Apple Music Offline -- "This item cannot be downloaded"

Same issue here. All over sudden I'm unable to download most of my music for offline use. Both iPhone and iPad give same message, item not available for download. Logging in and out makes no difference. I'm not going to add my 85.000 songs all over again Apple, fix your **** or leave cloud services to those who have the knowledge. Back to Spotify for now. Disappointing, it just DOESN'T work.

So, I've actually found a solution for this, and it's probably not the solution that everybody likes: Remove and Delete everything. Start all over again.

I believe Apple has fixed the issue the last week, because I've seen a few changes in the Apple Music catalog.

The iCloud Status in Apple Music seems to be corrected now, but it seems to only apply on music that you add now and not a month/weeks ago. So your own music will get status Matched or Uploaded etc. while Added from Apple Music will get Apple Music and not mixed/the other way around, that corrupted my library.

I'm afraid you're right eimoe. Though the majority of my my music has the correct status (Matched) by now, it's still random what I can or cannot download to my devices. All songs were uploaded at the start of Apple Music about a month ago.

I tested a couple of songs I could not download with both status Matched and Apple Music. I deleted them from my library and from the cloud and re-added them (and did an iCloud sync). After that I could download them for offline use. For me it means renew my library of about 85.000 songs. That will take a sweet time :-(

I'll report back if this is the final solution or not.

Oh, and make sure your original files are read-only. This way Apple Music won't mess up your metadata in the process.

This is something that has recently struck me as well. On any album I have added to my library from Apple Music, there are one or two songs that stream and every other songs gives the error code 'This item cannot be downloaded'.

Discussion with Apple, they said remove the albums and re-add them to my library, should fix things, unfortunately that isn't the case. If I search for an album and stream it from search, everything works lovely. Just something about adding an album/song that messes things up.

If someone finds a solution, do let us know.

Unbelievably frustrating.

So far I added my first 20.000 songs, the rest will follow when the testing results are positive. As far as I can tell I can stream and download them all for offline use now. This applies also for the songs that previously popped up the error message. So it seems deleting them all, cloud files included, and re-adding them does solve the issue (at least for me... for now). There are a couple of albums that keep having the iCloud status Waiting. I need to delete those from my library, but leave a copy in the cloud, and re-add them to my library. If my iTunes library is error free, and I'm still able to download and stream all songs on my iPhone, the test is completed. Only then I'll add the rest of my songs.

3 Days for 20.000 songs on a 220/20MB internet connection.... <sigh> Oh, don't do this wireless, it might choke your router.

I solved this today by simply turning off Apple Music and iCloud Music and re-enabling them.

Here's what I did:

- On your iPhone/iPad, go to Settings -> Music - uncheck "Show Apple Music". Wait a few seconds unntil it's off.

- Once Apple Music is off uncheck "iCloud Music Library". It will ask if you want to remove downloaded music, say Yes.

- Exit the settings menu, wait a few minutes then go back in an re-enable both of them.

Now go back to the Music App, select My Music then the Playlists tab. Find the playlist you want to download to your device and click on the 3 dots on the right and select "Make Available Offline". Once you do this as small, thin "Downloading XX Items" bar will appear near the top. Select it quickly and it will take you to the downloads window where you can watch the songs downloading. At the bottom is a summary of how many remain.

Apple certainly could have done a better job of the UI in Apple Music, but it's a great service so I guess I'll give them a pass! ;-)

Now everything synced without issues, although it took a while. No need to delete purchases using iExplorer or anything else.

Hope it helps,

Trust me, I've tried that in all possible ways without the wanted effect. Good it worked for you though. So far all works for me again, but only after a full refresh of my library.

This worked for me thanks!

Cool. Glad it helped.

I'm not sure how these points work but if possible can you check "this helped me" or whatever is needed to give me some points?

Thx,

I don't know if my issues really match but I figured I'd share what's working for me. My iTunes library is large (45GB+) and has a plague of duplicates. When Apple Music hit my iPhone music was gummed up and I had to go through hoops, restoring the device and such. Since then I've had a rash of errors. Of note, my Library is on an external drive due to the size, so my system is wonky in a few ways. I may be missing some steps here, so use this as a suggestion for things to look into. Don't chew up your songs because of my ineptitude. Oh, and I recently had to do a full wipe of my system and restore it by jumping through hoops with the Migration utility and a temporary version of my system on the external drive. (On a positive note that process cured a choked iCloud issue with iCal on my laptop, so that's cool)

Issues (this happens for some purchased songs, some imported from CDs):

Some songs became "!" lost.

Some said "Error" under iCloud Status

Some said "Ineligible" under iCloud Status

Some said "Waiting" under iCloud Status

Since my iPhone 4S had to be restored I was starting with no music in the Music app. I was able to drag and drop some 'healthy' songs over in iTunes, but not the tracks with the errors noted above.

For lost tracks in iTunes:

Go to your Music Library (not a Playlist)

View> Hide Music in the Cloud

Add the columns iCloud Status and iCloud Download to your list so you can sort to find bad tracks.

For sad tracks:

Verify tracks are still available through the Cloud from another device.

I used my iPhone 4S to bounce back and forth between two views of the Cloud.

I set my iPhone Music app to display songs from the Cloud (since there were no songs available offline at this point anyway)

If a song was missing, I'd play it on my iPhone and verify I still have the song in the Cloud.

Back on my Macbook in iTunes I'd delete the song. I'd confirm this scary decision.

When I went back to View> Show Music in the Cloud, the song was available to download from the Cloud.

If there was still an error listed under iCloud Status after I re-downloaded the track I right-clicked and selected Add to Cloud and the error went away.

These steps recovered a bunch of music I thought was gone for good. I used my phone to verify songs were in the Cloud before deleting anything. (Well, okay, honestly I got a little reckless eventually because I was tired of the repetition, but caution really is your friend)

I don't know if this helps anyone, but I was able to recover what I assume were corrupt files or corrupt records of files in my iTunes database.

2007 Macbook OS 10.6.8; iPhone 4S iOS 8.4 (unrelated but I had to downdate from iOS 9.01 due to OS 10.6.8!)

For me the problem was simply that I had videos in my playlist. Yes these used to work but apparently the programmers changed things and didn't tell their support people.

I am so sick of this crap from Apple/ £75/year for this nonsense and every new release of iTunes it breaks in a different way. I've got some albums that have been sat there for MONTHS with any attempt to add cover art being met with a message telling me it hasn't uploaded to iCloud yet and so I risk losing data if I proceed. Others complete fine but then on one of my devices there's no artwork. The latest update seems to let me add covers almost immediately and they show up on mobile devices immediately but then any attempt to download the actual music is met with the completely meaning less "This item cannot be downloaded". Of the last 10 albums uploaded I can never get more than the first two or three tracks to download before hitting the "cannot be downloaded" message. Cancelling my subscription when it becomes due. Can't people I've been dumb enough to pay for this garbage for 5 years now and STILL it's seriously broken and inconsistent. Utter garbage!