Update genius greyed out on Mac

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Update genius greyed out on Mac

I have an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017 running on Mojave v10.14.5 and iTunes is v12.9.5.5. I use iTunes Match with 3 devices authorised to play content purchased with my Apple ID and all my music is stored on the iCloud. I am trying to put together some playlists for my upcoming holiday and find I am unable to create genius playlists.

After checking the help I have found that 'file>new>genius playlist' is greyed out and in 'file>library both 'update iCloud music library' and 'update genius' are greyed out. Why is this and what do I need to do to enable me to create genius playlists?

NB. I have selected 'iMac Pro' as my device because the one I have is not in the device list.

iMac Pro

Posted on Aug 16, 2019 7:25 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Aug 16, 2019 12:13 PM in response to LorrieFlannery

"all my music is stored on the iCloud"

That could potentially be a reason. As far as I am aware the Genius scanning process works on locally stored files, although in some ways it would be odd for iTunes to "know" that everything was in the cloud as a point of data. You could try downloading one of the cloud tracks just to check if that has any impact on the two menu options. My guess would be not, but still worth checking.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Aug 17, 2019 9:01 AM in response to LorrieFlannery

You could try signing out of your Apple ID and then sign in again. Obviously your iCloud Music Library won't be available when you are signed out. Again I don't know why the option is greyed out for you, but if everything is in the the cloud there is really nothing for update iCloud Library to do. Each time you launch iTunes when iCloud Music Library is active it should refresh its view of your iCloud Music Library. The update function is for uploading/matching newly added local content.

tt2

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Answer 3

Aug 20, 2019 4:35 AM in response to turingtest2

Hi and thank you. I contacted the Apple help desk and a very nice guy called Mark spent an hour looking at this with me. You were right in that signing out of my Apple ID and back in again helped to resolve some of the situation but another problem I had was not getting album artwork for CDs I loaded - it turned out there isn't the artwork for some of them. Any way, I'm a lot happier now so thank you for your help.

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Answer 4

Aug 17, 2019 6:54 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your response.

I downloaded a whole album so it would have some tracks to choose from but got the following message:

'Genius is unavailable for the song 'xx'

Your Genius results are being updated. If, after updating, Genius is still unable to create a Genius playlist from this song or artist, please choose another one.'

Another thing I don't understand is why 'update iCloud music library' is greyed out when I clearly have an iCloud music library.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Aug 20, 2019 6:07 AM in response to LorrieFlannery

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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Update genius greyed out on Mac

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