Q: Greyed out songs on iphone after iOS 5 update

I was having the same issue, but I just toggled iTunes match on my iPhone and that took care of it. 

Nothing is working for me. I can't even play the songs on iTunes.

There are only 6 songs on my phone at the moment. Why didn't all of them stay?

anyone have any further updates etc?  I have updated software on phone, have latest version of itunes, carried out a number of the 'solutions' restored the phone but still have around 20 songs greyed out. Even more strange when i 'modify' the data on the song (via get info) the song does appear on my phone, but as a brand new track! leaving it impossible to remove the 'grey track' from my iphone music list!

Hello guys i am a newbie here and need some help, I have recently bought an iphone from ebay and now it is not working so i am wondering if it is possible to take it into our local apple store and will they open it up and see whats the matter with the phone? thanks! sorry if it is out of topic.

I've had this problem for ages - some grey songs on my iPhone, visible in the iPhone's Music using iTunes on the PC. They do not show up in the Music player on the phone itself. On the PC iTunes, they have a little 'resync' icon next to them, but you can't click on this, and you can't delete the songs. Even if you try to delete every song on the iPhone (using the iPhone's Music player, or using PC iTunes), they stay.

In my case, all of the tracks with this problem were purchases I had made *on the phone* before I did a full restore, which was when the problem arose. (But all the same, it didn't happen with all such tracks, only with some of them.)

I finally fixed it, but not in a very orthodox way. I basically deleted ~/Media/Purchases, ~/Media/iTunes_Control/Artwork, ~/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/Artwork, and ~/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb*.

Before doing this I stopped the Music player on the iPhone. After doing this, I resynced the iPhone with iTunes. This process put all the music back, with no greys and no duplicates, and it even (finally!) got the information correct on my phone again about which purchases were on the phone and which weren't.

If you don't know how to do this, this isn't the solution for you. Even if you do, it probably isn't the solution for you.

Back up your phone first, you might have to do a full restore. Caveat emptor (literally) - I hadn't made any purchases on my iPhone except songs and apps, and I made **** sure these were all in iTunes before I did anything.

I have an iPhone 4, iOS 5.1 - I have no idea if the file system is the same on other devices (and I am pretty sure it isn't, below iOS 5). If it isn't, this (clearly) won't work, and is even more likely to necessitate a full restore.

Mike

Add ~/Media/iTunes_Control/Music to that list. (I did it myself the first time without deleting these files, but suspect this may have been wasting some space on the phone, and did it again, successfully, deleting these ones too.)

I had a similar problem on a new Ipod touch. When first setting it up in iTunes, I forgot to turn off auto syncing, and it tried to copy about 30 Gb over. I stopped it, and found it displaying all uncopied songs as grey.

I tried all of the fixes on the first 3 pages to no avail ( I didn't read the full thread)

In the end I chose the restore option in iTunes. I wasn't going to lose much since it was so new. Once the restore completed, I made sure to select to iPod and iTunes options to set it up as a new iPod, so ther would be no restores from backups. Ther are no no more grey songs, and with syncing turned off, hopefully it will stay that way.

What worked for me was updating Itunes. Make sure your itunes is as well.

I tried all of the replies on this forum which failed to solve the problem. I just got off the phone with Apple and the problem has been resolved. All of the songs from my iTunes library are lit up on my phone and play. Here is what worked for me:

1. Ensure that all of the music is in your iTunes library

2. Sync your phone, but uncheck the Sync music, causing all of the music on your phone to be deleted

3. Once this sync is complete, recheck the Sync Music and re-sync your phone

Thank you so much scnickr!  This solved the problem I was having!  It worked perfectly!

Ughhhhh! After like a few hours of trying ang trying to get this solved, I finally got one solution to work.

I did as suggested and 1. Go to your device name and click on the music tab

                                     2. Click "sync music" box to UN-sync and then memory should contain no music

                                         However, on my phone there were like 6 Kanye west songs (some greyed out,

                                         some regular that were still there and wouldnt delete even when i unchecked AND

                                            Command + Delete! Frustrating....but then I went on to actually delete them from my

                                         itunes library and then repeated step one again. It then cleared! *sighsss* and NOW

                                         I went back and my phone is now syncing my library and playlists to my phone (minus

                                         those 6 songs) For whatever reason...

*Note: I think this DOES have something to do with the new update because I didn't notcie songs being greyed out of my playlist until I did the update, but I didnt realize the songs werent on my phone since I have so many. Idk what the issue is BUT it sure just took alot of time to do that! -_____-

Hope this saves someone time!

I've made my iPhone properly clear all music (including grey tracks) successfully again (iPhone 4, iOS 5.1, iTunes 10.6.1.7, Windows 7).

Here are the steps, in more detail:

• Stop the iPhone's Music app (i.e. when Music app not in foreground, double tap home button, find and hold down Music icon, click on the red 'x' which appears)
• On the phone:
  • Delete /var/mobile/Media/Purchases (rm -r -f)
  • Delete /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Artwork (rm -r -f)
  • Delete /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music (rm -r -f)
  • Delete /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/Artwork (rm -r -f)
  • Delete /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb* (rm)
• In computer iTunes, click on the iPhone device, go to its Music tab, uncheck 'Sync Music'
• Sync the phone
  • Check that there is now no music - including no grey tracks - showing on the iPhone device's Music sub-folder in PC iTunes
• Re-check the 'Sync Music' checkbox on the iPhone device's Music tab on computer iTunes
  • If you're not syncing your whole library, then at the bottom of that Music tab, make sure there are no 'Manually Added Songs' listed which you do not want
• Sync the iPhone again

This process deletes all iTunes music on the phone, and all purchased music on the phone (these are stored separately on the iPhone), then gets the computer iTunes to put all the music back on again as if the purchases had all been made originally on the PC.

You would need to get iTunes on the computer to download any songs purchased on the phone which aren't yet on the computer. If you didn't do this before the above process, you can do it later - all the purchases are linked to the iTunes account, not to the phone specifically.

Yeah, I've been dealing with this issue since I updated my iPhone 4S to the iOS 5.1 as well.  The thing is, I keep having to go in and weed out songs that iTunes finds somewhere on my computer.  Anyways, I just have to go throught the trouble of deleting my phones music library every week or so, and reinstalling the songs I want, so that I can have the playlists on there that I want.  I am also a little curious about the genious suggestions on my iphone, because the songs don't play the apps never delete, they stay there forever no matter how many times I try to remove them. 

So, back up your songs, transfer all purchases, then uncheck sync music. After music is erased, recheck sync music, and it will put the songs back on without the annoying grey out, and those spinning arrows that you can't click on.

Kill the music app and sync works for me

Message was edited by: Maurice Williams

This worked for me. I was doing a complete restore to fix the issue before.

No power cycle needed for me though. I just kill the music app and sync.