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Some uploaded songs don't play on my iPhone

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.

MacBook Air 11-inch 1.6 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Nov 23, 2011 1:01 PM

Best reply

JohnMcGully

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Jan 17, 2017 1:24 PM

If some of you still have this problem, even with iOS 10:

After upgrading to my iPhone 7+ i've realized that some songs in my iTunes Library (Apple Music + iTunes in Cloud) do not play. I can see them my library but after few seconds it skips to the next (playable) song. There was no issue on my Mac but the same issue on my Apple TV.

After some investigation i've identified the affected songs. Only "AAC 256kbit, matched, uploaded" were affected. Important to say that i've switched from iTunes Match to iTunes in the Cloud a year ago. But i didn't have any issues to the day i've switch to my new iPhone.

That's what solved my issue:

- I've created a smart playlist to isolate the affected songs (iCloud Status is "uploaded" & Type contains "matched")

- Then i've converted them again to AAC

- Waited for iTunes to try to upload to the Cloud which results in "Duplicates"

- I've deleted the old songs from the library and pushed the new ones to upload again

Since then all my beloved old songs are playing on all my devices.

Unfortunately i've had to add them to some playlist again. In my case 13% of songs have been affected by this issue

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67 replies

May 7, 2013 9:24 AM in response to DecBailey

Yes,

You disable iTunes Match. Delete all songs on your Iphone. Then turn iTunes Match back on. That should solve the problem

May 7, 2013 9:35 AM in response to Andrew Shalit

If you have a specific song that won't play, you can delete that song from the iOS device and then download it again. In my experience that has always worked.

May 24, 2013 6:27 PM in response to Tim Lorenzen

I know how to fix this. Plug in your iPhone. Go to your iPhone tab. Go to the Music tab at the top. Uncheck the box that says sync music. Click apply in the bottom right and sync if it doesn't automatically start. Once finished, check the box and click apply in the bottom and sync if needed as I said before. This worked for me so it should work for you as well!

Jul 14, 2013 5:54 PM in response to scrumpy33

totally lame. I bought the song with my iPhone, few days later the songs where unplayable... seams to be the new spirit...

Aug 19, 2013 12:36 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

I have had the same problem for a month or two until I just barely figured it out a second ago! 😀 If you go to your settings on your iPod/iPad/iPhone (I have a iPod Touch 4th Generation for example) and tap General, you will see an option under the VPN option that says "iTunes Wi-Fi Sync" Tap that option and make sure you have your iDevice plugged into the computer with iTunes open and when you go into the syncing options on iTunes, make sure you hit the "Sync with this iPod over Wi-Fi" and let it sync. Now all your problems will (most likely) disappear! I hope I helped some of you guys out! 🙂

Dec 23, 2013 7:41 AM in response to Andrew Shalit

I discovered what was causing this problem for me: I had a custom start time for a song set in iTunes. Select a song and press Cmd+I to bring up the song inspector, go to the Options tab, and you'll see a "Start Time" setting. I had to delete my song from iTunes and iCloud, keeping the file, then use Rogue Amoeba's Fission to trim the AAC file, then re-add the song and re-add it to iCloud.

Feb 9, 2014 6:37 PM in response to Andrew Shalit

TO EVERYONE THAT HAS THE "GREYED OUT MUSIC PROBLEM!":

try going to settings>itunes & app stores>(then turn on "music" under "auto downloads" and also turn on "use cell data." IT WORKED FOR ME!! 🙂

Some uploaded songs don't play on my iPhone