Why are some songs greyed out on iTunes?

Wow! Thanks!! You have answered two of my questions tonight that I have been having problems with.

Thank you so much. marking all the songs as checked fixed my grey issues. Don't know how so many of my songs got unchecked.

Thank you for that "Duh" moment!

This was the answer! I ended up doing a "Ctrl = A" to select all and then adding checkmarks to the entire catalog. I can go through later and uncheck just a few items. Thanks so much!

This worked! Thank you. What is the check/uncheck section even for other than fixing brokenness 😟

Tried this and just lost 600 songs from before I had Apple music. All Apple music has been since I had it is a disaster!! Constantly have grey cloud icons buy all my music and it doesn't allow me to listen to any of it, and now losing 600 songs just tops it off...

Apple's sync function is indeed quirky! In my case, all the problem music to be transferred was already showing as "checked". BUT, simply toggling just one track to the unchecked condition, then toggling it back apparently broke the Sync log jam on that item as well as all similar greyed out tracks. Had tried for days to command the thing to Sync, but it would initiate, go through a couple of the steps, then hang on the Apple smiley face (infuriating) without progressing to any kind of track transfer progress. Every attempt to sync left me with the same non event, but when the check box thing is tweaked, something in the Apple OS says "Well....hmmmm.... hah, maybe this guy actually wants me to do something about the greyed out unplayable stuff!"

All the other log out, log in advice did Nada, but this apparently worked.

In attempting to find a remedy for this problem (this answer did not work in my case), I took a look at the devices I had authorized for my iTunes account and realized that I had two previous iPhones authorized. They were both also named the same (I am a creature of habit). I deauthorized them and the sync session that was in mid session immediately began adding the 763 greyed out items to my new iPhone. It is anecdotal, but in my case, I believe that having several devices with the same name was confusing the sync process. My post hoc conclusion is that, a) There are several reasons that specific songs may not synchronize properly from your computer to your other devices, b) give your devices unique names, and c) deactivate old devices. Additionally, don't beat yourself up for being an idiot. The entire iTunes ecosystem, designed to keep people from wholesale theft of music, and to protect the economic incentive for creating intellectual property, can be unbelievably frustrating and convoluted.

Thanks! This took care of the few songs (Apple Music downloads) that were greyed out.

Thank you! Help me soo much!

I have been using iTunes for years and have relied on it totally.

I am losing the faith with recent bugs - greyed out songs, missing artwork, ineligible songs, song no longer available etc.

OK, so most of the problems can be solved, but it all takes time. First you have to realise there is a problem, then search for a solution, then implement it. That takes time, and the historical attraction of Apple was that "it just works". That is no longer the case. Each update now means more time wasted on problem solving.

I don't know what happened but I tried this and now I have more music missing. Basically everything now is gone. Down from 200gb to 8. This is ********.

I was trying to just get some greyed out songs that were in my library, but not apple music, back. Signed out, quit iTunes, reopened, signed back in.

It just wiped the whole shebang. And no I did not click the "delete music" or whatever popup is in the news. That never appeared, as I was never attempting to delete anything... quite the opposite. My music library is a shell now. The Apple Music playlists have had disspaeard almost entirely. On my phone in Apple Music most of the Apple Music playlists are empty, and there is no trace anywhere of the songs I wanted to retrieve that I assumed Apple was backing up, but apparently wasn't?

I am not going to think about this now. As I've just spent hours not listening to music, trying to listen to music. Specifically one song that is not commercial, which apparently I've lost to the cloud by not backing up a hard copy. Which defeats the whole point of the cloud.

I'm really at a loss here. I want my **** back.

Thank you so much!

Check Selection finally cleared my issues with random grayed out songs.

Turn on iCloud Music Library - Apple Support

this is what i ended up having to do and once the upload took place there were about 2800 songs to upload to the iCloud. I believe this will solve the greyed out music issue on my iPhone. Hope it helps you too.

Many thanks. I don't know why the word "Check" is used for this function.