Q: Playlists and music are not syncing (can't add any music to my iPhone now)

I've been having sync issues too between iTunes on OS X and Apple Music on my iPhone. I seem to have found a fix:

Go to iTunes>Preferences>General ...ensure "Show Apple Music" & "iCloud Music Library" are checked

Once I had done this, all my music and newly created playlists appeared on my phone.

Hope it works for you

I was having problems getting my iPhone to sync with the Mac.  Solution was to go into Settings on the iPhone, turn Apple Music and iCloud Music Library off, and then back on again.  I chose "Replace" all music (vs. the "Merge" option), and it has been working so far.

I have a question that may be similar to the original post. The problem that I am having is when I add music to my iTunes library and sync my phone, it becomes categorized as music that is not stored on my phone (not offline). I couldn't understand why music I have downloaded straight to iTunes wasn't showing up in my phone library. I unchecked the "Music Availabe Offline - Only show music stored on this phone" option and the songs showed up. Why are songs downloaded on my computer considered to be music not stored on my phone?

What follows is pure speculation.  I'm a programmer for 40+ years.  If I were to implement Apple Music, how would I do it?

There must be a cache of music and as a cache it must have a fixed size or perhaps some other method of releasing the space that it consumes.  From experimentation, I know that if you mark an album as "Make Available Online", the tracks do not get marked and vice versa.  So, I assume that each album, each play list, and also each track has a bit that says "do not purge me from the cache".  That bit is called "Make Available Offline" because that is more along the lines of how a normal users thinks of things.

So... all this to say that maybe a particular track is on your iphone right now this very second but if space gets tight, it will get released and not be available to you as you are driving through the Mohave Desesrt outside of cell coverage.  If you set "Make Available Offline", then it will not get purged and either some other tracks will get purged or you will end up with an error that says "out of space".

To me the interesting question still is how do they get into a mess like this.  Yes we can speculate their priority is pushing their content not helping us managing our libraries, but do they do ANY User beta testing at all?  It would have taken them about five seconds to realize the chaos they'd be causing.  I can't decide if the root cause is arrogance or incompetence or both.

Have they published anywhere the precise criteria & algorithms etc for 'matching' and deciding just what is where?

Judging by many of the kludges (sorry, solutions) published in this thread, their servers must be flooded with spurious up and down load traffic as people turn iCloud on and off and on again etc etc to try and clean things up.

Fortunately, I haven't tried using any of this iCloud/Apple Music stuff.

DId the recent iTunes & iPhone updates not solve anything in this regard?

I don't want to speak too soon, but I think this fixed the problem. This has been bugging me ever since Apple Music came out. I haven't been able to sync songs. I had tried everything. I rebuilt my iTunes library. Wiped my phone and restored from backup. Just tried the steps and it appears to be syncing now. We'll see, however. It's just started syncing. My goodness i wish they'd just stop changing stuff. Why would they introduce something that STOPS a basic function.

Having a similar issue tried downloading a mixtape to my iphone and doesnt work it appears in my ituns library but it will not download it says it syncs but it just refuses to add new songs unless i buy them from the itunes store from my phone...

If you look at your music in a list with the checkmarks not sure exactly what that format is called you have to make sure the music is checked, that solved the problem for me

Thanks,this was the only post that helped. Why change something so inconsequential, such as the syncing of playlists??

Maybe because you haven't mastered the next level of technology yet (holograms, retinal scanning) and so this is basically a smokescreen, until you do that.

Thanks Apple, for keeping us in the dark ages.

I HAVE FOUND A FIX!

Basically if you wish to continue using apple music whilst having your itunes library synced to your phone and not the useless new icloud library system where you then have to download your own music from the cloud basically rendering the sync utility useless. IT IS SIMPLE
1: settings - music - switch off icloud library

2: then plug your device into itunes and re-sync (same as old method)

all your apple music downloads will be cleared DO NOT WORRY YOU CAN RETRIEVE THEM
3: when your phone has re-synced you will have all your music on your hard drive, Then go back to settings - music - turn on icloud library

Now you will see an option to merge your icloud library and apple music library, click MERGE
4: You can now re-download your apple music tracks on your device without affecting your pre-existing hard drive music

This is the only fix i have found which allows you to re-sync your music directly to your phone whilst still being able to use the new apple music software which is great once you get past this "bug

Hope this helps!

I HAVE FOUND A FIX!

Basically if you wish to continue using apple music whilst having your itunes library synced to your phone and not the useless new icloud library system where you then have to download your own music from the cloud basically rendering the sync utility useless. IT IS SIMPLE
1: settings - music - switch off icloud library

2: then plug your device into itunes and re-sync (same as old method)

all your apple music downloads will be cleared DO NOT WORRY YOU CAN RETRIEVE THEM
3: when your phone has re-synced you will have all your music on your hard drive, Then go back to settings - music - turn on icloud library

Now you will see an option to merge your icloud library and apple music library, click MERGE
4: You can now re-download your apple music tracks on your device without affecting your pre-existing hard drive music

This is the only fix i have found which allows you to re-sync your music directly to your phone whilst still being able to use the new apple music software which is great once you get past this "bug

Hope this helps!

I wanted so bad for Apple Music to work.... it totally messed up my playlists. After two months of trying, I am turning it off. After turning off iCloud music, my music library is re-synced back to my iPhone... it worked.

Going to check out Spotify....

You rock!!!!  Let me try to explain what my issue was and how with the helpful sugestion below I was able to fix my music library.  I purchased the new IPhone 6 a few weeks ago and realized I was missing several songs.  I contacted Apple support and to my surprise they could not figure it out.  I went into the store and the genius bar was absolutely useless.  So I contacted apple support  again and the support person started by looking at my purchase record.  My purchase record for some odd reason had no record of the songs I was missing and in the end the support person made the statement I must have used another source to buy the 12 songs I was missing.   I stated to the young lady the music I have in my library was either from a CD I bought or thru iTunes and I have never used any other music source to buy music.  In the end the apple support person gave me a 12 song credit because they could not figure out why the songs were not syncing.  So I had to buy all the songs again in order for them to sync to my phone even though the songs were on my MAC computer and in my library.

The most bazar part of the story is there were two songs that are no longer in the iTunes music store, Simply Red "So not over you" and Boney James "Skating".  So I was unable to purchase those songs again.

Any way to end my story I did another google search just to see if this was still an issue  and read the following:   go to setting then to music and unselect iCloud music library and sync your music the old way.  Presto the two songs by Boney James and Simply Red were sync to my phone.  OMG !!!! Apple the next time a customer contact you with an issue, Please investigate more.  I am loyal customer and was a bit surprised with your employees at the genius bar. 

I have the same issue with most of my songs grey out when I tried transferring them to my iPhone. But I figured out how to fix that issue, although there were still a few songs that still remained grey out but most got through to my phone. My iTunes version is 12.3.

1. Connect your device to your computer.

2. Suppose that you have all your songs in your iTunes playlist, click on the device icon next to the three dots.

3. On the left sidebar, select Music and put a check on Sync Music. Underneath that, choose Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres (make sure that the number of songs you want are there). Choose Entire Music Library if you wish to add all songs in your library.

4. At the bottom, click Sync. After a bit, the songs will stop syncing. When that happens, continue to click Sync and repeat the process until your songs get through.

Note: You can check if your songs are still syncing by looking up at the top where it says "Copying # of the total number of songs" and as you're syncing repeatedly, the total number will decrease.

I'm still trying to find a solution that would not involve this tedious, long process so please let me know if there is any. Thank you!