In genius, it says: Genius is unavailable for the song... No matter what song it is, it keeps on saying that

Based on my early findings, your iTunes Library may be damaged. Starting this morning, I have the same issue. Regardless of which of the 24,000 songs in my iTunes Library that I select, I get an error message stating that Genius is unavailable. When attempting to update my genius results, the symptom is the same. I have virtually no locally stored music--nearly everything is in iCloud, and Genius was working up until I started changing genre settings on some of the songs in my library. For testing purposes, I created a new library and populated with songs from iCloud and Genius works fine, so I would recommend creating a new library to see if that works fior you.

There are a couple of threads on issues with Genius and newer songs:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3000658

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2744045

Genius is not making playlists out of songs released after April 2010. If you're trying to make a playlist from songs released before April 2010 and they're still not working then you probably have some other problem.

I think there are two different issues happening in this thread. My issue, I think shared by jms63087 and karenfromsalinas is that Genius is working fine except that it will not make playlists out of any songs released after early 2011. It's irrelevant when they are bought, E.g. I bought Jay-Z's track Lucifer a couple of days ago (a 2003 release) and updated Genius and it works fine. I'm almost willing to bet that everyone in the world is having that same issue. I think Apple probably need to do some update at their end. I've been asking a customer care person to try to ask the engineers to fix it, but I'm not sure if the engineers are understanding - the word they are sending back is that "it should be working". The thread at this link is mainly focused on that issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2744045

The issue that denisefromak and mmmax are having seems to be something else, in that none of their songs are working. So their fixes will probably help people with Genius not working for any song, but maybe for the issue regarding 2011-2012 songs not working we need to go to thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2744045 or start a new one.

When I try to create a genius playlist from some of my most recently bought music I get the message "Genius is not available for this song" (righ click > Start Genius to cerate the playlist). I have updated genius each time I have received this message to no avail.

I see that these discussions have been going on for some time-when can we expect a fix or an explanation?

By populate, what do you mean by that? Would it be possible to put a step by step of how you got Genius working for you? Can you create music from songs released in 2011 because that seems to be my main concern and issue. Thank you!

I am having precisely the same problem. It only happened after I put all my music on the cloud, and then deleted it all from my local drive. Now, even when I select songs that were the basis of past genius playlists, I get "Genius is unavailable for the song". There is no variation with date of song release -- it won't work with ANY song. I'd also be very interested in the steps that squane took to solve this problem.

Thanks to the tip from squane about repopulating the library, GENIUS IS WORKING AGAIN!

It does seem to be related to having started iTunes Match. My guess would be the songs that did not make it to the cloud may be the culprit, but I'm not sure.

The steps are a little involved, but here's what I did:

1) Go through the iTunes Match process

2) Click the cloud icon in the sort bar at the top of itunes

3) Select all the songs that were matched (if you're like me, you'll have about 50 songs/booklets that did not make it to the cloud for various reason -- so it's important not to select these at this point).

4) Delete, and, of course, do not select "also delete this song from the cloud" (I'm doing this because I have a MacBook Air with an SSD drive, so I can't afford the space to have my 94 GB of songs on my drive).

If you haven't tried this before (only keeping the cloud version), you might try it with one song just to test. After the local version is gone, you still see the song but you need to be connected to the net to listen to it.

Now, all your songs, except the ones that did not make it to the cloud, are off your local drive.

5) For all the things you want to keep, but did not make it to the cloud, I right clicked on each item, selected "Show in Finder", and dragged it to a folder on my desktop so that I'm sure not to lose it in subsequent steps.

6) Quit itunes

7) Go to your Music/iTunes folder

8) Delete all files that begin with iTunes (so iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Music Library.xml, * Extras.itdb, * Genius.itdb)

I'd recommend backing up these files somewhere before deletion just in case...

9) Restart iTunes

10) Turn on Match

11) Turn on/update Genius

At least for me, this process fixed Genius being unavailable for any song I tried, even those songs that were the basis of previous Genius song lists that I have saved. It still shows as unavailable for certain songs like before, but all the songs it previously worked for work again.

Ok everyone, this issue, at least for me, was that the genius database file was corrupted or damaged. It is an easy fix, a whole new library does not need created. Navigate to the itune folder, delete just the file iTunes Library Genius.itdb, relaunch, update genius. THERE IS NO NEED TO DELETE THE ALL THE LIBRARY FILES. Just the genius database. Turning off genius does not delete this file.

My issue was that ANY new song I added, as far as I could tell, it would say genius was unavailable, but I mostly listen to new stuff, so my guess is that it will work for your issue. All the songs I have had for a while worked fine. I would also make sure your computer's date and time is correct in system preferences, I think the database becomes corrupted because of having a incorrect date and time set while opening. (just a guess). That or it can't write to the database because of a permission issue. Give it a shot, it can't hurt!

Can you provide an example on how to check for dafe and time set while opening. Also what do you mean by permission issue?

Can you take a 2011 or 2012 song and try to genius? Do you get a playlist? I want to know if it is an issue with me or with others as well? If you have a pop song, that would be great. If you get results, please post what you get here. I would really appreciate this. I have called apple for months trying to resolve it. Thank you in advance!

All songs from before April 2011 works with a few exceptions such as "I kissed a girl" Katy perry and "sexyback (feat. Timbaland). Genius needs to be refreshed or repaired by the engineers because it collects data from the iPhones and iPads and iPods so there must be something going on. The information comes from iTunes as well.

Woohoo, it's all working again for most songs since April 2010 - just do another Genius update and hopefully it will be all OK for you.

Same here, part of the great shitstorm unleashed by iTunes Match. Tried everything stated above, except for the "right clicked on each item" because it will take a month or five to do that.

Does this work for 2011 and 2012 songs? I cannot create a genius playlist from any song from 2011 and 2012. Or just for genius in general.