Q: Apple Music Error 'Unable to download songs'

Its an issue somewhere in the backend logic of the geo selection at their content providers/streamers (ie. Akamai, etc or whoever they are using) I think. It seems that many Euro based users (regardless of ISP) are hitting the snags, users of the large shared DNS providers like Google and OpenDNS will also be affected as generally their addresses are anycasted to localised caches, hence UK users get a "local" London DNS, etc.

If you have the ability to switch your DNS server to other global servers, such as U.S., Australia, Middle/Far East, etc the issue will clear straight away. This would also explain why general operations like artwork, metadata lookup can succeed, but the heavyweight stream/download of data fails. It also probably explains why Apple support is having a hard time replicating without toggling their resolvers into affected zones ...

On a Mac if anyone wants to verify its very easy to prove, I use DNScrypt as a matter of course, generally using the OpenDNS any cast response, which has lead to these failures (over 3x different ISPs in recent days), if you toggle an alternate geographical remote DNS service into place (which does not anycast) and flush the cache of old entries, then a running iTunes will suddenly recover its stream/download ability (without even restarting the program)

WIthout knowing how their backend services are organised it could be as simple as one or two nodes in a cluster serving one subset of zones/users returning null/empty data, hence the odd pattern of responses being reported. Once you hit a different server you're OK, that's all the changing of the DNS is achieving indirectly ...

OK people I've done a few things people have said here and the Google DNS dose not work for me but the person that said about changing to a DNS out side of the UK to a USA one has worked for me a right treat I can now down load all my songs agine  for offline use

69.170.122.129

client-69.170.122.129.skybeam.com.

Houston

7 minutes ago

valid

95 %

Whois

this is the one I used on my iPhone go to your wifi settings go to your connection select the i on the connection that's yours and change the DNS to the one above and there you go and then renew the lease after its worked for me so I hope it works for all of you

i have been having the same issue as everyone else. im with sky broadband and have an iphone 6 plus.

none of the dns stuff has worked for me but i tried switching on the vpn and then downloading an album and it has worked for me

AT last this one worked for me

cheers

bigrand123 pleased to have helped but also someone else pointed out here they used a vpn on the iPhone 6 plus and that worked for them I have iPhone 6 normal one and I installed a vpn from the App Store surf easy  its cauled and that has worked as well I can't see why we have to do this there must be something wrong somewhere with Apple

With regard to all the previous posts I am having similar problems. I am not tech savvy so to speak so all this DNS and VPN stuff is above my head. Anyway I was mucking about in Apple Music today and the tracks that I had tried to download still nowhere to be seen in my Music Library. However when I went to the actual album in the Apple Music Library that I had tried to download from, the tracks I had tried to download were highlighted and available offline. Don't know if this changes anything regarding where the problem lies.

Well everyone... Apple is truly having some major issues http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/21/apple-music-beats-1-itunes-down-vma/?utm_sou rce=osx&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=front

This is a total quality control issue, lack of attention to details. Apple Music is still hardcore BETA and they act like everything is ok. I miss the Apple Engineers of yesterday ;/

I don't know if that helps you guys... I'm a member of apple music since day 1 and former itunes-match-user. I know a lot of the problems you describe by myself on my iMac Retina (on the latest OSX-version).

Today I just clicked by accident on the "try now"-button on http://www.apple.com/music/ --> Safari opened iTunes automatically as expected but... everything worked suddenly perfect again. My new apple music was synced, it haden't any problem to connect to the iTunes store, my account was synced, the music from the match-cloud and apple music started without any lagging or any other issue...

Maybe it helps you too... even if it sounds like one of those web jokes...

UPDATE:

OK, it didn't solve the problems for a long time but the "try now"-button fixed it again

aand as usual Apple's silence on this problem is deafening. I can see people giving up and going back to Spotify!

I had the same issue and tried everything posted so far to no avail. I tested with another iPhone in the house and it worked without issue. I powered off my iphone and then powered it back on. Now my iPhone works without issue.

I found a way, if u go in to the playlist, and then chose a song, then you can make the song offline, and then it work, so you need to do it on every single song.

It works for me

further to my last post, tried to download songs tonight and no problems. It worked fine. Didn't do anything to my iPhone.

This problem has been resolved as of yesterday Apple music is back up and running hope everyone's sorted as well here now on the forum and also this problem with Apple music was due to sky Virgin media and plus net what it was do not no but sky new of the problem hope everyone else is ok now

I too can confirm the service is now working with no re-routed DNS.

I am sky broadband customer, who previously had the issue and had to change DNS to get stream/download on any IOS/mac device, i now use the router default settings for DNS and it no issues downloading or streaming.