go to the Songs section of your Library.

Find the problem song and delete it from the library.

Re-add it to your library/any playlist.

It should now be playable.


I don't know why this happened, or how this song came to be saved in my library because I'd never actually added it. But lo and behold, it was there and causing the problem.

163 replies

Dec 15, 2019 6:47 AM in response to lloyd_634

I would certainly agree, but then again... Who T* F* edited it? I have to say, I did not see this issue before I "tried" Apple Music... and I say tried because even with a free trial subscription, the service was abysmal and the most difficult to navigate resource I had ever see (I may as well have been navigating through Unix with command line). And I have thousands and thousands of songs that I LEGALLY purchased, but now that I am travelling in Europe, I cannot modify or add playlists to my iPad. So, the basis of your complaint is totally understood. After all, for songs I purchased via iTunes, and those uploaded from my own CDs, should be available to me to transfer to the iPad or iPhone that I OWN and have registered as authorized devices.


The bottom line is that Apple needs to get its act together and stop implementing "solutions" to problems that never existed. After all, this is not material that I am purchasing individual use licenses for and subsequently trying to use for Public Performances, which negates the issue of International Copyright laws being at play. The company has gone from a tech eco-system that worked seamlessly together, to one of a thousand hiccups and hindrances to law abiding customers. In full honesty, what this feels like is a backdoor attempt, by Apple, to force people into its Music and TV subscription services.

Dec 26, 2019 3:44 PM in response to lloyd_634

I never, EVER got anywhere near Apple Music.


The vast majority of my library (22K+ songs) is comprised mostly of ripped songs from my own CDS.


Even so, my iPhone has THOUSANDS of greyed out songs with this stupid error.


Add to that the complete messing of album artworks since iOS 13.


Also, the duplication of thousands of my personal photos every time I sync the ****** phone.


Three decades of Mac using later and here I am, seriously considering Windows / Android as the lesser of two evils.

Feb 3, 2020 7:31 AM in response to greenmind

I did and, alas, it sometimes changes the songs that will not sync, but still gets confused and any albums that started with problems still have problems.


I believe it's probably a nightmare for Apple's engineers - they're having to deal with two operating systems with songs that both match and sometimes don't match an enormous database, that pulls from and sometimes adds to, and matches and sometimes doesn't match the complex infrastructure of each user's library.


The thing I don't understand is why everything seems to work perfectly on my Mac and not on my [sometimes brand new] iOS devices.


Weird.

Mar 15, 2020 3:42 AM in response to lloyd_634

Im trying to listen to some music too ( Pay Money to My Pain - Remember the Name Album ) However its not available in my country, but the rest of their albums are? What is up with that? Region locking for contents is so annoying. Specially when i can listen to this album using Spotify. I'm definitely considering on going back to Spotify after learning about these region locks on the apple music.

Mar 15, 2020 8:34 AM in response to Markuziii

I guess it's just to do with Apple not knowing how to deal with so many users, libraries, licences, nations etc that occasionally it gets buggy. Google Play has had similar problems, Spotify less so, but it doesn't seem to have the same syncronisation with old libraries. They'll get through it eventually, but it's a problem Apple has at the moment and things will come and go, at least for a while. Best thing I can say is if you really love something, buy it and back it up to Google Play -it's free and you can put your Apple Music purchases there until Apple is happy for you to access them again.

Apr 24, 2020 11:35 PM in response to lloyd_634

I purchased an older song on itunes on my macbook pro. it played fine. on my iphone i couldnt play it with the error this discussion is titled. im on same network (no vpn), makes no sense. i really hate apple. microsoft in the 80s was bad but apple today is worse. why am i not on android and using linux everywhere. im stupid, so im posting here. i want my money back apple, you suck!!!!

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Why do songs become unavailable on Apple Music?

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