Why are some songs greyed out on iTunes?

I had this problem, but I didn't realize it was because the "allow explicit content" was disabled (by default) so just double click on the greyed out song and it will ask you if you want to enable it, then it wasn't greyed out anymore

Try this… I was at my wits end last evening trying to fix this
problem of a grayed out playlist that I synced to my ipod touch 6 that I just
purchased last week. I felt like Marty McFly in "Back to the Future"
when he slammed the steering wheel and the Delorean started up! I sat there and
tried everything that was suggested… nothing worked. So I just looked at the
screen and stared.. then I thought… ok, I'm going to do a CTRL Shift and click
on UNCHECK songs…. Ok, did this… then went back, did another CTRL Shift and
RECHECKED all the songs…. holy moly! It worked! All of a sudden the playlist
was no longer grayed out and synced to my Ipod just dandy! I'm a freakin'
genius LOL !!!!!!

Hi Andrew, I too experienced this similar problem, I decided to delete all my old playlist and create new ones, which initially I did successfully, all new playlists and contents synced to my iPhone 4s (used as iPod only) a few days later i added (via itunes) another 12 songs to one playlist in particular hit sync and thought no more of it,(carried on doing other things) sync complete I discounted iPhone only to find that when connected to my car the only music i had on my phone was those last 12 songs! all my other playlists were gone. On going back to iTunes I found that although the original songs were still showing under there respective playlists, the songs themselves were greyed out with the exception of the odd one or two, although if I clicked on them they would all play but they would not copy over to iPhone. After several hours of bashing my head of the desk I found the following to work with no problems. For some unexplained reason the songs had unchecked themselves??

So step 1, Go to each individual playlist were your songs are greyed out highlight first song on list then hit control A, this will highlight all songs in the list, then right click on mouse and scroll down to, and select 'Tick selection' left click mouse to clear the highlight, and you will find all songs are no longer greyed out and will play individually now.

Connect device (iPhone or iPod) Now simply drag each individual Playlist from iTunes up to the music folder under your respective device the playlist should now copy to and play from your device with no issues.

Andrew, this is my first ever response on a forum and I hope it helps mate, it certainly worked ok for me, incidentally my iTunes version is 12.5.5.5 with iPhone 4s iOS 9.3.5

Hope it helps bud! cheers

This doesn't seem to work for me. I'm trying to get "Money" and "Any Colour You Like" on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to finally show up in my Apple Music streaming (it's been since March of 2015 since I could play them!). When I right click on the track, > Get Info > File, under iCloud Status it says "Waiting" What exactly is it waiting for? Do I need to do something to get it to finish?

4. Shurely you must pay Apple for his efforts… They bought music before the digital age and your music belongs to them. We must pay for his best effort named iTunes even if that **** will never work!.

Bingo! Thank you!

In iTunes, click the song's time (which turns into "...") for the drop-down menu. Then select "Check Selection" in the middle of the menu. You can also change all of the songs at once by first selecting all (CMD+A) then repeated the same step.

This option should be visible in the main playlist view. It's too easily overlooked and very frustrating.

It is actually much simpler than some of the explanations offered in this thread.

The grayed out songs are those songs that are "Unchecked" in the "Songs" view and in your iPhone/iPad setup in iTunes, you selected to "Sync only the checked songs". Thus, the grayed out songs are those that are NOT synced to your iDevice. However, and this is where it gets freaky, you can still view and play those songs on your iDevice, if you have synced your song library to iCloud with Music Match or Apple Music services. In some cases, I have even downloaded manually the songs to my iPhone from iCloud. The main difference is that iTunes will NOT sync those songs automatically for you.

Pretty sure that this means that the song is added to "My Music", but not downloaded (available offline)

Hi,

I think I have figured this out by accident, however if I am right it's annoying and will drive users mad. So while trying to solve this I decided to build a playlist on my Mac and use it on my iPad, based on the fact that tracks remain greyed out on the mac. What I noticed was that some tracks actually did appear on the mac (iTunes 12.2) in the playlist and could be downloaded/played, but some remained greyed out. As a reference all appeared on the iPad/iphone and can be played.

So I looked up the new Florence and the Machine album (How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful - Deluxe) and saved it to my music. I picked this because it's heavily featured on iTunes. And sure enough it appeared in 'My Music' (MacBookPro iTunes) with a previous Florence album I had purchased, and yes it can be downloaded and played in iTunes 12.2.

Next I found the newest Chicane album (The Sum of its Parts), I repeated the process and saved it to 'My Music'. Yep it appears and plays in 'My Music' on the iPad/iPhone. I then checked in my MacBookPro iTunes 12.2, and sure enough it is greyed out and won't download or play.

My conclusion is that there is either an issue with the updated iTunes 12.2 or there are licence issues with an awful lot of music out there preventing them working on iTunes 12.2 (desktop). All the music mentioned and everything I have moved from Spotify works on my iPhone and iPad, and I'm really pleased with it. Apple need to sort this because none of the other streaming services have this issue. If it's not sorted by the time the trial is up, I'll be going back to Spotify and that will really annoy me as the streaming integration with my own music is perfect and just what I wanted. Sad.

Hope this helps guys

Guys and gals, you may need to do the steps outlined below to get your music libraries in sync. I know it worked for me.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7104446

1) Log out of iTunes (Account > Sign Out)

2) Quit iTunes

3) Launch iTunes. Re-login to iTunes by going to the For You tab and logging in through Apple Music.

After you go through these steps, let the updating to your iCloud Music Library finalize (notice syncing loop in top right corner of iTunes window). It is then that you will see your album covers and tracks available for streaming through iTunes on your Mac.

Perfect thank you! All working now.

I did have some issues while following your instructions, that was purely because iTunes kept crashing. While following this process I logged in to my account and discovered that there was a button asking me to add my mac to iCloud sharing, once connected this button vanishes. That in the end did the trick. Thank you again for your advice ohneSchatten.

That worked. Thanks for your help!!

That worked perfectly for me - thanks ohneSchatten! 🙂

I had the same issue on albums. Some were available and some weren't. Simple fix, while in iTunes select Accounts then Update Genius. On the far right you will see your Search bar shift to the left and a rotating circle will appear. If you click it you will see the progress. Once done you will see all the songs. The only one that didn't work for me was one that they don't have license to have on Apple Music.