Apple Music won't play songs - "Not playing"

BubblesMcGee33

User level:

Level 1

(4 points)

Apple Music

Speciality level out of ten: 0

Jan 15, 2019 7:56 PM in response to cmx

I was able to fix by following these steps:

1.) delete Apple Music app

2.) Go into setting on iPhone and sign out of Apple id

3.) download Apple Music app back onto iPhone

4.) Go into Apple Music App and sign in with Apple ID; it will ask you to sign into Apple ID in settings (do this by clicking on appropriate button from dialogue box).

5.) Enjoy music!

Sorry, this one worked for me! Thank you!

I just encountered this issue on my Apple TV today. After reading about the corrupt cache file in this thread it had me thinking that the file is attached to a profile rather than the application itself. This was after trying all the basic troubleshooting. I then logged out of my iTunes/App Store profile and logged in under my wife’s account and launched Apple Music. This reset the application and appears to have overwritten the corrupt file with the new profile. I quit Apple Music, logged out of iTunes and back iin under my profile. I then relaunched Apple Music and this appears to have rewritten the data again, thus fixing the issue and allowing Apple Music to work correctly. I’d recommend trying this before performing a reset. Good luck.

I think I know what's going on and why only a clean install without backup restore fixed the issue. It appears to be a corrupt cache file.

I have the same issue and I can play anything I purchased, whether downloaded or in the cloud, but I cannot play anything from Apple Music. I can download songs, but then I get a dialog box about the song not being authorized rather than the silent fail and "Not Playing" status I get if I try to stream it from Apple Music.

Anyway, I connected the iPhone to my Mac and fired up Console, and here's what I see when I try to play an Apple Music song in the Music app:

I have a case open with Apple and am going to talk to them on the phone tomorrow, but my guess is they can't do anything other than take my console log and see if they can learn something from it while I wipe my phone and try to get on with my life.

I do have iMazing and iExplorer, and I should hopefully be able to restore app data for those apps that don't use the cloud to store it. Either way, it's going to be a painful experience and a massive waste of time.

No, but it’s not a bad idea. I did get an email from the support guy who called me the other day and he says they’re still working on it, which I assume means going over the log file I sent. I hope they are. This is a stupid problem for anyone to have to have.

I have the same bug since 11.3!

I tried everything in this post, but nothing worked. I had a call with Apple care this afternoon, but the only solution is to restore the iPhone to default (without backup), which is not acceptable for me. Apple has to fix this bug very soon or I will cancel my Apple music payment and get back to Spotify...

Hi, I came here looking for a solution to the same issue. I've tried most of what you have w/o any resolution. I believe this started happening for me some time around when I installed iOS 11.3, but can't be sure. Apple Music on macOS seems to work fine.

This is a really detailed reply and I really appreciate that! I was thinking of doing the same thing with the console but you beat me to it. It definitely seemed like something locally was screwing it up too, as it's so fast to NOT play the music that it seemed like it was too quick for any kind of network request to be telling it to not play.

Looking forward to more info if you're able to get anything helpful from Apple or from hacking around on this issue.

And sure enough, once I did a restore from backup, Apple Music is broken again.

What kind of OS allows a corrupted cache file where it KNOWS it's corrupted (it logs it as such in the console log) and doesn't just wipe the cache and recreate it? Really, the only way around this is to wipe the phone and start completely over from scratch? Meaning: lose all your app data for apps that don't store in the cloud, have to recreate your Apple Pay settings, Touch ID settings, Siri and autocorrect learning, etc, etc, etc, all from scratch again.

This is a really poor user experience.

Hi there, I found this thread while searching about this issue since I'm having the same thing happening.

That's a pretty terrible solution, since you basically lose all your data just to be able to play music with Apple Music again.

Is there really no other solution? No one else has had any luck with anything else? I've tried so many things and have not been able to get this to work either, except to setup my phone as new again. This is pretty ridiculous.

So far nothing helpful. I was called by an apple support person, and there was no resolution. They had me try all the things I've already tried, then sent me a link to upload my log file to. I've heard nothing back since.

I just wiped my phone and am installing an 11.4.3 beta using my developer account. I'm sure music will work. Then I'll restore from backup, and I'm sure it will break again.

I'm really not happy about this experience AT ALL.

Ok, just did a fresh install of 11.4.3 beta, installed as new phone (didn't restore from backup). Apple Music works fine now. Now I'm restoring from backup to see what happens. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one.

Thanks OregonWoodman !

This worked a treat. Did exactly the same thing for my iPhone 8 and all is working as it should now...

My For You selection is all there, whereas before it was blank, and I also had the Not Playing issue with random songs being selected..

I have the same issue. Just to precise that the problem is only on my iPhone since updating to 11.3.1. I did not do the update on my iPad and Apple Music is fine on it. Did anyone tried the 11.4 beta ?