Greyed-out songs problem

Given that five years have passed and the poster has but 12 points they probably aren't active on these forums and you're unlikely to get a direct reply.

Try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour (including the troublesome grey dotted circles of stalled transfers). They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

1. Backup device to iTunes.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Re: disable encrypted backups, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud.

tt2

Hello,

I found A solution after reading a lot about the issue.

The only way it work for me is in the pictures below:

first in iTunes, preferences, devices tab:

Check that box to prevent auto-sync.

Then plug your devices and go in the info page of your device:

YES that's right: UNCHECKED all options

then sync your device:

ALL the music that you selected before and that you checked manually

in the music tab will sync normally

for the future I will stay out of the wirelessly option over wi-fi

because I think that play a big part in the problem.

Now I have 1754 songs, 6,6 days of music and 14,30 GB used for my pleasure!

You're welcome by the way

After talking to apple support, I was instructed to

1. Make sure my computer OS and apple itunes and iphone software were updated to the latest version.

2. Click on the iphone/ipod icon in itunes (to the right of the Music bar, top left under the file/edit/view/controls/account/help menu), then go to Settings > Music

3. Click on sync music to uncheck (Make sure you have a backup and what you have is synced to your computer, and entire music library is selected).

4. Click remove, click apply

5. Re-Sync the library (may need to click apply)

6. If you still have grayed out songs, check your storage on your phone > Settings > General > Storage and icloud usage > manage storage(top section). Click Music, edit, all songs. Delete.

7. Unplug your iphone from your computer/laptop, plug back in.

8. Repeat steps 1-5.

Idk if this issue has been resolved or not but I was having the same problem that just started today. And about half of my songs were grayed out when I got off work this evening. Reading through the replies and thinking there has to be a fix on the device itself. I went to setttings>music>iCloud music library and turned it off. Closed Apple Music. Turned iCloud music library back on and deleted songs on device to merge with iCloud. When I opened Apple Music all of my music was back and playable. Only problem is having to redownload your songs back onto your device. 😉

Thank you for your contribution Hotestgeek . But you know what? This problem has been going on since 2011. And it shouldn't be. There is no sense why it is. If Apple was really concerned about the fact that this problem has existed for at least six years, a permanent fix would have been done by now. I mean really???

1. Make sure my computer OS and apple itunes and iphone software were updated to the latest version.

2. Click on the iphone/ipod icon in itunes (to the right of the Music bar, top left under the file/edit/view/controls/account/help menu), then go to Settings > Music

3. Click on sync music to uncheck (Make sure you have a backup and what you have is synced to your computer, and entire music library is selected).

4. Click remove, click apply

5. Re-Sync the library (may need to click apply)

6. If you still have grayed out songs, check your storage on your phone > Settings > General > Storage and icloud usage > manage storage(top section). Click Music, edit, all songs. Delete.

7. Unplug your iphone from your computer/laptop, plug back in.

8. Repeat steps 1-5.

Why are these instructions still out there? It Should NOT be a problem in 2017! Apple people....techs or engineers....why are you not able to fix this? Why are you telling your customers....you know..CUSTOMERS? to do this work around? I just started ignoring it and live with what I have. You know you have to the above instructions every time? Plus, each time I did try it, my iTunes went a little crazy, and I have had to delete iTunes and everything Apple related from my PC and reinstall it. That's why I gave up. Good luck folks.

This happened on my iPad Mini 4 after I added a folder to the 7,500 songs that were already in the iTunes library. Apparently I clicked on the first song in the folder and it started playing, There is of course no "stop" function in iTunes, but I added the folder anyway. No problem. I then copied it and another folder to my iPad. The following morning, I went into the iPad to play the album, but it wasn't there in the "recently added" view, although the other album was. Eventually, on checking by Artist, I find all the songs, buy they're greyed out. So, back to the PC, open iTunes, delete the album from the iPad and from iTunes, re-add the folder, then copy it to the iPad. Bingo!

Had this problem for quite some time now. Seemed to have started around when Apple Music came in, not sure, might have been some other update.

I never had nor tried have Apple Music and I always manually manage my music. Then I started noticing that after drag and dropping music from iTunes to my iPhone within iTunes I would go about my day only to find certain albums weren't available.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which albums / tracks would be left out; for example, I had a 2 disc DJ mix compilation that I had burned in from CD some time ago. CD1 was there on my iPhone, CD2 wasn't. They were burned in and added at the same time, so should be no different from each other.

I tried every single solution I could find (except for factory resetting my phone) to no avail.

Last night I had enough so tried this:

1) Navigate to the music listed on the iPhone within iTunes

2) Delete either ALL music or just the greyed out ones (with the dotted circle on the left)

3) Selected ALL the music in my iTunes collection (stored on my PC)

4) Ran 'Convert ID3 Tags ...' (Found in iTunes under 'File > Convert > Convert ID3 Tags ...')

Selected the checkbox 'ID3 tag version' and chose 'v2.4' from the popup menu

5) Then tried copying one of the stubborn albums that would never appear and it worked!

FYI: ID3 tags are simply the song metadata for the files but embedded into the actual file. Not quite sure if downloads from Apple Music Store have this data embedded in already, I would be surprised if they didn't.

I suspect the music I had burned in from CD (which was done years ago) had some older tags and simply needed updating to not cause issues with newer iTunes / iPhone Music App.

This worked for me, maybe back up an offending album and convert the tags and see if it works.

Cheers
Matt

Just wondering if anyone from Apple has actually acknowledged/responded to your question...? I have an iPod Touch 5th Gen & have the same issue. My library is just shy of 10K songs, so deleting, dragging, etc is not really an option as I have thousands of greyed out songs. So frustrating!

I've had the same problem when sharing mp3's between my Mac and iPhone. It's extremely frustrating. One solution I found is to double-check that there isn't anything missing in the song's file details. The song is somewhere, just not shareable for some reason. I found the song, selected it, pressed "command+i" and saw that it was missing artist information. In my case, these are audio files that I created for practicing/rehearsing. I entered my name as the artist and voila! I believe the issue has to do with how these files are indexed/linked/shared between AppleMusic, iTunes Store, the Cloud, etc., and your own personal music files 'warehoused' in iTunes on your computer. I hope this helps - I feel your pain.

I beleive that symbol means that the song has not yet been transferred to the iPod. If the symbol is not rotating, that simply means that iTunes has "paused for a think". (That's probably the easiest way to explain what it's doing).

I don't understand why you would want to play a song "on your device" while it's plugged into iTunes (why not play it in iTunes?), or at least wait for the Sync to finish. The fact that it's not on your iPhone begs the question "did you wait for the Sync to finish before disconnecting the phone?"

If not, then the solution to your porblem appears to be to wait for iTunes to finish Syncing before doing anything else.

This is one of the best write up i have seen on the infamous "GREYED OUT PLAYLIST". I have struggled with this ever since my wife and i purchased out iPhone 4s last october. No matter who i talk to from apple, wheter it be apple care, itunes store or the actual apple store, they dont have a solution for my problem.

One of the techs from the store mocked my wife and said anyone with a computer degree should be able to figure this out in 10 mins(wife mentioned that i have a BS in Computer Information Systems). He joked and said he was only a sophmore in college and said he could do it no problem, but couldnt find a solution for why this is happening to us.

Anyhow, i have deleted everything from my computer that was associated with iTunes, including my registry and reset my phone to factory settings and once i upload my music i still get the "GREYED OUT PLAYLIST". I am going to continue to watch this thread in hopes someone is able to answer this frustrating question. Because right now my 32g iphone 4s is a big waste of money.

Cheers

The_Quacks

All right I have figured out "my problem" with the Greyed-out playlist

1. I backed up my music files to an external hard drive and an old iPod that I had. I did not remove anything from my iPhone 4s or update it, I left it alone.

2. Completely removed iTunes from my computer ( this will work for a PC only,I don't own a mac)

• control panel, remove iTunes
• Start menu>Search bar> "regedt32" (this opens your registry, you may be prompted "Windows need your permissions to continue" just click continue)
• Once your registry is opened
  • make sure "computer" is selected
  • press "CTRL + F"
  • search iTunes
  • delete all associated files, extensions etc with "iTunes"
  • after all that is completed restart, its Microsoft

3. Open up your Internet browser and download the latest and greatest iTunes and install it on your computer

4. After you install the program DO NOT CONNECT YOUR iPod or iPhone

5. Open iTunes> Store> Authorize this computer

• If you get the "iTunes hangs on access iTunes store" follow these steps, my iTunes did this
• Close your iTunes,
• Go to command Prompt
• (Win 7/Vista) - START>PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES, right mouse click "Command Prompt", choose "Run as Administrator".
• (Win XP SP2 an above) - START>PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES>Command Prompt
• In the "Command Prompt" screen, type in netsh winsock reset

  Hit "ENTER" key

• Restart your computer.
• If you do get a prompt after restart windows to remap LSP, just click NO.

Now launch your iTunes and see if it is working now. My iTunes started working

6. I connected my old iPod, it populated my playslist/songs/movies I was using before

• After this loaded I connected my iPhone and to my surprise my phone started automatically syncing
• All 3000 songs are now able to be played on my phone, now all I have to do is update the Mrs. phone tonight

I hope this helps you and your problems with the infamous "greyed-out playlist"

Cheers,

The_Quacks

Message was edited by: The_Quacks wow the format is terrible, i am sorry for that i used the bullets that the forum provides and they didnt populate in my post. how irritating

(READ BOLD AND ITALIC PART FOR SOLUTION) Well, i think i solved it (and solved, not deleted itunes or any ipod songs) i have an ipod touch 4g and the exact same thing happened to me in itunes when i tried to add a new song, it greyed and wouldn't let me sync it, it didn't apear on my ipod at all, only itunes, i even played it in itunes to check if the file was corrupted, it was fine. so heres what i did, (seeing that i couldn't find a solution ANYWHERE)

I went to itunes, went to the grey song under my ipod section, music, then i went to the greyed out song, pressed delete. so now it wasn't in my ipod, but it WAS in my itunes library. So then i unplugged my iPod, resprung it, plugged it back in, and then dragged the song to my ipod music section. POOF it worked, the song was now on my iPod and playing. 😀