Q: Greyed out songs on iphone after iOS 5 update

I stuggled with this too. I am completely useless at technology but managed to fathom this out eventually. My problem was that the music I had purchased was duplicating on my iPhone.

1. Sync Device with iTunes on computer/iPad etc...

2. Click on Device 'Tom's iPhone' on left-hand bar.

3. Click 'Music' on the right-hand screen (SUMMARY INFO APPS etc...)

4. Untick the Sync Music Box

5. Click Apply in the bootom right-hand corner

My problem was that I had chosen to sync my music over wi-fi. So once I had done the above, I...

1. Went onto iTunes (not Music, took me ages to work out the difference - iTunes is the symbol on the left hand side of the iPhone, I can tell you that)

2. Tap More

3. Downloads

4. MAKE SURE YOU'RE CONNECTED TO WIFI

5. Allow the songs that should be there to Download

6. Re-sync all other music.

Thank you, this worked!!

It worked for me too and many thanks! Luckily I didn't destroy my phone just for a few songs to be retrieved!

I had the same problem. I went to System Preferences on my iPhone > MUSIC > iTunes Match was switched off. I switched ON and it solved it for me.

All you have to do is- restart iTunes and reconnect iPhone/iPad.

Thank you for posting this in the forum. I too tried everything for several months and this one simple solution fixed everything.

I bought an iPhone 5 and could not add music to it. Same problem: grey songs. After hours searching forums and blogs I found this solution. Work for me! Now I manually add songs using iTunes and no problem. Hope it helps.

1. Download and install iExplorer http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/

2. Plug in device first, then open iExplorer

3. Delete the iPhone\Media\iTunes_Control folder (you may want to copy this, just in case)

4. Restart the iPhone / iPad

5. Start iTunes. Not restore iPhone from back up, select New iPhone (don't worry, you will not lost apps or data on your iPhone doing this)

6. Add music manually with iTunes

Ok, having the same problem here.....songs greyed out on my iphone.....also cannot use Wifi Sync to sync Iphone. Has anyone been able to sort these issues?

I fixed this problem by only adding about 10 songs at a time from iTunes to IPhone.. This tool hours as I have thousands of songs but it worked for the greyed out songs. They all seemed to load properly when I only added a few at a time. This wasn't very time effective but it saved a lot of other dramas.

This works!

THE ONLY THING that works was SB7523's suggestion. Woked like a charm. Thanks SB7523!

1.  Plugged in my iPhone 4S into my computer to sync.

2.  On the music tab, I kept the "sync music" button selected, but unchecked every playlist, artist, album, and genre that was previously selected.

3.  This time when I hit sync it erased all remaining music from my phone.

4.  I then reselected a playlist to test it out and it worked!  I then selected some more...and they synced as well.

I had to check and check again to see if all the mysterious grey circles had disappeared and had uncheck and recheck the odd playlist but it certainly works!

Thanks guys

I am with greguva .... submit your feedback to apple making it clear how ***** irritating and frustrating this issue is.

I cannot sync or manually copy ANY songs to ANY device I have (iphone 4s, ipad 2 or iPod Touch) and not a single solution I have come across works for me.

Check what "MentalBentos" said right above you in the discussion. Only I had an even easier experience by simply unchecking"Sync Music" then syncing mu iPhone which wiped the phone clean of all music. Then, go ahead and check the box "Sync Music" and all of your music will sync to the device with no more greyed out songs.

I'm almost positive that the majority of 'greyed out' music occurs due to a poor network (WIFI) connection during a download.  That's usually the cause for a lot of issues actually.

If the song doesn't appear to be in the middle of downloading.. or you don't see itunes match turned on in settings > itunes store app store - then id say the easiest fix is to unsyc / resyns the music in itunes as people have stated above.

My problem with greyed out songs om my iphone5 was quite simple and was to do with itunes match.

I was attempting to sync my phone(iphone 5) the way I used to do before I signed up to match. I had put another bunch of my Cds onto my laptop and was trying to get them onto my phone. Album data appeared grey on my phone but there was no music.  I tried syncing again over a few days and with messing about with my sync settings, to no avail. I then read the online help manual (should have done this first you say?) and found this was because the music  was on my lap top ONLY and not on icloud, and when match is on your phone will only sync with icloud. I would have to wait for itunes match to upload all of my new laptop music onto icloud (which I haven't done yet as i know it will take a long time and itunes match will have to in the right mood to do it) then slowly download them from icloud to my phone. Considering I had to go and poke my eyes out with a sharp stick I didn't do this. I just turned off match on my phone (in settings) and also on my laptop (in the store menu) and did a normal oldfashioned sync and all 185 grey songs on my phone appeared in black with the songs in less than 5 minutes. I now feel smug and stupid at the same time!! I still at some stage have to upload all of these new songs onto icloud and for the last few days it has seemed to be going really slow and not wanting to even get past the first song.

Good luck . hope this helps some of you

NOTHING here works. I have the same problem on my ipad and iphone. I can't sync any music. It shows up under "on this phone" but is grayed out and has little dotted circle next to it.