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

Found a fix! drag and drop the album or song that is refusing to transfer to your desktop or another folder that is not within the iTunes library folder. Once the album or song has been moved, delete the album or song from your iTunes library (not the one on your desktop). Once the album has been deleted from your iTunes, drag the album that you have on your desktop back into iTunes. this fix worked for all of the songs and albums that would not transfer onto my iPhone for me.

Hope this helps!

Well this thread has taken some interesting turns. I'm not convinced everyone on here with "the answer" has had the same problem. Some have had success turning off passcode. Others, managing music manually. Others still, twiddling with home sharing. None of those worked for my case. I have a iOS 8, 5s, 64b so I have plenty of space, and 3100 songs in my library.

I checked on the music tab, sync entire library. It LOOKED like it did it. all the space was allocate on my phone for it, the "on this phone" tab showed what appeared to be every one of 3100 songs on my phone, and on my phone they all LOOKED there. Go to play them, the music player skips over them and turns them grey with a circle. MY fix to the problem was to go thru the music player on the phone and, on the songs tab, try to play every song, skipping fast forward thru them.

Once I've hit each song, it then sync'ed to my phone. But out of 3100+ songs, I had to touch probably 2400 of them to get them all to sync! It didn't take as long as you might think to touch all of them because for every song it stopped on, it skipped over 10, 20, 50, however many songs it discovered weren't really there. But this was a kludgey approach.

What sort of "we'll do this for you" approach is apple taking here? Somewhere the "it just works" factor got lost in the details...

Hey all,

Well I guess this discussion morphed to many questions apart from what was asked originally, but that's ok. In another case, if some of you are trying to place songs from iTunes into your iPhone, but have had it previously synced to an old library, or just are unable to place that one song into your iPhone, and to avoid syncing and erasing, I may have a solution.

1. Compile the songs on a playlist in iTunes you want on your iPhone.

2. With your phone connected, and iTunes opened, click the 'iPhone' tab.
3. Click 'On This iPhone' Tab on the far right. You'll see a list of your music (or not) already on your iPhone.
4. At the bottom, set 'Autofill From' to the playlist that has all the music you wish to add from your iTunes.
5. Click the 'Autofill' tab on the far bottom right above sync, and it should add all the songs from that playlist.

This worked for me, but I'm on an iPhone 4 , iOS 7 though, so I don't know if outcomes might be similar. If the 'Autofill From' doesn't display your newly created playlist, perhaps you could try adding it to those predetermined ones.

Hope it helps for this particular problem!

I had this same problem, but after an hour or so of restarting, shutting down itTunes, etc, I figured out that, at least in my case, if I deleted the songs from the "On my iPod" list, and then tried to download them again, it worked. I hope this works for everybody else!

So this may be too late for most people but I found that I was having this problem too. Obviously a little later than everyone else as I didn't use the music feature of my iPhone all that much. After trying EVERYTHING! I found that going into your iPhone's settings into the Music icon and de-selecting (or turing off) the "Group songs by Album Artist" tab my music shows up. For many songs the "Album Artist" is not filled in and it was not able to group the information because of this and caused a weird issue of hiding the music.

I tried it, and then all my music deleted, like it was supposed to. And then I tried syncing my music again, but on my iTunes on my Mac it shows like it worked but when I check my phone it says that I have no Music in iTunes. I waited a few hours but it still says "No Content."

Help please?

(I have 45 songs on iTunes, and I have an iPhone5s with iOS8, if that helps.)

OK. Thanks to everyone who posted ideas on here. After a night and a half of lost sleep I'll never get back, here's what eventually worked for me, which is a variation on what Trevormitchell1212 originally suggested..

I've got a 4s iPhone and a Vista laptop -- I'm not exactly your early-adopter type. Been having trouble ever since several OS updates ago. But anyway:

1. Removed passcode on the phone (although I'm not sure that mattered)

2. Had iTunes up on my computer (updated to the latest version, though I'm not sure that mattered either)

3. Plugged phone in with a genuine Apple connector cable. Several third-party charging cables in the house don't deliver a decent sync.

4. Selected the phone when it appeared; selected the "Music" tab

5. Simply unchecked the "Sync Music" box at uppermost left

6. Selected "REMOVE" when iTunes gave me a popup that says "Are you sure you do not want to sync music? All existing songs and playlists on [the phone] will be removed. [I don't actually think they were removed -- just at risk of being written over.]

7. Then rechecked the "Sync Music" box when given the opportunity.

8. Then hit "Sync" at lowermost right.

FINALLY I got that satisfying 20 minute wait when the sync routine got to the last step and you could see all the tracks copying over. Prior to that it would complete the sync without actually copying anything over.

Trouble is I'm not sure this is a 'permanent' solution. Might have to do that unsync-sync thing everytime you want to update the phone inventory. Good luck.

Hi All. Ive had this problem it really ***** right! ok ive fixed mine heres how..... Start itunes in safe mode (shift and control held while program start up) click continue to safe mode. ok you should be in itunes, connect your iphone. Go into preferences, click the device tab, then check the box that says "prevent iphone from auto sync". Now go into your iphone library, click the summary tab, scroll down to the bottom of the screen where you should have a box saying "manually manage music" check that. Go back to your comps library, go into the song tabs and manually drag and drop the songs you want into your phone. drag and dropping songs will only work if you are in the songs tab. Voila! should be good to go now! DO NOT USE THE SYNC BUTTON AT ALL!

ajal1 wrote:

When I plug in my phone into my computer and try to sync my playlists on iTunes to my iPhone, the sync completes but the songs will not transfer. I even tried deleting the existing playlists from my iPhone and I couldn't even do that. I have literally tried everything that I know. Any suggestions?

Hi. I just had this problem too, where my iTunes would only copy a few things and nothing more. An error message came up saying items can't be copied. I closed the music and video apps from the list of apps running in the background (ios 7 &8 double tap home button and slide up those two apps until they disappear) and when I tried again it worked and my files all transferred.

Hey, everyone!

I just did the latest update to iOS 8.1 on my phone, and guess what? My newly-created playlist APPEARED on my phone, after synching it the normal way. I've spent hours reading this entire thread, trying to decide which one of your brilliantly plausible solutions to attempt, and I'm SO happy for the answer to be "none"! If this is, indeed, an Apple fix, let's just hope it lasts.

I posted this before and it got removed.... probably for "advertising" or some crap.... I'm not trying to sell anything, I'm just trying to help. So I'm posting it again in hopes that it makes someone's day

The first thing you need to do (FOR MAC ONLY) is to go here and download this free program (trust me, I'm usually hesitant on downloading stuff, but this program is a life saver!). The download took a total of maybe 10 seconds... user friendly and extremely simple program, as you'll soon find out.

http://www.headlightsoft.com/detune/downloads.html

Once you've successfully installed Tune, run the program! Once you connect your device, it will automatically show what device is connected. You're ready...

Step One: Connect your iPhone to your laptop (USB) - ignore iTunes if it opens, but CANCEL any sync that may occur (if it doesn't; even better!)

Step Two: In DeTune, it should automatically recognize your device (iPhone) and show all of the data in an iTunes-style display. On the left-hand side, you'll see tabs for Music, Podcasts, etc. (JUST LIKE iTUNES) Step Three: THIS STEP IS NOT NECESSARY, but I highly recommend it to keep all of your stuff organized: Create a new folder on your desktop (title it whatever, I used "iPhone Transfers")

Step Four: In DeTune, select everything you want to transfer. DRAG AND DROP it into the folder you made on your desktop... wait for the copying to complete.

Step Five: Stare at the screen in complete awe and amazement as all of your music is now comfortably sitting on your desktop waiting to be imported into your iTunes music library!

My files were in m4a format, so you may not be able to simply drag and drop. Import them into iTunes via FILE ---> ADD TO LIBRARY, then select the files.... Don't know why you can't just drag and drop, but that works just the same.

I hope this helped! I know I was in the same boat for quite a while, and am VERY pleased with this program. I bet my post disappears within a week 😉

Good luck!!!

Actually I just found the solution!!

Plug your phone into your iMac (I have iPhone 5 with IOS 8). Go to iTunes and click on the upper left corner on your iPhone icon. Then scroll down to OPTIONS where you can select MANUALLY MANAGE MUSIC & VIDEOS. Check that box and then you can drag the songs you want to your iPhone. Now in my case I had only 10 songs or so manually drag to my iPhone. Hope this help. Apple Support helped me with this:)

I had the same issue with my iPhone 5s (iOS 8.1) and by the computer side Windows 7 64 bit and iTunes 12. I just uninstalled iTunes then reinstalled and from the iPhone's section go to Summary section and uncheck the automatic sync then go to music tab and uncheck the synch musics. then synch with iphone and your corrupted musics will be deleted from your iphone then go back to music section and re-check the synch musics part. then sync with iphone again and u will see from the music app your musics will get synched.

How i got it to work was delete the songs from your original library but keep the files. Then find the music and and copy it into itunes again. This is because once you move the music files they cant be located anymore. So delete them from library but keep files, then go to where you moved them to and copy them from there and dont move them again.

I was having this same problem and read through this entire board and then happened to see someone mentioning a corrupt update. I uninstalled itunes on my actual computer (I have PC) .. and then I went and reinstalled it from the apple website and now everything is working just fine. I selected playlists and no issues all music is now showing on my iphone. There must of been an issue with the original itunes update.