Why does it say "Not Playing" in the bottom of the Music App?

I went through this problem - the issue seems to be that the data base (locations of files etc) gets corrupted. The official solution was to 'restore the phone to factory settings', then restore from a backup. This did not work for me as the backup was with the corrupted data. I got back with Apple to see if they could help me get a "good' backup from my Time Machine backups - from when I knew the phone worked. I got to Apple iTunes technical support and did the following:

1. Delete Music App, restart phone and then install it again - did not work

2. Delete the music I had on the phone. This is done from Settings -> General -> iPhone Storage -> now scroll down to Music, below the Offload App and Delete App, are all the songs you have, just above this on the right is 'EDIT' -> Press EDIT, the first choice is All Songs with a line in a red circle. Press this, respond to the are you sure and voila all the data is gone.

3. Sync your phone to iTunes and sync all the music you want.

The above steps worked for me and my phone is now usable for music and listening to books etc while on long drives (it had failed in the middle of a book, which ****** me off a lot!).

I hope that helps you and others! Have a great day!

The process I used worked for me. Once I determined that a large number of songs were 'not working', I called Apple. Their 2nd or 3rd level support told me what to do. My steps are detailed in an earlier response to the question.

Essentially you go to Settings, General, iPhone storage, then delete ALL the songs under Music. This deletes them ONLY from the phone, not from your computer.

Now go delete the Music App. Do a shutdown and reboot of the phone, now download the App from the App Store.

Now sync with your computer, select what music you want, and then enjoy.

FYI - I find that my Pictures are also corrupted (pictures showing up in random folders, especially folders that I know they do NOT belong in. I am going to do the same thing with pictures once I get home (traveling right now).

You ask 'why does not Apple repair this? Good question. I worked with computers for some 30 years! The issue is that this is a random error, very hard to reproduce. I think it is to do with the iOS file system - some combination of conditions causes it (mainly because all this is shielded from users, so it can not be user error). Since the SW development types have many other things to worry about, this is not on their list of things to fix.

I have just spent the better part of a day on this. Both of my iPhones (6S & 6S+) running iOS 11.4.1 syncing to my High Sierra 10.13.5 MacPro, via iTunes 12.8.0.150. I tried the delete music app & files described above to no avail. I found out the problem (in my case) was that the artist(s) I was trying to play did not have any albums listed in the metadata/itunes. I went into iTunes, selected the entire Artist's work and populated the Album column with "Album. I resynced and each Artist I do this to work fine. Obviously a significant oversight on Apple's part. First High Sierra corrupts my iTunes library and tells me I don't have rights access to it and now music I've been listening to for over a decade is "Not Playing". What a sad state of affairs.

Basically the data base where your music tracks has gotten corrupted. The solution is to delete the Music App and ALL the music from your phone, restart it, reinstall the Music App from the App store and then sync the music from iTunes. I put detailed instructions on the reply to another user.

I had the same problem, this worked for me - it took a long time (I have almost 30GB of music and audio books on my phone).

Perhaps! I did try deleting selective files, but it did not work for me. So I ended up deleting all the Music data and then resync'd with iTunes and that solved my problem.

Greetings, PugLife.

After reviewing your post, it appears that the Music application on your iPad is showing "Not Playing" when you open it. I'm happy to help.

I suggest closing the app and restarting your iPad to see if this helps. This can help if an app isn't responding like it should.
How to force an app to close on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch​

Let me know how that goes.

Take care!

Right. This is not normal behavior. Before if I was playing a certain song, that same song would be there when the app re-opens. Now EVERY TIME you open the music app. IIt says not playing. Even if I have a song that has “remember playback position” checked in info. It starts all over again. This is definitely a bug!

This was happening to me on my iPhone6s. I changed my settings in iTunes to “remember playback position” which seemed to work, although there was an update to the iOS about the same time. I found it extremely annoying to only be able to skip ahead or back 30’seconds so I reverted to remove the “remember playback” and sync’d. I got the skip buttons back but now I’m back to having the “not playing” issue after the music app is inactive for a while, but I consistently! I am okay on some albums overnight and my Bluetooth alarm clock will kick on with the song it paused on the night before. I can get into the car and it will pick up on CarPlay the song that was paused. However sitting at work and using the phone for thing other than music (I played a video with sound...) and when I went back to Music it’s on Not Playing. So this can’t be an issue with the album! It seems to be an issue with Music forgetting the position when the system is interrupted.

That said I spent way too much money on this phone for this nonsense. I have 30 years of digital music and hate spending hours every weekend trying to fix this issue or navigate the impossible virus app known at iTunes. This is ridiculous for such a basic function of a multifunctional device. I also refuse to pay again to listen to music since I have already have purchased what I want. My next phone will not be an Apple.

This is most definitely a bug. I have been playing Music and Audio books on my iPhone since iPhone 4. Even on this phone, I have been doing that since I bought my phone (in Dec). All of a sudden I get the "not Playing' message - by the way this happened in the middle of a book that I had been listening to.

I have stopped the application,, shut down the phone and restarted it again - no change. Obviously the testing of SW at Apple has gone downhill - used to be iTunes was not tested, but iOS for an iPhone X?

It is showing this to say that no music is playing, it is not a bug or error.

I am facing the same issue and I definitely think it is a bug or error. The bar used to show the latest song played when opening.

It HAS to be a bug or something considering that it never showed this “not playing” until just the past 2 weeks.

I've noticed the same problem over the last couple months on my iPhone SE. I've restarted my phone and the app but it still happens at random times. Glad to see I'm not the only one. Wish there was a fix.

I am having this same issue. Before it started, when I would open the app, there wouldn't be anything at the bottom, unless I had something playing (via bluetooth for example) that bar would never be there. Now I have the same Not Playing at the bottom that everyone else is seeing. Has anyone actually had success with the recommended option of deleting the entire music app and reloading it and all of their music? And does anything have to be done if I use Apple Music on my MacBook also?

Hey!

Did you ever get a response that worked?

If so, did you have to delete the app and all of your music then restart and then sync to iTunes on your laptop/computer?

Or can this be done over WiFi?

I’m a little nervous about deleting all of my music and playlist!! Yikes!😬

What worked best? And did everything turn out exactly the way it was before the “Now Playing” bar even appeared?

What’s weird is how did this happen to sooo many different people? And why didn’t any of the IOS updates repair this?

Could all of us really have downloaded a “corrupt file”/song/book/podcast....whatever it is and it be the exact item?? Maybe a different song, for say?

Then again, why hasn’t Apple added a fix for this in any of the 4 plus IOS updates that has been issued since this first began to happen??

Crazy isn’t it??

I didn’t mean to rant, I actually do and would be VERY grateful and appreciative for any kind of help with this. 😊