Q: What are these red circle symbols that suddenly appear in my iTunes library on my iPhone?

This from sgibbs33 worked for me.  I would have spent the rest of my life trying to figure it out.

was in the same boat with 95% of my music on my iPhone showing the dreaded red square in a circle.   Thanks to Jerry's post,  I can see how to kick off a download playlist-by-playlist over my wi-fi.   But the thought of doing that for all my playlists  and for 3500 songs made me cringe big time.

So I kept fiddling around.   I finally got my whole music library back sync'd.   Here's what I *think* did it for me,  but it would be good for others to try it themselves and post here if it works:

1.  connect to iTunes and let it perform it's initial attempt at a resync

2.  while connected to itunes,  select your phone under DEVICES so that you see the 'Summary', 'Info', 'Apps', 'Music', etc.  buttons at the top of the window.

3.  select the 'Music' button from the top to see selections for what you want to sync.   Here,  I could see all the playlists that I have always had selected (prior to iOS7 upgrade).   But it seemed that none of it was actually sync'd to the iPhone.   So I checked one additional Genius mix  to be added.   Then I hit  'Sync' button at the bottom right of the window.

4.  Voila!   now  iTunes started to successfully resync my whole music library.

My theory:

During the iOS7 upgrade of the iPhone,  the upgrade process whacked the iPhone's index of music and flagged everything as being on the iCloud rather than actually in files on the phone itself.   Doing *something*  (anything?)  to force iTunes to resync was enough for it to fix the index of music on the phone.

Interestingly, iTunes shows how much space is being used for 'Audio' on the phone.   Even when the iPhone thought everything was in the iCloud,  it was still using up just as much iPhone space as if the files were still downloaded.

Let me know if this works for anyone else.   Good luck! 

I have tried all of these suggestions and nothing works for my phone.  In fact NDJerry's suggestion made it worse!  It messed up even more songs than before!  And the songs for me are a mix of iTunes purchases and CDs.  Some very recent, some older.

I even tried deleting my whole music library from the phone, but it didn't even get rid of the songs!  I can't win...they won't go away when I want them to and all won't sync when I want them to!

I have the same problem as everyone else, with a slight twist.  WHen I try to sync, the ipad deletes all my playlists from my library.  I did find how to restore the playlists, so tried again, and the ipad again deleted the playlists.  I restored again, and tried to sync my phone, and it worked fine.  Until oday, now 95% of the songs on my phone also have the red circle/square, and my ipad only has the songs I purchased from itunes and downloaded.

Any suggestions on how to get back the 300 plus CDs I transfered without transfering again?

Hey guys I had the exact same problem for about a month ever since I updated my phone. Finally being fed up with only being able to listen to 200/700 of my songs I decided again to try and fix it. (Mind you what I did to fix it I had tried a couple of times before but did not work for me then)

So I synced my phone and clicked into devives where there are buttons at the top which one is called music.

I then unticked everything and synched my phone.

It still did not seem to make any changes on my phone except my laptop said I lost a lot of gig.

I went back and ticked the sync all button

I then repeated those two steps another time

Something really weird happened on my phone then and it somehow started to re-download every single song which it had not done before.

It will then look like only the songs that were already working are being re-downloaded but then the ones with the red circle started coming back as well until eventually I got back my WHOLE library.

-I honestly hope it works for you guys because I know how much it *****! It may not work, as I said it did not actually work for me before until I tried a couple of weeks later. x

Thanks alot. getting iTunes to just resync got it all back to normal. the only difference is i just unsynced all my music and then resynced which forced it to sync. Thanks again this was really annyoing.

Looking for a suggestion, as whenever I attach my ipad to the computer, the ipad deletes all my playlists - on the ipad and computer.  Has anyone had this happen and know how to override?  This is a recent occurrance, which just started two weeks ago, after working great for a year plus.

Thanks @NDJerry, it wokred for me....appreciate your post

Thanks Swaith; that fixed it!

Had same issue and can also confirm (as someone else posted higher above) that de-selecting all music from sync, disconnect the phone, and then sync all playlists again sorted out my problem.

I also didn't lose anything in the process, so overall fairly painfree

The only way I can still get it to work is to check the "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to ###"  I dont want to do that.  I ripped in M4A and FLAC for a reason.

I have done everything everyone has stated.  I have even deleted my libraries from itunes, deleted everything from my phone and started from scratch - rebuilding all the libraries.  I started small with a couple of hundred songs, but even then only about 10 synched.

The only thing I haven't done is moved my library to a different computer - and I really dont want to do that (yet). . .not until I migrate to a new Mac.

So not happy at all.  I have the 64GB phone because I rip in the non-compressed format.

The fix posted by NDJerry and others worked for me, thanks guys!

• Start iTunes on your computer 
• Connect your iPhone and let it synch 
• Select your phone among the devices in iTunes 
• Select the tab for Music 
• Uncheck the "Synch Music" and then hit "Apply" (down at bottom of page). NOTE: this will remove all the music from your phone but it will not affect your iTunes library. Don't panic. It's necessary medicine. 
• After the phone has synched and removed all the music, Go back to the same Music tab for your phone in iTunes and recheck "Synch Music". Then synch your phone again with iTunes. It will now reload all the music in your library back on to your phone.

That's a temporary fix as well. Here's a permanent one:

This has bothered me since the beginning of the iOS7 betas and iTunes 11.1 and it has continued to plague me and thousands of iTunes users. I think I have finally nailed it.

Firstly there are two separate bugs: The "Waiting for sync to start" bug where you'll get stuck on this step. That one is simple. iTunes can't sync when your passcode is locked. Unlock your phone, and make sure it doesn't lock before you finish the sync. Stupid I know.

The second one was much much harder to nail down. The symptoms include: "ghost songs" on your phone that will stop new syncs, cause your iPhone to skip over them when playing/shuffling. And not having your phone sync new or all of your songs. The common denominator: When looking at your phone in iTunes there will be grey circles in front of a bunch of songs/media.

A million different temporary cures from logging in and out of the iTunes store on your phone and your iTunes; turning off 'Show all songs'; turning off iTunes Match; selecting your iTunes library in your music apps sharing options (obscure); turning on and off sync (the most common temporary cure); resetting your phone settings; restoring from backup or most destructively restoring from fresh, deleting all your data and settings. Yes, the equivalent of the good old nuke your PC and reinstall Windows option we've all derided for so long is now a common troubleshooting technique for your Apple device. Sheesh.

Have you tried all of the above already? Too scared to nuke your phone and start afresh? Grab a copy of iExplorer or PhoneView (the demo version will do) and follow these instructions:

MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS BACKED UP TO BOTH YOUR LOCAL MACHINE AND ICLOUD.

Connect your iPhone to mac, open PhoneView, go to Settings>Show entire disk. Here I would recommend you back up all the contents of your phone. Or if using iExplore, open the media section.

Deleted the following folders:

• Purchases
• Downloads
• iTunes Control>Sync>Media,
• iTunes Control>Music

Deleted the following files from iTunes Control>iTunes:

• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb
• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-shm
• MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-wal

You may get away with only deleting purchases, but just to be safe nuke them all.

Restart your phone by holding home and start buttons for five seconds.

Resync with iTunes (make sure you reset all the options for only syncing what you want, deleting these files makes iTunes think you want to sync everything).

This should (most likely) cure your ghost song troubles once and for all.

Credit to this obscure fix goes to an leeg330 on old thread I dug up on the Apple Discussion forums with people having issues with ghost songs on iOS5.

Unchek/check the "sync music" button on iTunes worked for me too! Nothing was left.

Thanks to everyone!

Since none of these options work for me, I need to ask:  What kind of file format and file size (average) are you using?  I am using Apple Lossless (MP4) and the average for my music size is 35 megabytes with some of them upwards of 70 - 80MB each song.

Last week when I was in the Apple store buying a time capsule and macbook air, I asked about this.  When I told them I was using files that size, they said that is probably my problem.  Some devices (iPhone and iPod Nano included) can not handle files that large.  Now, I have not gone back into my computer/phone to see which ones have the red circle/box and look up their file size, but until then, I have to go with what they said because nothing mentioned here works for me except for using the "Convert higher bit rate songs to xxx kbps AAC".

I have the answer connect your iphone to your computer, open itunes, click file - devices - then click transfer purchases and now you have all your songs playable without red dots. upvote or whatever so others can see and fix this, also riot on apple. this took way too long