Greyed out songs on iphone after iOS 5 update

Can't believe this is still a problem for me - all the new updates and suggestions just simply don't work. APPLE YOU SUCK!

Hopefully this new iTunes version fixed the gltich but if not I will try turning them off then syncing. Also I have been able to redownload previously purchased songs with out any issues. The only problem I have is with songs that I have put on iTunes from my own collection.

Well just turned off my firewall/anti virus and nothing. Really at a loss right now.

Are you sure you shut both firewall and anti virus properly? Including windows firewall if you have it?

Maybe try syncing in safe mode?

My songs "weren't" grayed out. They were completely missing from my iPhone 4S. I use the word "weren't" because I'm now back to normal.

I had lost my music on my iPhone 4S after updating to iOS 5.0.1. A call was placed to tech support yesterday (11-22-11). Several options were tried before I was passed on to a "senior tech advisor". Several other options were tried before it was decided that in my case a "full restore as a new device" was needed. The key here is to make sure you restore it as a "new device". It worked! Everything is back to as it should be. I also had an iPod Touch that had experienced the same problem after updating to iOS 5.0.1. The same solution was used for it as well. My entire music library is back to normal on both devices!

The strange thing is that I had updated my iPad 2 on the same day as updating my iPod Touch & my iPhone 4S & it doesn't have the problem. My music library is just fine on the iPad. The tech & I discussed all the apparent issues with this problem & we are in agreement that the problem seems to be a bug/glitch in iOS 5.

Some devices are affected & others aren't. Some fixes of one kind will work for some, some won't.

Be prepared for the time consuming task if you are forced to take this route - especially if you have a large music library. In my case that consisted of over 5,000 songs & videos. You will also have to restore your other items such as contacts, calendars, bookmarks, notes, WiFi settings, etc.

I can't stress this enough - back up your deivce before starting a restore!

For all the needed details, please see this link: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137?viewlocale=en_US

Please be aware that some Apple techs do read these discussion boards. My tech stated that she makes a point of checking what is happening to customers, as well as what issues seem to be causing a lot of posts. She further stated that Apple does want people to contact directly with their problems. "We can't fix a problem if we aren't aware of what our customers are experiencing." She related some of the fixes that were being addressed on this very issue of music library problems to me, which I myself had seen. This told me that she indeed was accessing the discussion boards.

Hope this helps some of you.

I tried that - it took a long time, but didn't resolve the problem..

encountered this after i interrupted a wifi-sync with a plug-in via usb. the sync completed... and the greyed out mp3 appeared. as i have only synced a single playlist, this is what i did to resolve the problem.

1) disconnect

2) close itunes

3) reboot iphone

4) sync after de-selecting the greyed-out playlist

5) sync after selecting the same playlist

6) a-ok

probably overkill with the disconnections and reboots. good luck.

Updated iTunes this AM to 10.5.1 (42) and presto problem resolved. Not a techy but I have tried everything on this board to no avail (even posted that I had resolved the issue but was wrong). To date my phone was unable to sync through wi-fi. It always "cancelled" when it got to track 7 or 8 of the 530 or so songs that iTunes was attempting to sync with my iPhone 4s (these were the greyed out songs on my phone).

With this last update, I sysnced my phone through wi-fi and it managed to proceed through to completion and presto all songs were transfered. For me at least the problem is resolved. Hope the update works for you all.

Not sure which of this steps fixed my issues, I suspect you could skip all the steps below and just turn off wifi when you sync via USB and it will work. In any case, here's what did the trick for me. I owe gratitude to all who posted here and other blogs for the "fix". Thank you everyone!

My issue: Both purchased downloads and CD Library Tunes play ok in iTunes but are either grayed out on the iPhone 4s or will hang and not play at all; eventually skipping to the next track.

What was tried:

1. Ran entire music library through what I call the "GeFilter" (Rush fans will appreciate). Its actually a free app called MP3 scan + repair (note: to repair an etire library might take awhile)

PC

http://trevinchow.com/blog/2008/09/17/fix-for-mp3-songs-not-playing-in-itunes/

Mac

http://triq.net/mac/mp3-validator-mac-os-x

2. Updated iTunes to 10.5.1, iPhone 4s to IOS 5.0.1

3. UnSynced via USB the music library. So at this point the only thing on my iPhone are videos, podcast, apps, photos.

4. Ensured "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC" was unchecked (on mine it never was)

5. Turned off wifi network (maybe airplane mode would work too)

6. Enabled the music library (which for me is a few smart playlists and select artists and selected the option to fill the empty space automatically.

7. Performed another sync via USB cable (which took a few hours to put the music library on the phone) and this time everything works!!

Hope this helps and hope apple will release a software fix soon.

I have some greyed out songs on my iPhone 4 (upgraded to iOS 5 a couple of days ago). Here's the kicker -- I played some of the songs after my last sync, and only just now, tried to play them again. No dice.

Anyone else have this issue?

I would go ahead and resync, restore, etc., except -- today's the day I decided to upgrade from Leopard to Lion via a clean install of Snow Leopard -- I have put very little back on my nice, clean new hard drive. (I am undecided how I want to handle music storage on my home network right now; didn't want to put all my music back on my computer for space reasons... guess that might not be in the cards right now...)

Sigh.

I believe it's something to do with amount of space left on the device. I freed up some space by deleting some unused apps. Cleared about 3 gigs, then when resynced, all the tracks that were greyed out went on and worked.

Glad that worked for you, but I had a 64gb iPhone with about 30gb free when I had the problem. I think this issue has myriad causes with multiple solutions.

Hi Folks,

I had the same issue, and for me the fix was simple. So I thought I would mention it here in case it helps anyone else.

With the new IOS 5.0.1 I had a bunch of videos greyed out and not available for play.

My issue was that I unplugged my iPhone4 before the sync was complete. That's it.

I think it is less obvious these days when the sync is actually complete.

I replugged it into iTunes and re-synced my video library, waited a little longer and it worked fine.

Good luck.

i was going out of my mind trying to figure out why this was happening to me

i kept getting a message saying "1 song could not be copied to iphone" and i realised that only all the songs up to where itunes hit the corrupt song were being synced but the whole play list was copied, which is why the songs were greyed out!

i deleted the song from my library then hit sync again and it took off from where it stopped until it hit another corrupt song and i repeated the process until finally all my music was synced! yippee!!!

only thing i'm wondering is why my songs were corrupt this time when the were fine before...i havent done anything to them *scratch head* 😕

hope this helps 🙂

What happened to lynzwales was exactly my experience too. It seemed to get stuck at the corrupted songs and once I got rid of them, all was fine.