Some uploaded songs don't play on my iPhone

Apple tells Mossberg there are software updates on the way.

http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/

For those with the "greyed out" songs on iPhone here is a shorter way to fix: instead of changing the info to albums one at a time 1) Select all songs in your iTunes library 2) Batch change a meaningless piece of info (ie. change the info section called "Notes" for all songs, simply enter a space or any character) 3) Once the batch change for your entire music collection is done processing you should no longer have greyed out songs on iPhone. I have 6,000 tracks and this took about 10 minutes.

My iss ue not that the songs are greyed out. They all show up on my iPhone and look fine but if I try to play a playlist or a song in the list it hesitates for a second and skips to the next song and then keeps skipping songs until it finally plays one. I'd say 90% do not play from iCloud. This happens on 3G and Wi-Fi. All of the songs play fine in iTunes on my Mac at home. Also, if I try to download one of the skipped songs from the cloud, it does not do anything.

Thanks Bundyhombre, wish I'd thought of it.

I have the same issue. Songs either completely freeze, or skip to the next one after a few seconds of play. This happens on my iPhone 4s both on 3g and wifi (5-15 mbps). They play fine on my iMac however. Frustrating.... I hate to say it, but I'm 1 and done with Match (won't be renewing). I also use the app GoMusic for Google Music and have not had any issues using their cloud service.

Help! ? Same issue. Sync to iCloud and download prev purchased songs to Win7 iTunes instance. Then try and play said songs. Plays to timecode 0:35s on the dot every time then skips to next song. ***? I know iCloud is free for < a few GB, but I think Apple ain't gonna get upgrade revenue based on a service that doesn't work :-)

Jeff Young4. I think I have the same problem as you. As I try to download a song from Match...it hesitates and stops with about 10% to go. In a playlist, it ends up jumping over that song and starting the next available tune. I hope they have a fix on this. If you were able to fix it, please share.

Hey everyone, I have been using the wrong terminology and probably posted in the wrong forum (hand slapping on head). But my symptoms are identical, so maybe this re-post (with correct terminology) will help the Apple Support folks, because there seems to be a bug in the base services which underpin iCloud. Let me explain...

Okay, so I am NOT using "Match" like @markhamdons or @JeffYoung4 ...I double checked and it isn't even turned on in my iTunes WIn7 install (10.5.2.11). I am merely downloading purchased items from the iTunes store. So yes, the songs are "in the Cloud" but likely not iCloud specifically (I can't differentiate between the marketing name "iCloud" and songs in the cloud but part of iTunes???).

To replicate: Clean install of latest iTunes on Win7 64-bit AMD. Then authorize iTunes under the AppleID, log into the "purchased items" of same AppleID and download 15 songs (big spender eh?). Some songs play, other songs stop 42 seconds in and jump to next song.

Summary: It might not be Match or iCloud. It might be the base feature of downloading purchased songs from iTunes which is likely used by many other "cloud" services in the Apple product line.

Update: Right click on problem song, and select "Convert to AAC". Got error (-3) and did not complete. Deleted song from library. Logged into iTunes store under authorized AppleID. Re-downloaded same song by itself (i.e. not selecting a mass of songs all at once). Works like charm.

Therefore: Bug is in concurrent stream handlers on either cloud side or WIn7 64-bit client. If this problem cuts across OS X and Win7 users then it's either a shared library on all these machines (less likely) or it points to a problem in the cloud services (more likely). In essence, iTunes is corrupting your music as it downloads to your hard drive.

i'm still trying to be patient. i've successfully installed Match and i've been busy updating songs on my Mac. no problem playing them there either. however. my iphone 4 is a totally different story. i update it, i've turned off cloud songs, and now i've turned off match altogether. and still it won't even play me the measly few songs ive uploaded onto my phone! Just don't know what to try next!!😮

Andrew Shalit wrote:

I've just set up iTunes Match and mostly it is working fine. However, some of the songs that were Uploaded (as opposed to Matched) from my Macintosh do not play on my iPhone. I see them on my iPhone; I can download them on my iPhone; but when I go to play them nothing happens. There are a few seconds of silence and then the Music app on my iPhone skips ahead to the next song.

This happens to individual songs. Other songs on the same album will play fine.

If I take one of the problematic songs and load it directly onto my iPhone (not through iTunes Match), then it plays fine. But when I switch back to iTunes Match and download the song from iCloud, once again the song won't play.

These songs were coded at 256 kbps AAC files.

Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have a workaround? I would just as soon not rerip all my songs as MP3 files, but I guess I could.

I'm having a similar issue. Match works fine on my Air and the songs show up on my iPhone. I've downloaded probably about 15 songs to my phone using Match. A few are totally fine but most do on of two things

1. Plays HALF a song, timeline bar continues as if it's on the same song but auditorily the song has chnaged to the next song in the album.

2. Plays HALF the song and then timeline bar keeps going but the song has cut out. dead air.

I've deleted and re-downloaded these tracks and problems occur in the sae exact place. Again, tracks are fine on my comp.

Eaxct same problem as you dowdilymodish, i would have thought something as major as this cant be ignored for long. I logged a support call with apple, so we will see.

Similar problem here, but with a twist. My wife and I share an iTunes account ID and we set up match on both of our phones. All the songs play on my 4s with no problem, but a few songs won't play on her 4. Some do, but maybe 10% don't. It will usually just skip to the next song, but will sometimes just hang there.

Andrew Shalit said:

...some of the songs that were Uploaded .... do not play on my iPhone. When I go to play them nothing happens. There are a few seconds of silence and then the Music app on my iPhone skips ahead to the next song.

If I take one of the problematic songs and load it directly onto my iPhone (not through iTunes Match), then it plays fine. But when I switch back to iTunes Match and download the song from iCloud, once again the song won't play.

These songs were coded at 256 kbps AAC files.

Andrew Shalit - Perhaps you've discovered the problem, but if not, the first question I have is, were the 256 kbps AAC files created outside of iTunes? if they were created using another program, such as Audacity, I had the same problem and determined that while iTunes Match will allow these files to upload, there is is something unique in the way they are encoded that is altered in such a way as to make the files unplayable. The files become corrupted, so as you have discovered, downloaded copies them won't play either. The solution is to either go back to the source material and export in another format, then make AACs in iTunes. I export using AIFF.

I detailed the situation and a step-by-step for replacing the corrupted files in a post awhile back.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3567775

Interesting answer however for me I get problems with songs that were matched not uploaded and only on an iOS device (downloading the songs from Imatch in iTunes works fine) which suggest that my problem is an iOS device issue. So far my support call with apple has been escalated to there iOS engineers. So maybe something will come back from that for me soon. I hope so, had imatch for 1 month still can't use it!