Q: home sharing on iPhone: library loads but won't play just scrolls through songs

Is the content in the library or is it just listed by virtue of iTunes Match or iTunes in the cloud.

It sounds like it might be a problem with your network, rather than home sharing.

The following article(s) may help you.

Troubleshooting Home Sharing

Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections

Recommended Wi-Fi settings

Wifi Diagnostic Software (for Mac users)

You may also find some help on this page, where I’ve collected some of the more unusual solutions to network issues.

Similar problem here.

I can't play any of my shared iTunes music that's a Protected AAC audio file through my iPhone 5s running iOS 7, even though I purchased those songs through the iTunes store.

The songs show up on my iPhone, but if I click one and press the "play" button, it either jumps to another song in my shared library (that's not a Protected AAC audio file) and plays that instead, or it just instantly scrolls back to the prior screen and doesn't play anything.

I have no problem playing those same Protected AAC songs through my AppleTV.

Same problem here.  iPhone 5 running the latest iOS and an iMac running the latest version of iTunes on Mountain Lion.  When trying to connect, it will take a minute or so to sync the information to my phone (which is normal), but upon trying to play anything, it doesn't.  Instead, it rapidly skips to the next consecutive song and doesn't stop.  This applies to Protected AAC or not.  Nothing has worked via this method for some time now.

this happens to me all the time. i have an iphone 5 , ipad air running 7.0.4 and itunes 11.1.4

i don't think its a network issue

i think its a bug

usually rebooting the iphone or closing the audio app , and rebooting your iitunes server fixes it

maybe regenerating your itunes library.itl file would help ?

It is not a network issue, it is a bug.

Sometimes this fixes it, but why should it be necessary? Apple need to get a grip and fix the implementation of functions that other OS have been doing for years - or else stop offering functions their own OS is incapable of delivering.

The library takes an age to load and if it finally does, the songs just race by as the OP describes.  How hard can it be to serve files across a network for crying out loud?  I was doing this with WaveLAN kit fifteen years ago and yet today, Apple are making a pig's ear of it. 

The only solution appears to be to reboot the device, be it iPad, iPhone, iPod etc. and even then, it may be that you have to do this multiple times before it works correctly.  Then, for no good reason, it works - until next time.

Right now, for example, my iPad should be playing music, but it isn't. Twice I have waited for my library to load, yet still it sees fit to scroll (or at least attempt to) through evey song. 

Same problem here--often--with an iPod Touch gen 5 on iOS 7.1 receiving from iTunes 11.1.5 on an iMac on Mavericks. Selecting a song from a home-shared library to play causes the Music app to flip through song after song without playing anything. This happens regardless of whether I am selecting a song in album, artist, or song view.

I have to say that the problem is not consistent. For example, on about the fifth try this morning, Home-share is now playing successfully through my iPod. I had tried a number of things for previous tries -- restarting my iPod, checking network status, and, with each try, stopping the Music app completely, shutting down iTunes on the iMac, restarting iTunes, and restarting the Music app and letting the shared iTunes library reload. For some reason that escapes me, I finally had success.

In the past, too, sometimes playing from iTunes via Home-share on my iPod has worked and sometimes it hasn't. When it hasn't, the problem has always been this flipping-through-songs craziness. I've never experienced problems connecting with the iTunes library.

I have the exact same problem, iOS7.1 on 4s,5c, 5s, iPad air, iPad mini, and laptop running Windows 8.1  containing the media database with 245+gb of files. It will sometimes connect, mostly cicle hangs, wihen it does connect. any selected music track will not load and just fly by... What really erks me is that my ATV connects fine. What do we do!?

Use an older device without the updated iOS. 

I now use an iPad 1, running 5.1.1 and so far it has never failed to open the library and play the music. 

unfortunately don"t have any older devices anymore. I made such a huge investment to update everything, an to have this not work. Apple you'd better address this soon...

I updated to iOS 7.1.1 and home sharing started to work again.