Level 1

62 points

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

So starting last week at some point, Apple Music on my iPhone seems to have just stopped working. It refuses to play anything that is not in my library, nothing from "For you", "Radio", or any saved Apple Music Playlists.

The now playing card only shows "Not playing". If I hit the play button enough times it seems to just pick a random set of songs from my library and start playing.

I have already tried:

Restarting the music app
Reinstalling the music app
Resetting network settings
Restarting the iPhone
Signing out of iCloud and singing back in.
Erasing all content and settings (I restored from backup, I might need to try this again without restoring)

No luck from any of the above. Anyone know how to fix this?

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 11.3

Posted on Apr 10, 2018 11:02 AM

Top-ranking reply

OregonWoodman

Level 1

9 points

Posted on May 5, 2018 12:17 AM

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.

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79 replies

Jan 13, 2019 3:55 PM in response to cmx

Had the same issue with my moms phone, I logged her out of her Apple ID and logged her back in after closing out the app and opening it back up and it worked perfectly fine.

Feb 10, 2019 9:57 AM in response to KateSKWLSN

This worked for me. Signed out on my itunes account on my phone. Logged back in and turned icloud back on.

Jun 27, 2019 7:53 AM in response to cmx

I just had this issue today, and all I had to do was delete the app and download it again.

May 21, 2018 10:37 AM in response to cmx

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...

avoapple

Level 1

4 points

Jun 14, 2018 4:36 AM in response to cmx

This issue is still occurring for me on 11.4, one way round it is to download the complete song from apple music. Do you think this has anything to do with iTunes match or are people having this issue who don't have iTunes match?

Jul 25, 2018 2:26 AM in response to jagreenwood

Same problem. On Mac OS it's fine for me too. Seems isolated to IOS
I have tried disabling iCloud Music Library and re-enabling it is provides a temporary fix.................Until you want to listen to music again.
It also seems to affect certain songs all the time

kycara

Level 1

4 points

Aug 14, 2018 12:02 AM in response to cmx

I just had success deleting the Music app and reinstalling it and redownloading the album. I was losing my mind.

hnm18

Level 1

0 points

Dec 17, 2018 5:35 PM in response to cmx

when i had this problem i deleted the music app and redownloaded it, the music was gone for a minute but it came back and i just had to redownload the songs. everything works fine now.

Feb 8, 2019 2:23 PM in response to cmx

I got this problem. I solved it by deleting Apple Music and re installing it. It worked for me and hasn’t happened since.

May 7, 2018 1:50 AM in response to cmx

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 ?

Aug 30, 2018 10:58 PM in response to SysAdmom

Thanks again. That route worked but I'm all as expected. English, UK etc
The Country/Region is very pale grey but it does say UK.

I just tried the problematic tracks I found yesterday and on the MacBook Air, they work fine (as I expected).

And then when I tried on the iPhone again, expecting them to fail with the NOT PLAYING message, they actually worked.

Who knows what the problem is? Only Apple I guess....

Apr 10, 2018 12:13 PM in response to cmx

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.

cmx Author

Level 1

62 points

Apr 10, 2018 1:23 PM in response to jagreenwood

Yup that's exactly what mine did. I finally got Apple Music to play music again by Erasing all settings and content and then NOT restoring my iCloud backup. Total pain and not really a solution but I guess it will have to do for now.

cmx Author

Level 1

62 points

Apr 24, 2018 9:07 PM in response to teltech290

Yeah unfortunately I couldn’t figure out another solution. Really inconvenient if you have a lot of apps that store local data only. In my case it was really only one app where i lost a bunch of stuff but it wasn’t too critical.

Might not be an option for you though.

Apr 29, 2018 11:35 PM in response to Scott Willsey

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.

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