Songs won't sync to iPhone but play in iTunes

iCloud Music Library is a feature of iTunes Match and Apple Music subscriptions. If you're syncing with iTunes then you're not using the iCloud Music Library.

Try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour, including the dotted circles and greyed out tracks 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.
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

I have your solution, as i was having the same issue getting MP3 files to sync using itunes 11 to my iphone. So annoying they play in itunes but won't sync/appear in your iphone!

Google or download iSkysoft Tunesover. It's a free program and it took less than a minute to sync the song to my iphone! Try it! I spent hours on message boards and researching alternatives and this was the only program that worked!

After about 2 months scrolling through these forums I finally found a fix for this problem! I simply turned off the "Sync Music" checkbox on the "Music" tab in the page for the device on iTunes. I then checked the "Manually manage music and videos" box at the bottom of the device summary page, selected all of my music in my library and simply dragged it all to the device and the music is now all playable on my iPhone (with no duplicates, despite dragging all of my music onto the device). This was such an easy and annoyingly simple fix so hope it works for you too!

Nearly all my musik comes from my own CD's imported into iTunes. Until the new iPhone5s or maybe iOS-7.0.4 there was never any problem with syncing the iPhone with iTunes. Not sure whether it's something with the iPhone5s or iOS-7.04 because they both came when I purchased the new iPhone.

All musik imported into iTunes is as Apple Lossless. Until the iPhone5s & iOS-7.0.4 there was never a problem even though the space was taken quicker.

Now I have some albums, mostly classical that simply will not sync to the iPhone5s. I can delete all the musik, sync again and it's the same thing. It shows that the musik is syncing, but in the end when the sync is done it does not show on the iPhone5s. Even though the same musik appears and plays on iTunes.

Might have to try the manual, but where did you drag the musik? Since it's 'musik & videos' do you also have to drag the videos?

Except for a few TV shows even my films are my own. Converted from my DVDs then placed into iTunes as needed so I can sync with the iPhone. With iOS-7.0.4 now films show up as 'musik videos' or 'home movies', it no longer lists movies, films, etc ... the movies I put into iTunes now fall under 'home movies'.

There has to be some reason why some sync and some do not...

I have now had my iPhone 4S (iOS 7.0.6) either corrupt or delete most of my music library FOUR times in about a month. Typically the corrupted songs will show up with a red circle, and clicking the circle does not do anything. This did not happen before iOS 7 was released. Sometimes I can "unsync" all music and then re-sync, but it takes HOURS to re-sync nearly 3,000 songs. On 1 occasion I had to do a complete restore, which means additional hours re-synching my applications and restoring the backup. I sure hope this is being addressed in 7.1. If not I guarantee I will get rid of my iPhone and purchase an ANDROID!

Yep. I'm having the same issue, and after getting no help at all from Apple (though they did manage to waste 3 1/2 hours of phone time the other night as they passed me from rep to rep without solving my problem) I guarantee that my next phone will be a Google based phone. I've loved the iPhone while they put out a good product, but this IOS7 release is pure crap.

Put them into a playlist on your Itunes library, click ON THIS PHONE, click on SETTINGS on the autofill bar (should be right above SYNC in the bottom right corner) and make sure only CHOOSE ITEMS RANDOMLY is selected, select your playlist from AUTOFILL FROM: (PLAYLIST) and select AUTOFILL next to SETTINGS in the bottom right corner. They should start to sync and turn normal. Worked for me anyway!

Similar issue, a little more detail and a different workaround in case it helps anyone.

Using the following:

iTunes 11.1.5

iPhone 5s with 7.1.1, iPhone 5 also with 7.1.1, and iPod nano running version 1.2

Not using iTunes Match on the Mac or devices.

Some songs that I purchased from iTunes quite a few years ago won't play completely through on any of these devices. On the iPhones the song keeps "playing" and the time moves advances normally but the sound completely goes away. On the iPod the song does the same thing for a few seconds but then skips ahead to the next one.

This was never a problem and all songs synced just fine on their own or as part of an album/playlist/etc. before iOS 7 so it's clearly an Apple iOS issue.

Tried syncing each device and unchecking music to remove everything. Synced again by checking music to add it back, no change.

Tried syncing again and checked 'manually manage' on the summary tab, opened iTunes, right clicked a couple of the problematic songs, ran a sync on one device, and the song worked normally.

Ran a sync on the other devices the standard way just by selecting them on the music tab (i.e. not doing a manually managed sync) and the songs that I added manually to the original device seem to be working across everything just fine.

The problem is that there is no way to tell which songs are problematic - nothing is grayed out, nothing has unique settings if you look at the info for each song, no visible difference at all.

So the only thing that seems to work is manually identifying problematic songs when you happen to come across them, then do a manual sync for just that song with a device, and it will subequently work.

I've seen a lot of other similar problems reported on forums but they all seem to involve using iTunes Match so this is a different deal. I'm HOPING that Apple support will eventually address the iTunes Match problem and that this will somehow also be fixed with it but I'm not holding my breath as they don't seem to be addressing that yet either, at least not in a timely manner.

In the meantime, at least I seem to be able to fix things one-by-one but that's going to get really old really fast especially not being able to tell which ones aren't going to work when I want to listen to them...

Same issue here: songs play and have correct artwork in iTunes, but won't play on phone and don't have correct artwork.

I've tried everything suggested here. No love. I even tried deleting from my local and match libraries, restarting everything (phone and computer), re-added the songs to library, but same issue. On the phone (iPhone 5s), they won't play, and they have the wrong artwork.

Tried the Manual thing... only 2 of the three would even copy, but... even the ones that did won't bleepin' play, and still... have the bleepin' wrong artwork.

Oh thank you so much. I've spent HOURs going through forums for a solution. THIS works!

I finally solved this issue and its syncing right now perfectly

In Itunes when you sync - for me it was as simple as - selecting the box that says

"Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128kbps ACC and it worked"

Hope this helps you too

mc

sorry - it synced some more but still not all. 😟

This worked for me! simple!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVbZZEZlGGY

Thanks! simple fix

Nathan, what exactly do you mean by dragging your entire Music library to your device???