not available in this country or region

I fixed it. I was trying everything and all fixes but ultimately the problem was all my music (and files) live in a OneDrive folder and the files were not available locally (a setting to conserve diskspace). So syncing the music through Finder wasn't downloading the files and sending but rather trying to contact Apple's servers. Once I downloaded all my music locally and re-synced my library all files were sent across and appeared in the music 'downloads' and now everything works fine.

Apple broke something here. It’s like the metadata they usually use to map to an actual song now maps to a song but it is saying it’s the wrong region. Multiple people saying the same thing now.

This is why if you go in and just search for that song you can play it just fine. But can’t if you go to your songs or a playlist.

Greetings Joe M21, 

That does seem like an odd message when working with music you created and wasn’t purchased. So, let’s work to isolate the situation. If you are syncing your entire music library via Finder, what happens if you sync 10 songs? Do they remain grayed out and showing an error message? 

Next, do you have both devices using the same Apple ID? We understand the music is synced manually and not coming over via a sync service such as iCloud but we want to be sure, given the error message, that one device isn’t set for a different country/region than the other. 

On your iPhone, can you go to Settings > your name > Media & Purchases, sign out of your Apple ID and then back in. Then test again. 

Thanks. 

Joe M21, 

A few more questions, to help us learn more. How many songs/tracks are in the album? Are you syncing the album using either Finder (macOS Catalina and later) or iTunes (Windows and macOS Mojave and earlier). Are you able to tell us which app the music was created in? 

We’d like to continue isolating by having you create a new library file on your computer. Then upload an album or two to that library and sync it to your iPhone. To create a new library file. 

For iTunes on Windows - Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and launch iTunes.

For macOS: Hold down the Option key and launch Music or iTunes for Mac

You’ll be met with a screen to choose or create a library, in this case, we want to create one. Then please add just one or two albums. We don’t need your entire music library to test this issue and we say that only because it can take time to import a library if it contains a lot of music. 

Once imported, let’s sync with that new library and test playing on your iPhone. 

Thanks. 

So I talked to Apple support and it seems I had much better experience. I have a call back from one of their techs on Friday they need 48 hours to escalate. I know what is going on, I just don’t know what part of the code broke here. I can also replicate it so I think they’ll figure it out. If they fix it that’s a different story.

So here is what I have figured out without being able to actually look at the code.

• It’s something with iOS16. My Wife’s old phone has iOS15 and it will still work same playlist, same songs. On the iOS16 it’s won’t played those songs.
• It looks like its only songs that were moved to ITunes originally pre-apple music.
• The songs you had on ITunes pre Apple Music were never coded as your songs. So the file that is trying to be played within your playlists is an Apple Music song that is “not in your region”. It’s not your old song. If you move mp3s into iTunes, it converts them now into “matched” or “Uploaded”. Matched means it’s your song and there is a matching Apple Music song. Uploaded means it can’t find the song so it uploaded it.
• The easiest fix is to just move all the music you have saved on your computer back to iTunes. However, this will break all your playlists. It removes duplicates within ITunes, but the file will be gone within the playlist.
• Finally you’re screwed if Apple doesn’t fix it. Since APPLE is reading that it’s not your personally owned song, you can’t change the region for those songs. You have to find the current album and pull it in.

Apple Music doesn’t co-exist with personal/ripped collections very well. Use instead, a 3rd party app like File Explorer, the basic version of which is free. The pro version works across all devices on your local network and also popular cloud services. Both versions are ad-free and come with built-players, can recommend.

Joe M21,

Thanks for providing us those details and for attempting those steps. With all the detailed steps that were performed to isolate and troubleshoot this issue, we suggest to contact Apple Support through this link here: Apple Support

Kind regards.

Okay so not good news but I have a fix I tested and it’ll work but you need another user’s device or create a second ID on another device. They are saying the songs aren’t available and I pushed back a bit on it and she’s going to run it by their team again. It looks like it was dumb luck that it happened with the iOS16 release but for whatever reason all of those original albums the rights are gone from Apple Music. Maybe Apple just made a decision to drop those right since there are upgraded versions and they didn’t want to pay for both? I have no idea, but the fact that they are greyed out seems valid. The downstream effects were unintended consequences.

So here is the fix - and please test this on a couple songs with a test album first so you understand the steps and don’t blow up your library.

1. ⁠Send the playlist to another device, I used my wife’s but it has to be a device that doesn’t have you signed or signed in with a different Apple ID so you can actually send the playlist.

2. ⁠On the second device, the songs will automatically map to a current version of that song. I have no idea why we can’t just refresh the mapping on a device but you can’t.

3. ⁠Duplicate that playlist on the second device. While in the playlist hit the three dots in the upper right, click add to playlist, name the new playlist and create it.

4. ⁠Delete bad songs on the first device.

5. ⁠Send the playlist back to device one from device two. This will remap all the songs to whatever version is out there now and ignore the old mapping.

You’ll want to duplicate all the playlists first so you don’t lose songs on multiple playlists. Because as soon as you delete the songs they will drop from the playlist. Since they aren’t in your library. You can also remove step 3, but that’s kinda risky if something maps weird. It’s better to just duplicate.

If you have iTunes I would also make a playlist with all your songs to remap all the the other songs not in a playlist and do the same thing.

Sorry for the crap news. I think the real question is why there isn’t an option to refresh mapping on a song within Apple Music or iTunes.

Thanks dude.

Got interesting this morning after a iphone delete of music app, and re-sync of 31K odd songs over night. Prior had kept the iphone music app and wiped out the sings on iphone and re-sync.

After music app delete, sync back phone, I lost most of my playlists like say 45/50 not including the defaults. Some playlists "lived". No rhyme or reason, one was very much older playlist. One was a newer playlist. Was thinking it was tied to my apple subscript date and playlist creation but that guess seems incorrect.

In one of the 2 playlists I was focused on the region error issue prior, one of these playlists 'lived' and only one song had error; prior many songs had the region message in this plist, quick delete the single song with error and re-add solved the issue.

So, I seemed to improve the situation in a single playlist from prior. At cost of wiping out almost all playlists. Hard say if issue of region error still exists inside a 31K song library since lost playlists where I was doing the testing and seeing error conditions.

Anyways, next step is to back up the Itunes folder have now, and restore from backup older Itunes folder to get access to playlists I want to keep (export them, swap out Itunes folder back). I will also screenshot my playlist songs. PAINFUL.

I have disabled all cloud syncing. The only sync is from my local windows machine to tethered iPhone. I will manually add Shazam'ed songs as want via Apple purchases, converting them from AAC to MP3 in future. Spotifiy it is over Apple Music, and Shazam then manually adding these songs.

Net net, Apple introduced a serious error for those of us (older?) folks with extensive MP3 song libraries in Itunes...when start using Apple Music my issue started. Coincidence? Hard say. I presume it is the case. But my upgrade to 16.x could have been the problem as around same time I upgraded and enabled Apple Music trial.

I will never use Apple Music ever again. I will never cloud sync my Itunes library. I do machine backups both files and volumes anyhow. May add DirSync Profolder backup to my backup story also.

As someone mentioned, Apple cares little about your private non Apple Music library in MP3 format....this has made me think the unthinkable, is Android my next phone choice? I could have gone Android in less time than this mess. And I am still not back to where was....

I am going to contact Apple support and ref the above case #, just to add my voice.

Shall report back on my restore Itunes folder approach for playlists....

Half of my entire Apple Music Library has all of a sudden been grayed out and saying it is not available in my country. Tried to access the region and it was saying one or more Apple TV subscriptions must be canceled before I can change regions. They definitely screwed something up in this update.

Well I basically told them what was happening but it’s hard to argue when I have the screenshots and videos to prove it. Also, I’m pretty sure most people are getting pushed off at level 1 support because songs being outside the region is a valid error and if you delete the song and add it back it does fix the problem, but not the root cause of it.

My assumption is it doesn’t grey it out until after it skips the song with the region error which is why it keeps looking worse for some people.

But I made the same comment to the Tech Lead. I can add the songs back in that is easy they are saved on a hard drive. But it wipes them out of the playlists. That’s what everyone will be ****** about. She agreed with me especially since there is no backup for the playlists. So if you modify it, thats the end of it.

Doesn’t matter, avoid by using a 3p player for the reasons already mentioned. There’s no other solution, sorry!

It is what it is. iTunes is history. Use a 3rd party player.