iTunes Match - 'No Music' on iPhone 4

Question

Level 1

15 points

iTunes Match - 'No Music' on iPhone 4

I have an infuriating problem that I can't get rid of with iTunes Match.

I have had iTunes Match since launch and it worked fine on my Mac, PC, iPad and iPhone 4 for months now. But since about 3 weeks ago, my iPhone won't work at all.

When I go into Music, I see the cloud logo appear with a progress bar. After about 3-5 seconds, it disappears and shows 'No Music'. All tabs show this, except Playlists - which accuratley shows all my playlists as they are in the cloud. Going into these playlists shows the songs that are in there - some appearently downloaded, others with the cloud download button - but none will actually play.

I've restarted the phone numerous times, turned iTunes Match on and off, everything. So last night I decided to do an iCloud Backup, then I totally wiped the phone and restored from the iCloud Backup. That worked fine, and when I went into Music the cloud logo with the progess bar appeared. This stayed on for maybe 10-20 minutes this time, slowly filling up. Then it bombed out and went back to the 'No Music' message again, exactly like before the wipe & restore.

I am so fed up with not being able to use Match on my iPhone now. I hope someone out there can help!

Thanks in advance.

iPhone 4, iOS 5.1

Posted on Apr 10, 2012 1:32 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Apr 10, 2012 7:44 AM in response to Argonaught

Hm. Definitely odd behavior. Let's try something.

Turn off iTunes Match on your iPhone, then connect it to your computer via USB and uncheck the Sync music option then do a direct sync. Once that is done power cycle the iPhone and see what you've got.

Reply

Answer 2

Argonaught Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 10, 2012 7:55 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

Hi Michael, thankyou for your response.

I should have mentioned - I've already tried this prior to my 'nuclear option' of wipe and restore. In fact, I tried it twice - once with my regular home Mac which I used to sync directly via USB before iTunes Match came out, and I tried it with my work PC too (hooking it up by USB, telling it to erase the content sync'd with another library and replace with content on the PC). The sync went fine, and the music played fine. But once I erased the music and re-enabled iTunes Match, straight back to square one as described above. I feel like I've tried everything short of replacing the iPhone!

Reply

Answer 3

Apr 10, 2012 9:25 AM in response to Argonaught

Sounds like you've got it covered, and have already tried everything I would suggest. The only other suggestion I have is a bit radical. Restore your iPhone to factory condition, then set it up as a new device. Do not restore the backup.

Reply

Answer 4

Argonaught Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 12, 2012 10:55 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

Thanks, that's pretty much all I can think of at this stage, but I'm not really prepared to do it until I've got a whole Saturday morning to painstakingly rebuild my iPhone settings and apps built up over the last four or so years.

I'll keep searching and trying things and update this thread if I find any solution.

Reply

Answer 5

Apr 12, 2012 10:58 AM in response to Argonaught

Yeah, it's a pain to do that. I've had to do it a couple of times myself.

Reply

Answer 6

Apr 13, 2012 3:14 PM in response to Argonaught

Same problem here. Just turned on iTunes Match on my iPhone 4s and all the music dissapeared from the device. If you found the resolution please advise.

Reply

Answer 7

Argonaught Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 16, 2012 7:32 AM in response to Argonaught

I'm convinced that the Music Library on the actual iPhone has become corrupted.

For instance, I can turn off iTunes Match, and it shows my library to be empty (as expected). If I then attempt to download a song from the store (e.g. the free song of the week) the download completes but I then get 'Unable to download song' with Done or Retry options. Retry downloads it again, only to end in the same error. I can reboot and get the same.

I'm sure the library on the iPhone must be corrupt somehow, and my previous attempts to restore from backups don't fix it. Nor does turning off iCloud and replacing it with sync'd music from iTunes.

I know there is a bunch of music stuck there. For instance, even with iCloud turned off and supposedly 'No Music' in the Songs tab of the music app, the Genius Mixes still show up - I can even listen to them! When I turn iCloud on, after a time my playlists sync. I can go into those playlists and see (some) of the music in them, and even listen to it. But when I tap the Songs tab I get the iCloud logo with the progress bar for a second or two, which then disppears to the 'No music' message.

Going into Setting > General > Usage > Music shows 'No Data' under music so it's impossible to purge any data. I'm sure there are several GB's worth of songs stuck on the phone that I simply can't purge.

The search goes on...

Reply

Answer 8

Argonaught Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 16, 2012 8:46 AM in response to Argonaught

As a further update. I've tried to remove and re-sync the songs with my work laptop, which has iTunes and is authorised to my account.

I disabled iTunes Match on the iPhone, plugged in to my work PC, and it shows I have 6.7GB of Audio on the iPhone (which doesn't show up in the Music app on the iPhone). I chose to sync with the work laptop, a playlist of 30 or so songs, and confirmed I wanted to erase the music already on the phone and re-sync. The sync starts, sits on phase 1 of 4 for a while. The little space indicator bar jumps down to 250MB of music as expected. A little later and the sync seems to skip directly to step 4, and complete (well no error messages come up, it just goes to the sync completed stage). But the audio space indicator bar jumps back up to 6.7GB!

I've tried every which way, including unticking the 'Sync Music' button in the Music tab and telling iTunes I'm happy for all the music to be deleted. Same thing happens- sync seems to complete successfully, but right at the end the space indicator bar jumps right back up to 6.7GB! There just seems to be no way to remove these **** corrupted tunes from the iPhone.

Reply

Answer 9

Argonaught Author

Level 1

15 points

Apr 17, 2012 2:24 AM in response to Argonaught

I've fixed it.

I donloaded iPhone Explorer (now called iExplorer, Google it), plugged in my iPhone and deleted the iTunes_Control folder (I assume one of the files within was corrupt). I then re-synced with iTunes. It prompted me for a name for my iPhone and wanted to reinstall all my apps, but everything seems to have come back fine, and I was able to delete all the music and then re-add it to iTunes match successfully.

Reply

Answer 10

mrsibex

Level 1

0 points

May 12, 2012 2:45 PM in response to Argonaught

Thank you, this seems to have worked for me. I've had to toggle 'show all' a couple of times but then all music appeared.

Reply

Answer 11

May 18, 2012 2:57 AM in response to Argonaught

Had the exact same problem. Deleting iTunes_control with iExplorer solved it.

It seemed to me like a corrupt library file as well. When you toggle iTunes match on and off, some trash is left behind when it should rebuild everything from new.

Reply

Answer 12

newmach

Level 1

0 points

Jun 20, 2012 6:43 AM in response to Argonaught

The iExplorer method worked for me as well, with a few slight modifications.

iTunes Match stopped working on my iPhone 4 (Music app would either show 'No Music' or a cloud icon w/ a blue progress bar that would barely move). Toggling iTunes Match on and off did not help, nor did syncing with iTunes on my MBP. I wanted to avoid a factory reset but I was pretty sure some core music library files were corrupted.

I determined that I did not have to delete the entire 'iTunes_Control' folder to get Match working again. I used the following process:

1. connect iPhone, open iExplorer

2. navigated to iPhone\Media\iTunes_Control\iTunes

3. copied these 3 files to my desktop:

MediaLibrary.sqllitedb

MediaLibrary.sqllitedb-shm

MediaLibrary.sqllitedb-wal

4. deleted the same 3 files from my iPhone

5. performed a hard reboot on my iPhone (home button + sleep/wake button, hold until you see the apple logo)

The reboot forced iOS to recreate the 3 MediaLibrary files. After this, I was able to turn iTunes Match on and my entire library showed up on the iPhone. I am able to redownload tracks as needed now.

Thanks for the suggestions in this thread, they were very helpful.

Reply

Answer 13

cpajsb00

Level 1

0 points

Jul 15, 2012 4:26 PM in response to newmach

Thanks! It helped.

Reply

Answer 14

Jul 15, 2012 8:07 PM in response to Argonaught

Wow thanks everyone. This fixed my issue as well. I couldn't figure out why all of my iTunes Match music wasn't showing up on my iPad. It did show a few dozen albums that were downloaded to the iPad, but nothing in the iTunes Match Cloud (or whatever it's supposed to be called- Apple you made this confusing!). For about a week I've been trying everything to fix this. I rebuilt a new iTunes library on my PC, synced my iPad to the new library, tried every configuration of resetting computer / iPad and turning off iCloud, iTunes match- basically tried every combination of every toggle switch in iOS settings and iTunes PC (with a hard or soft reset inbetween every combination). I eventually figured the iPad iTunes library was corrupt after reading this post, and noticing that my iPad still showed dozens of playable albums even though when connected to iTunes, iTunes showed no music on my iPad (after turning off iCloud/match syncing and syncing directly to the iTunes library). Here's the quick four steps it took to resolve everything (except world peace I suppose):

1. Google/download/install iExplorer (free program)

2. Plug in iPad first, then open iExplorer

3. Delete the iPad\Media\iTunes_Control folder

4. Turn on iCloud/match in my iPad's iOS settings, which replaced the iPads music library with iCloud

Now everything just works as it's suppost to... will have to remember this for the future. I created my apple discussion board account just to reply to this post, say thanks, and hopefully spread the word to others in this predicament.

Reply

Answer 15

Jul 20, 2012 1:23 PM in response to AppJunkieCanada

If anyone still has this problem after trying all of the above try this:

Make sure that in your iTunes library on the computer that you use to upload to iTunes match that the Album Artist part of the metadata is filled in for those songs.

I tried all the above suggestions and the what finially helped me was filling in the Album Artist field.

Reply