Greyed out songs and empty playlists on iPhone

Almost identical issue.

iTunes uploaded my songs from my iMac (but not all as it is now at hour 18 of uploading my 1100 songs iTunes did not "match").

I turned on iTunes Match on my iPhone 4, lots of my songs (all of these songs ripped from my CDs) were then greyed out on my phone and I could not play them and the album art cover was now missing. I turned OFF iTunes Match on my phone, resynced it to my computer to reload all my songs (because they are deleted off the iPhone after activating iTunes Match on the phone), and lots of my songs are still greyed out on my phone. Synced iPhone again and still have the same problem. That is, I've got iTunes Match turned off on my iPhone but it still behaves as if I have it turned on.

This is very frustrating.

This is so annoying. This is not a finished product and does not work the way it should. I have all the problems people stated here:

Grayed songs & empty playlists

Songs not matching because of slight difference in name

Bazillion duplicate songs

Some songs won't sync from iTunes no matter what

And why would they not allow manual sync if you enable iTunes match.

:/

I would try out the solution to disable>resync>enable and see if it resolves the problem and post back.

I am having the same problem and I have done the restart on the itunes match and still nothing. This is horrible. I wish I could just got back to 4 hours ago when everything worked fine. Also, in addition to losing my playlists and having greyed out songs, now it looks as if just random artists have been added to my library but when I click on them, they too are greyed out! HELP!

spotify is looking more and more attractive...

Also, songs that are greyed out that you cannot select play fine when played in succession from the song before after it...you can click next into the greyed out song but you cannot physically select the song. are you having this problem too?

My solution to this problem worked well, and is easy, though not particularly obvious...Match seems to have a few user-issues to iron out:

1. On the iphone - turn OFF iTunes Match
2. Manually sync the phone with iTunes on your computer and it will add all of the greyed out songs to the phone (if you have them selected to sync to the phone). Also make sure the play lists you want on the phone are set to sync tot the phone.
3. Check that the songs and playlists are on your phone - they will be visible in iTunes under you phone device, and on your phone.
4. IF you want to use iTunes match on your phone, just start iTunes match on the phone again. Note that after activating iTunes match on the phone, your playlists will not appear in the device list in iTunes, this seems to be a "feature" with the Match service, BUT they will show up on your phone.

For me, the greyed out songs were all songs I purchased through eMusic, and some of the album artwork is not available now ( I thought Apple claimed this would work with Match, even if you purchasesd the songs outside of iTunes ) No big deal for me, but it seems a bit buggy / non-intuitive.

I do not have iTunes Match or Home Sharing turned on but my playlists have been acting funny for the last month or so. Some of my playlists are now empty, I can populate them on my phone and sometimes, the next time I sync they are emptied or I can populate them on my computer with iTunes and then they are empty on my phone. This is a recent problem for me and very confusing; it does not seem to be consistant.

In a related problem I used to have a genius playlist based on the song "Landing in London", it was a fantastic mix; I saved it, had it for half a year. A couple weeks ago it was all of a sudden missing the first song ... Landing in London. Nothing I could do would add that song back in. I created the list again, synced my phone, had an empty playlist on my phone. Now, even more bizzare, when I try and create a new list using the same song I get the "This song does not have enough related songs to create a Genius Playlist" ...

Keith,

I have some greyed out song and I just checked a few: they are not on my hard drive. If I turn iMatch off and back on will they magically come back?

Victor.

I'm running into this same exact problem. I turned on iTunes Match on my iPhone while the upload process was still occuring. I didn't like it since it removed about 300 "ineligible" songs and some music videos so I decided to turn it off since I sync my iPhone with iTunes and have plenty of space.

All the songs that were greyed out while iTunes Match was on are still greyed out now that it's off. Even after syncing a bunch of times with iTunes. I'm not sure how to fix this exactly. My guess is that I'll either have to:

1. Wait till the upload process finishes, then turn iTunes Match on, wait for the items to go bold (assuming they all do) and then turn iTunes Match off again.

2. Turn off syncing of music. Sync, then turn it back on again and sync. With about 3600 songs, though that will take a long time and I'm not sure it will work.

Certainly wait until the iTunes Match process is complete. At this point switch off iTunes Match on your iPhone, switch off iPhone, switch on iPhone, enable iTunes Match - once settled all Songs should be accessible.

Many people are encountering issues syncing their Music, Movies and/or TV Shows with their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. We're happy to report that the iPhoneWriter.Com team has successfully tested the following fix on multiple iDevices.

1) Select the iPhone, iPad or iPod in the iTunes "Devices" section.

2) Drill down into the Music, Movies or TV Shows section that is having issues with greyed out items.

3) Determine the Song(s), Movie(s) or TV Show(s) with the issue.

4) Within the Library in iTunes, drill down into the corresponding Music, Movies or TV Shows section that matches the section with greyed out items.

5) Select the Song(s), Movie(s) or TV Show(s) with the issue.

6) Right-Click selected item(s) and choose the "Get Info" option from the pop-up menu.

7) Select the "Options" tab.

8) Reverse the "Part Of A Compliation" option:

* if the option is currently checked, uncheck it.

* if the option is currently un-checked, check it.

* if the option is currently un-checked and the correspnding drop-down menu says "No", than check it and select the "Yes" option.

* if the option is currently checked and the correspnding drop-down menu says "Yes", than check it and select the "No" option.

Finally, after you've addressed all of the greyed out items:

9) Click the "OK" or "Apply" button.

10) Re-Sync your iDevice.

NOTE: For some greyed out items, we had to repeat the steps above multiple times (reversing the setting each time).

While we all utlimately have the same problem, we don't all have the same cause, there are likely several potential solutions for both Mac and Windows users... problem being that no one solution works for everyone's particular situtation.

Hopefully, this will turn out to be something that will work for you.

Meant to note that the post above was borrowed/quoted from the iPhoneWroter.com website.