ImFrmHawaii

Q: Greyed-out songs problem

First off, I'd like to start by saying that I'm sorry if I there are other threads that already talked about this. I tried googling for solutions, but I could not find any one article that could help my current problem.

 

After downloading my songs onto my iTunes, I tried to sync the songs to my iPhone. That's when the "Greyed-out" songs started showing up. In the Library itself, the songs are normal, playable. But under "Devices" -> Music, the songs appear "greyed-out" with a circle being created with two arrows that do not move. Furtherrmore, the "grey-out" song(s) does not sync to my iPhone. Below is a picture of the problem.

 

Greyout1.jpg

 

Again, the song is plays perfectly fine in the Library. However, it will not play under the Devices -> Music category nor will it appear on my iPhone. Please help me. I am tired of this problem and would like a quick solution. If there was a thread with the exact same problem, please post the link to said thread IF there is a solution. It is much appreciated.

 

I already tried one of the solutions that worked one time but doesn't seem to work now. The solution involved logging out of one's Apple account then logging back in. As I said, this one doesn't seem to work for me anymore. Any help and input is appreciated. Thanks.

Posted on May 26, 2012 1:30 AM

Close

Q: Greyed-out songs problem

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 7 of 10 last Next
  • by Acid-Etch,

    Acid-Etch Acid-Etch Dec 2, 2013 8:15 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 2, 2013 8:15 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    Hi guys, after seeing this problem on multiple Ipods, talking with multiple tech people from apple (morons), I finally found the solution on my own.

     

    1: Right click the song

    2: Click convert ID3 tags.

    3: Check 'ID3 tag version'

    4: Select the newest version (v.2.4)

    5: Rinse and repeat.

     

    I should now work. The idiots at apple should know how to fix this. I have seen this problem on 5-6 ipods. Converting to a new file format is the annoying way to fix this.

  • by DJGoldfeld,

    DJGoldfeld DJGoldfeld Dec 4, 2013 10:18 PM in response to Acid-Etch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 4, 2013 10:18 PM in response to Acid-Etch

    I have searched for months to find a solution to this problem, and the ID3 tags finally worked. All I had to do was convert the tags, then remove the song from my iPhone and resync.

     

    Thank you Acid-Etch!!!!

  • by dthfru1454,

    dthfru1454 dthfru1454 Dec 10, 2013 3:16 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2013 3:16 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    you need to remove songs from device and reset sync history then resync ur music   this happens because if you just unplug ur device and not eject it from itunes using the triangle at the end of its name it gives itunes mixed signals eventually leading to greyed songs and inacurate memory read

  • by edlucas,

    edlucas edlucas Dec 17, 2013 1:02 PM in response to dthfru1454
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 17, 2013 1:02 PM in response to dthfru1454

    i had same problem all my songs were greyed out. I then clicked on the itunes store button in the upper right hand side and then clicked back to library. i was bored and repeated this about 2-3 times fast, then for some reason all my music wasnt greyed out anymore. weird!

  • by tsemattsilver,

    tsemattsilver tsemattsilver Dec 25, 2013 3:03 AM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 25, 2013 3:03 AM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    For me the problem was that there were multiple copies of certain songs in my iPhone 4s. I tracked those down on my iPhone by going to my songs and scrolling down until I saw some doubles. Then I deleted those songs. It turned out that was because of this one album, and once I deleted the extra copy from my iPhone all my greyed-out songs started downloading back into my phone. It works now.

     

    I've set my phone to not automatically sync with iTunes. This setting may or may not be important to fixing my problem.

  • by niennara,

    niennara niennara Jan 30, 2014 9:20 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2014 9:20 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    I eventually found a very long-winded way of making it work on my iPhone 5S. Both iTunes and my iPhone are fully updated. I had to do it in two parts, though.

     

    First -

    - Locate Usage on your iPhone. Mine was Settings > General > Usage.

    - Wait for Usage to load. This may take some time, so be patient.

    - Select Music, Edit, and delete ALL your Music.

     

    Second -

    - Plug your phone in.

    - In Summary, scroll to the bottom and uncheck 'Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected'.

    - Again in Summary, check 'Manually manage music and videos'.

    - Go to the On this iPhone tab.

    - At the bottom of the music, make sure it says 'Autofill from: Music'.

    - On the right of 'Autofill from: Music', make sure everything is unchecked except the top 'Replace all items when Autofilling'.

    - On the right of 'Settings', click 'Sync'.

    - Wait for your phone to sync EVERYTHING - mine deleted and re-added everything.

     

    This worked for me, hope it helps others too!

  • by cliffordberg,

    cliffordberg cliffordberg Feb 17, 2014 5:07 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 17, 2014 5:07 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    I discovered that if my iTunes music was in MP3 format, and I transferred it to my iPhone and then did a sync, the music did not transfer and it showed up on the phone "grayed out".

     

    I re-imported the music into iTunes in AAC format, transferred it again and synced, and it actually transferred and showed up normally.

     

    Of course, it mystifies me why one does not get an error when transferring MP3 files. Simply having them show up gray is not very helpful Apple!!!!

  • by Movitar,

    Movitar Movitar Feb 25, 2014 6:41 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 25, 2014 6:41 PM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    I cant believe how crazy simple this was after hours of messing around!!

     

    - click the iPhone button (with what looks like an eject style simbol on it) neat top right of iTunes (on computer).

     

    - click "on This iPhone" (on the bar near the top with Summary Apps Music etc..."On This iPhone" is the last on the right.

     

    - NOW bottom left of iTunes there is a Gear symbol next to a Plus symbol.

    click the Gear and the only thing that pops up is the word DELETE. click it and every one of those horrable greyed out tracks disappear

     

    hope this helps

  • by dpx,

    dpx dpx Feb 26, 2014 1:21 AM in response to Movitar
    Level 2 (250 points)
    Feb 26, 2014 1:21 AM in response to Movitar

    Hey Movitar, are you using a PC?

     

    I'm looking at my iTunes now and don't see an eject style symbol in the top right of iTunes and I don't have a 'This iPhone' button to click in the summary bar which makes me think that I'm not on the same machine as you.

     

    I removed my grey songs as explained on a different post which you have seen, but am always on the look for different ways to achieve the same outcome.

     

    Cheers.

  • by Anamcr,

    Anamcr Anamcr Mar 7, 2014 8:46 AM in response to ImFrmHawaii
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 7, 2014 8:46 AM in response to ImFrmHawaii

    This post is really old but i was having the same problem with my iphone and jacob's advice helped me without even noticing it. I connected my iphone and in the music library of my iphone, deleted one of the greyed out songs, ejected (stopping the iphone sync) the iphone and resprung it, connected the iphone again and added the same song that i had deleted, automaticlly iTunes started copying the missing songs, i had the problem resolved in under 10 minutes. With all of my songs.

  • by mas16sept,

    mas16sept mas16sept Mar 7, 2014 10:07 AM in response to Anamcr
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Apple Watch
    Mar 7, 2014 10:07 AM in response to Anamcr

    The problem was that I couldn't actually hi light anything at all so could not use your method. Anyway I've solved the problem by downloading a iphone explorer program which delves a bit deeper and basically deleted everything in a few folders. IE purchases folder, downloads folder and few in a itunes folder.  It's safe. Once deleted sync again and greyed out stuff GONE.  !!!!!! Program is free and called iphone explorer

  • by kittyk13,

    kittyk13 kittyk13 Mar 22, 2014 10:35 PM in response to niennara
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 22, 2014 10:35 PM in response to niennara

    after 2 hours of scrolling through multiple forums, I did exactly what niennara said and it worked perfectly! thanks so much!

  • by Nephilim 2038,

    Nephilim 2038 Nephilim 2038 Apr 23, 2014 12:27 AM in response to Movitar
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 23, 2014 12:27 AM in response to Movitar

    Note for anyone trying to follow Movitar's instructions  .. you have to disable the sidebar to see the "on this iPhone" / "on this iPad" tab.

     

    That said, I don't see a gear symbol with a delete option.  Wish I did!

  • by Nephilim 2038,

    Nephilim 2038 Nephilim 2038 Apr 23, 2014 12:36 AM in response to Nephilim 2038
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 23, 2014 12:36 AM in response to Nephilim 2038

    To nuke the ghost files (I had thousands of them .. even if I completely deleted the Music's app data on the device, and then set it to sync music with no albums or artists or genres selected, so there was nothing seen in the Music app at all) .. I used iFunbox, a utility that lets you dig around in the file structure of your iOS device. Although somewhat dubiously named, it worked very well.

     

    Open iFunbox,  scroll down to "Raw File System", find the "Purchases" folder, and delete it. 

     

     

    For good measure I then bought PhoneClean, which deletes application caches on the device.

     

    Presto, my thousands of ghost files gone.

     

    Watching carefully, I see ghost files showing back up each time I make a new purchase.  Once I saw both a 128kbps and 256kbbs of the same newly purchased song get lodged in there.  Why would the music store give you a 128kbps file?  Odd.

     

    Anyway. Clean out the cruft and see if your ghost songs disappear.

    2b4095e27a18f425be18eee2f3e91a14.png

  • by Movitar,

    Movitar Movitar Apr 23, 2014 3:44 AM in response to Nephilim 2038
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Notebooks
    Apr 23, 2014 3:44 AM in response to Nephilim 2038

    Hi,

     

    Regarding the fix I found: I had a quick look at the problem of " no gear appearing". I found its another typical glitch where theres an illogical fix that does works.

     

    Once you get the the part where I said -

    "NOW bottom left of iTunes there is a Gear symbol next to a Plus symbol"

    if you do not see the Gear symbol, which I also did not see (when checking why it hasnt worked for some others on this thread) do the following...

     

    Click done (top roght of iTunes) >>> Close iTunes >>> (normal X symbol, very top left of iTunes) >>> Now in the Dock, where all the various icons are (This is for a Mac, hopefuly it would work the same in the task bar for Windows) Right Click over the iTunes Symbol>>> Click Quit.

     

    Now when you reopen iTunes and do the exact same process I listed originally you should see the Gear appear ...

     

     

     

    - click the iPhone button (with what looks like an eject style symbol on it) near top right of iTunes (on computer)

    - click " on this iPhone" ( on the bar near the top with summary Apps, Music, etc)... "on this iPhone" is the last on the right.

    - NOW bottom left of iTunes there is a Gear symbol next to a plus symbol. Click the gear and the only thing that pops up is the word DELETE. Click it and every one of those horrible greyed out tracks disappear

     

first Previous Page 7 of 10 last Next