Why won't my songs transfer from itunes to my iphone?

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

tt2

This is to the original post/problem. This worked for me, and you should try this first before doing all that reseting of your phone and backups and who knows what else everyone has been saying... lol so, (main issue) you try and add songs to your device, it completes whatever syncing process it was doing, you check the device's music (on the comp display) and the "added" music is in gray with the hollow circle next to it, which means it is like "ready" to sync, but never does. From here highlight the song(s) that are grayed out, click edit>delete. so you just got rid of the "ready" songs from your device. try and sync them again. It worked the third time for me. Good luck!

ok i had the same problem and i didn't ave to reset my whole iphone i just had to update the software on my iphone from my computer, like when i connected the iphone i clicked on its icon it says update the phone and thats what i did, i had to keep it connected for like 2 hours but now it adds my music normally

Managing content manually on iPhone, iPad, and iPod

Follow the steps in this link. It helped a lot.

Well, for what's its worth, this is what I did. For some unknown reason, iTunes won't sync under Summary. You have to select one of the tabs underneath it. Select> IPhone>Settings>Music, and then check "Selected playlists, artists, etc.." and it works just fine.

I think everyone who has asked this question has found a solution to their problem, but I was having a similar issue today where it said all of my purchases transferred and they didn't. After I did the File > Devices > Transfer Purchases, and Synced it, I realized I had to (phone connected to laptop via USB) go to the View tab in iTunes and select "All Music" and not "Only Music Available Offline". Then those songs showed up and I could download them from the cloud or whatever. Hope this helps other people who seem to have tried everything!

I was having exactly the same problem, and I tried all the many things people suggested (I restored the iPhone, reset network settings, tried using playlists, turned "show only music on this phone" on and off, etc). Finally I turned off Genius, and voila - everything works again as it should.

Thanks!! It finally worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, I figured this out. I went to ITunes/Preferences and then turned on ICloud music. I have no idea how it ever turned itself off, but this worked immediately.

SOLUTION

This solution probably won't help everyone, because I can see multiple problems in different posts here, but common one:

1. Plug in iPhone
2. Go to iTunes
3. Click on iPhone icon
4. Go to Summary
5. On the right bottom part of the screen click on "Select music and video manually"
6. Accept / Apply changes

Probably a warning that this will erase all your actual music from iPhone will pop up. Accept :-( - it will.

Now you can go to your Music Library in iTunes and just drag and drop what you need to the leftside where your iPhone device will pop up when you drag.

Why this happens?

iPhone can sync only with one Library (come on Apple! Its 2015!!!!!)

iTunes saves it's library files on the drive. When it can't reach its' files, it will get corrupted. Especially if you have files on external drive, you gonna get screwed sooner or later. When you plug iPhone in, it will think it's completly new library => hence it won't add the files.

Nope its just killed my iphone, Apple wins again (waving white flag)

I have been having this problem for months now! And it is extremely frustrating. I have read thru pages and pages of this post and have tried change several of the setting options as suggested. I even tried deleting everything and starting from scratch! But I think I have found a simple solution.

I have a MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11.1

an iPhone 6 running IOS 9.2.1

my music is set to allow me to manually manage it, but I was still having problems with select songs and artists.

Solution:

Turn off passcode on phone!

I have no idea why this worked but it did!

I think the issue is that Apple wants to store all your music on the ICloud and will only download what you tell it too.

I just resolve this issue myself. Here is what I did.

On your phone, go to ITunes Store. Click on "...More"->Purchased->Music->All songs. At this point you should see a link at the top which says "Download All", or you can individually download songs by clicking on the icon which looks like a cloud with an arrow.

Had the same issue on my new iPhone 6s.

Solved it on my phone by going to Settings/Touch ID & Passcode/Turn Passcode Off

by doing so you bypass the passcode access on your phone.

Plug into your computer and have iTunes to sync the music you desire and voila!

Once finished, your music will show on your phone.... Enjoy your music!

OH my gosh...this did it for me also!!!

Apple you really need to return to the basics and make things simple. I spoke to the Apple support people and they did not know about this fix

I have spent the past few days trying to get my songs out of itunes into my iphone. I had the same issue (grey dotted circle but songs would not download)

There are WAY TOO MANY settings and hidden functions in the IOS and Itunes makes this even more complicated. This all needs to consolidated into a single control area of IOS, instead of splitting things up between Icloud, Itunes, IOS etc etc.

1 Anything stored on your phone, should be managed by the phone only

2 Anything stored on the computer should be managed by the computer only

3 Anything stored on icloud should be managed by icloud only.

ALL TRANSFERS between the above should be managed by the apple ID

4 -If a user wants to back up anything on their device it should back up to itunes and to icloud and to the computer (identically and at the same time) this feature should not cost extra and should be automatically built into the price of the phone. 64gb phone = 64gb backup in icloud

5- there should be no restriction on what is being backed up (i found out the hard way that itunes does not back up music (I had 50gigs of wav files disappear)

6-Simplcity and useful tips should be a fundamental element on any button or selection in itunes or icloud. Most of us have spent days trying to figure out what buttons do and what selection boxes do. If you showed helpful tips or help files with useful information we would not have to spend days and days researching the web to find a solution.

7 Family sharing is a mess and should be consolidated better. If I want to share my data with family it should be managed by my Apple ID plain and simple.

If we wanted something to be this complicated I would move to Android which is now actually less complicated in some areas.

We have multiple Ipads, Iphones and now Apple watches that we use in our family and in our business. It has become ridiculous to manage all the devices and share the information with ease.

I am very disappointed 😟