Siri won’t play non-Apple playlists

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Level 1

14 points

Siri won’t play non-Apple playlists

Hi,

As of today, if I ask Siri to play one of my playlists on my iPhone it doesn’t work because she tries to use Apple Music. I don’t have an Apple Music subscription, but I regularly ask Siri to play my own music playlists.

For example, I have a playlist called ‘All Time!’. If I say “Hey Siri, play all time playlist”, today she is responding with... “Sorry, I didn’t find ‘All Time!’ on Apple Music.”

The most ironic part is that she actually recognises the playlist but still won’t play it! What does work is if I just ask her to play a particular song or artist or album, so it’s only the playlists that are the problem.

Could someone please help me with how to fix this? Why is this happening? I tried going to Settings > Music and turning off ‘Show Apple Music” but it didn’t help.

Thank you :)

Posted on Mar 23, 2021 4:27 PM

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Answer 1

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HallyHissmas Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 18, 2021 5:43 AM in response to HallyHissmas

Wow mine randomly started working again too! Sorry life’s been hectic the last couple of weeks so I haven’t posted. Looking back at the thread I think it fixed itself at about the same time as for the others on the thread. I guess Apple did something in the background to fix Siri. Hopefully it’s all good for everyone now!

Otherwise it looks like vinz90 came up with a possibly fix. For what it’s worth, I ended up speaking to Apple support for ages on the phone with no success trying all their troubleshooting. They never recommended what vinz90’s suggested and they ended up recommended a full factory reset. Boy am I glad it fixed itself before I got around to doing that!

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Answer 2

Mar 26, 2021 9:34 AM in response to HallyHissmas

IOS 14.4.1 This has been ongoing for a month or two for me. I first fixed it by changing my playlist names as it would not be able to play... "hey siri play classic rock playlist" but it could after I renamed the playlist to "Matts classic rock playlist". Now it flat out will not play any non-apple playlists. This is very frustrating and annoying. Leave it to Apple to break simple things that have always worked.

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Answer 3

chjones

Level 1

10 points

Mar 30, 2021 7:52 AM in response to HallyHissmas

Not much to add except that I do have an Apple Music account and have had the same experience lately. Similarly related, within the last month or so Siri would play an Apple Music playlist (not made by me) with the same name rather than the library playlist it had played without issue for a long time. I just tried changing the name of the library playlist, which is when I first got the “I didn’t find the playlist *** in Apple Music.”

I’ve tried adding “... from my library” to such requests as some older articles have recommended with no improvement. As expected, it also doesn’t seem to matter whether I ask to “shuffle” or “play” the playlist, or if I ask Siri to “play a playlist” then wait for it to ask “Which playlist would you like?” before naming it.

Happy to try other things if anyone has ideas.

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Answer 4

HallyHissmas Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 30, 2021 8:28 PM in response to HallyHissmas

Good ideas. Same here though, despite trying these methods it’s still broken.

It might seem trivial but it’s so frustrating. It stops me from listening to my music. Plain old car radio is having a comeback!

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Answer 5

HallyHissmas Author

Level 1

14 points

Mar 30, 2021 8:34 PM in response to HallyHissmas

I just had a thought.

Could it be related to the ever increasing size of my library and number of playlists? Can Siri not keep up? There are over 100gb in my library and well over 100 playlists.

I think I noticed a trend maybe over the last couple of months before she broke, where Siri was more likely to occasionally have a little delay before playing a playlist.

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Answer 6

Mar 31, 2021 5:31 AM in response to chjones

Does anyone have access to an iPhone that Siri works To pull up non-Apple music playlists? Maybe check on other phones or iPads if you have a family plan? This is probably an Apple Siri issue and there is probably nothing we can do to resolve it until Apple releases a software update or back end Siri fix. If we can confirm that this does not work on any iPhone anywhere then it’s definitely an Apple problem that only they can fix.

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Answer 7

jimmerz

Level 1

43 points

Apr 1, 2021 2:26 AM in response to chjones

Mine literally just started working out of the blue.. I said to my watch hey Siri play (great sh&@ play list) and it worked it started to play on my phone so I stopped it and went to my phone and told it to do it but with a different play list name and it started playing.. so weird. I wonder how long it will work. I haven’t done anything since a few days ago..

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