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Rating songs with Siri stopped working (iOS 15.1.1 Music app, not service)

Sorry if this is the wrong place--it's not at all obvious where this question belongs.


I've been using my iPhone and Siri to rate the songs in my music library. For months I've been playing the songs with the Music app on my iPhone (started on a 6S, currently on a 13) and rating them with "Hey Siri, rate this song [###] stars". It's been working great, including the start of today, with Siri responding "Okay, I've rated it a [###] out of 5" or "Okay, I've rated it [###] stars".


Some time today that stopped working. The only responses I get now are "Sorry, I can't do that" or "Sorry, I can't help you with that". All other Music related commands still seem to work. I can rate the songs manually via the ••• menu.


I've tried turning data off and on, wi-fi off and on, restarting the phone, installing 15.1.1 update... Nothing works.


It was working, then it wasn't. No indication of what changed or what the problem is. This is incredibly frustrating.


The songs are played from a smart list called Unrated, but it also doesn't work if I navigate to the songs via Artists, Albums, Songs...

iPhone 13, iOS 15

Posted on Nov 19, 2021 10:15 PM

Reply
44 replies

Jan 8, 2022 10:57 PM in response to webstra

I did the same thing Webster, and the issue has again been lodged with engineering. Hopefully if enough people do this we’ll get a fix in a future update!


For anyone else who is keen to lodge this error, make sure you:

  1. Advise this is occurring across multiple devices if you have them (which it is)
  2. Advise that this also occurs on a friend or family member’s device so they can rule out your Apple ID as the issue (which it’s not)
  3. Advise that you’ve already tried to restore your device to factory settings and the issue is still occurring, otherwise they’ll make you do that as part of the troubleshooting (even though they acknowledge this is probably a back-end issue).


Fingers crossed this gets sorted soon

Nov 24, 2021 2:38 PM in response to Ken Davies

I contacted Apple Support, https://getsupport.apple.com/, selected my iPhone -> Apps and Features -> Topic not listed and described the issue as "iPhone, Siri no longer allows rating the currently playing song". Then I selected chat. I gave the rep a link to this community discussion and told her that others were having the same issue. After some back and forth, I asked if apple was aware of the issue. She finally said "I'd like to set a callback for you with a specialized department to report and try to solve your issue". I said yes! I got a call immediately from someone who was much more technically savvy. We discussed the issue and he reviewed this discussion. He said that the problem had not been reported to Apple and that they did not usually look for issues in the community discussions. He said he agreed that it was a back end problem and would submit a problem report to the developers. So, if everyone goes through the same exercise, it might help get this issue fixed.



[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]

Nov 27, 2021 3:26 AM in response to Matt Tuley

Shortcuts can be used as a temporary measure:

Create five playlists and five shortcuts, name them from "rating one" to "rating five" and configure the action:

Get current song -> Add current song to variable -> Add variable to similar playlist.

On the way, order: "Hey Siri, rating three", and in the evening manually set ratings in the resulting playlists.

Nov 20, 2021 4:18 PM in response to Matt Tuley

This same problem started for me today. I probably rated 3 dozens songs in the last two days. I did a local pc iTunes sync today to update some playlists and afterward could no longer rate by saying “Siri give this song X stars”. I can still toggle the “love” flag with Siri though. Something must have changed on the Siri back end. Please fix this apple, it’s very useful while driving.

Nov 20, 2021 4:30 PM in response to Matt Tuley

Hello Matt Tuley,


We see that you're having an issue with using Siri to rate your music. We'd be happy to help.


You've already done some great troubleshooting steps to help with this issue. Next, let's have you go to Settings > Siri & Search > Listen for "Hey Siri", and toggle this off, restart your iPhone and go back in and toggle that setting back on. Once you've toggle it back on, test to see if the issue remains.


If the issue remains, sign out and back in. Go to Settings > Tap on Your Name > Media & Purchases > Sign out. Once you're signed out, restart your device and go back to Settings > Tap on Your Name > Media & Purchases > and sign in.


*This step will temporarily remove any music you’ve saved for offline listening, you will have to redownload all the music saved for offline manually again.


If the issue persists, then you'll want to reach out to Apple Support for further assistance.


Get Support


Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.


Nov 21, 2021 11:24 AM in response to KMB_12

I tried all this while chatting with Apple support last night. Nothing work. But I did find a clue: I disabled the phone's connections to wifi and cellular data and it failed, but this time it failed with "To do that, you need to be online". This tells me that the problem isn't with SIri or Music at the phone level, it's with Siri's support at Apple's servers. Something Apple has done at the server level has broken this functionality.

Nov 22, 2021 7:04 AM in response to Matt Tuley

The same problem started recently for me as well. This occurs on an iPhone 6 running IOS 12.5.4 and my iPhone 11 Pro running IOS 14.8. I was going to try updating to IOS 15 but apparently that doesn't work either. So it is definitely a problem that Apple has introduced on the Siri back office servers. I have a large music collection and I use Siri to rate songs while using CarPlay. If I don't want to hear a particular song anymore, I just ask Siri to rate the song as 1 star so that I can identify and delete it later from my music library on my computer. This has always worked for me until recently. Now Siri says "Sorry, I can't do that". There is no other way that I know of to easily and safely rate a song when you are driving. This needs to be fixed.

Nov 23, 2021 6:22 PM in response to Matt Tuley

Thank you for posting, I've been driving myself mad the past few days on multiple devices with different OS levels on this issue as I curate many smart playlists using song ratings over CarPlay. Unbelievable that they're screwing with ratings yet again after temporarily taking them away, the ongoing fiasco of "album ratings" polluting my individual songs, and now this! It's so unbelievably frustrating, I would happily pay for Apple Music if it had even half of the functionality that real music fans desire. Apple - get this fixed ASAP!!!

Dec 2, 2021 11:12 AM in response to Ken Davies

Well this is fun. The use 5 playlists idea partially works but there's definitely something weird going on. As an example, I created a playlist called "Rating 3" and a short cut as directed. If I then say "Hey Siri, Rating Three" it adds the current track to the playlist as expected but this does not sync back to Apple Music. If I say "Hey Siri, add this track to my rating three playlist" it adds the track and this DOES sync back to Apple Music. As an aside, I've found out the hard way that Siri on the Mac can't be used to add a track to a playlist. It pops up and error saying it can't add to playlists on this device. Wonderful.

Dec 2, 2021 1:06 PM in response to Ken Davies

Same problem here and while I appreciate the shortcuts idea I really am looking fit Apple to fix this. My library pre-dates iTunes so I have over a decade curating my library and a large part of my organization revolves around star ratings. I have dozens of smart playlists that all leverage the ratings. First Apple attempted to replace the stars with the on or off heart option, like there’s no levels of like. 😩


Similar to someone earlier in the thread, I use an unrated playlist in the case on long drives and Siri to taste them. It’s not safe to do it on the phone while driving, so Apple it’s a safety issue as well.


please restore this functionality.

Dec 3, 2021 7:48 AM in response to Matt Tuley

By the way, if you're using the Shortcuts workaround: You don't need an intermediary variable, the song can be added directly to a playlist. For example, my shortcut for rating a song four stars is "Get current song" -> "Add 'Current Song' to 'Stars 4' ". Works a treat.


I did find that once I rated the songs manually in iTunes on my Mac and emptied out the playlists there, that the playlists got deleted on the phone during the net syncing since they were empty, so the empty playlists will need to be recreated in iPhone Music app each time after syncing or the shortcut will throw an error.

Rating songs with Siri stopped working (iOS 15.1.1 Music app, not service)

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