You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

I get an 'Itunes Match Required' popup when trying to play music files from CD's on my iPhone, songs files don't upload to iPhone.

I have a mac OSX with Mojave 10.14.6 with a 2019 Macbook Pro (I can't update yet due to software compatibility). I have a 2020 iPhone SE and am attempting to upload a short iTunes playlist to it via iTunes. When I drag the playlist to the iPhone, songs that I made in Logic, or songs that are apparently not labeled properly, upload and play from the iPhone fine. But the other songs don't seem to upload and are greyed out when viewing my iPhone 'On My Device' in iTunes. When I go to the playlist on my iPhone, I see all the songs, but when trying to play the songs in question I get the warning 'Itunes Match Required. This item cannot be downloaded because you are not subscribed to Itunes Match.'


All of the songs in the playlist were legitimately purchased as digital files or the CD's were burned to iTunes. Left clicking on the songs in iTunes and going to Song Info for each song, they all point to their files on my external harddrive. When in iTunes on my computer, they play fine (and I can hear my external hard drive firing up to find them). Why is this happening? It seems like the iPhone is assuming that I don't own the songs, even though I am trying to upload actual files.


It's very frustrating that apparently the apple software and technology for anyone who actually owns their music is regressing and becoming unusable.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 22, 2022 4:04 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 23, 2022 6:03 PM

Hello kruegersc4,


We would like to see how we can help. We're happy to assist. Which iOS version are you currently running on the iPhone? Go to Settings > General > About for the version. Is the entire library stored on the external hard drive? Are you an Apple Music subscriber? If so, is Sync Library turned on? Check out this link for more information: Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music


Cheers!

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 23, 2022 6:03 PM in response to kruegersc4

Hello kruegersc4,


We would like to see how we can help. We're happy to assist. Which iOS version are you currently running on the iPhone? Go to Settings > General > About for the version. Is the entire library stored on the external hard drive? Are you an Apple Music subscriber? If so, is Sync Library turned on? Check out this link for more information: Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music


Cheers!

Jan 23, 2022 9:55 PM in response to judysings

iPhone is version 15.2.1.

Yes, basically the entire library is stored on an external hard drive. I was previously an Apple Music subscriber, but not currently, and there are a minuscule amount of songs in my iTunes library that were Apple Music songs that I didn't actually own, but 99% of my library is on my hard drive, and all of the songs in this playlist are on my hard drive (I went to Song Info on every song and checked that it had a file path to my hard drive).


I never had Sync Library on anyway because my iPhone has limited space and I wanted to manually control the songs on there.

I get an 'Itunes Match Required' popup when trying to play music files from CD's on my iPhone, songs files don't upload to iPhone.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.