Song fails to play on iPhone

Have been Googling to try and find a similar problem, but can't find it yet.
On my iPhone, I have one song that refuses to play. Looks like it's corrupted. It results in some weird behavior, let's see if I can sum up quickly. (Go ahead and skip over the next paragraph if you don't really need to know the exact nature of the foul-up.)
I have a bunch of songs, let's just call them A, B, C, D, and E, and let's say that song C is the troublesome one. If I go into the "songs" menu and click on C, then I see the title and album art for C, but the actual music playing is D (the next song). If I click the forward (skip to next track) button at this point, then artwork and title appear for D; this holds on the screen for about a second and then it skips ahead to E (I now have title, artwork, and song for E all correct). Similarly, if I try to jump back a track (go back to song B), then the artwork and title for B show up on the screen for a moment, then the phone jumps back ahead to where it was (artwork and title for song C, but actually playing song D).
So, no matter what I try I cannot get this song to play, and even attempting to play it is making things act pretty weird. It looks like I need to restore this song -- it seems to play in iTunes on the computer just fine. The song was purchased through iTunes on the phone.
Is there any way to fix up this one song, or do I need to do a wholesale wipe & restore of the phone? (Related question: since I've synced the phone with the computer a few times since this problem has shown up, how can I make sure the "restore" operation won't just restore the same problem I had before?)

...turns out I was able to find a fix for this. Never did know why things went wrong, though.
Here were my steps to fix:
1) Delete the problem song on the iPhone. (Just pull up the song list, right-swipe and say "delete".
2) Plug phone into iTunes. Yes it'll sync right away but that had no effect that I could see. Go into menu for the phone and set up to "sync only selected songs". So I set it up to sync all songs except my problem song. Click "apply" and another sync operation will happen.
3) Add the problem song back into the sync list. Hit "apply". Another sync starts. The song gets (re-)copied to the phone.
4) Song now works. Restore all settings.
I'm sure there is a more elegant way to do all this, but, eh, at least this got the job done.

Similar Messages

Certain songs will not play on iPhone and also not in my iTunes library

My problem is that songs will not play on my iPhone that I have purchased and appear like this...
These songs also do not appear in my iTunes library and when I look at the album (or other songs with this problem) in the iTunes Store it appeaers like this...
As you can see it says "purchased" where it would usually say "play"
It'd be great if someone could help as I am completely baffled.
Thanks.

In settings on your phone: iTunes and App store - is "show all music" off? Is automatic downloads off?
Do you share the computer with other Apple users? Is it currently associated with another Apple ID?
The work around is open iTunes purchases on your phone and download directly to your phone that way.

Some iTunes purchased songs will not play on iPhone.

Some of my songs that I have purchased from iTunes will not play on my iPhone but will play on my MacBook Pro and iPad - what can I do to fix this. This problem has been happening for around a week now. At first it was 1-2 songs but now in a playlist of around 80 songs approximately 1/4 of the songs will not play. When the song comes up next in the playlist it will not only skip that song but will also skip past 1-2 other songs.

Hey brewmaster1967,
Does this happen with any other purchased content? Download some of the free on iTunes store songs.
Deauthorize the computer and play/authorize the song in iTunes again.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014
Try re-creating the iTunes Library.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93313
Jason

Song does not play on iphone 5

Downloaded song onto iphone 5. Song does not play. I deleted it from my phone but it still does not work. Play fine on my computer. Help anyone?

Is that the only song not playing? check another song, Also try restarting your iPhone by holding down the on/off and the home buttons until you see the Apple logo.

ITunes songs won't play on iPhone 5

I've had my iPhone 5 for about a year now. Never had this trouble before switching to this unit. Never took the time to try and figure out the problem, as I knew it would be a long drawn out process over the phone, but this has been an issue since day 1. I'm missing my music...and I'm ready to listen to my purchases again!!
My music is in my iTunes account on my computer...in the library. However, on my iPhone, only a small percentage of the songs are available to be played. All others are greyed out.
I searched the discussions here and saw a post that said that maybe I need to authorize my computer. Did that, didn't change anything. I restored the iPhone back to original settings and then back to my backup file. Still not able to play songs.
I also downloaded the songs from the purchased downloads in iTunes, all this did was duplicate my songs, and allow me to play the 500 songs that I can play now.
HELP!!!! I'm VERY frustrated that I have almost 2000 songs, and only about 500 that I can play. I paid for this music ($0.99 for some, $1.29 for most, that's well over $2000 spent)...I should be able to listen to my music...ON MY PHONE!!!

Ok SIMPLEST and EASIEST thing to do- this WILL solve your issue:
Go to Settings->General->Usage
Wait for it to populate all the things taking up space on your iPhone. Tap "Music" and then swipe your finger from left to right over the "music" bar. the red "Delete" button will appear. Tap it.
Wait about a minute then power off your phone. Then power it back on.
Go to iTunes app on your device: then "More->Purchased->Music" you should be able to re-download ANY song bought. If you don't re-download on Wi-Fi it will eat at your cellular data plan...be advised.

How to prevent songs from being played on iphone 5

I have an iPhone and I'll come across a song that I don't want to hear anymore. I'll delete it off my phone and then when I charge my phone it shows up again!!!
On the desktop iTunes I can "uncheck" a song and it won't be played in iTunes. How do I do the same for my iPhone since delete isn't working?

If you are charging your phone by connecting it to your PC then it is probably doing a sync at the same time (Automatic sync). This means your deleted songs (from the phone) are being reloaded by the sync. You need to uncheck them from your sync in Music within iTunes

HT1209 Some songs no longer play on iphone, but are fine in itunes library... Help!

Songs i purchased from itunes months ago play fine on my computer in itunes, but are no longer playing on my iphone. they appear in the playlist, but won't play. i took all the music off my phone and synced all over again, and they still won't play. I don't know why only about a dozen songs are affected. they were purchased at different times since last summer. I recently experienced the "lost contacts" issue and had to restore my phone from backup. could that have something to do with this?

Are these songs purchased from the iTunes store, or from your own cds?
Been through these?
The Five Rs.

Songs don't play on iPhone 4 - iOS5.0.1

Why do my songs play on iTunes on my laptop and do not play on my iPhone 4? Some don't even show up on my phone! I bought Match hoping to overcome that problem; the albums that do not play are in the cloud (I guess) and are in iTunes Store. Even the ones on my phone won't play. When I select them, the WIFI appears to be doing a search, then stops, and nothing happens.

If all of the songs you own are already on your laptop, then when you play one, it is the copy on your laptop that will play. The only time you would play a song on your laptop directly from the cloud would be if it got to the cloud from another computer you set up on your iTunes Match service. So getting them to play on your laptop really doesn't have anything to do with why they won't play on your iPhone.
Two things may be happening here. First, if your first iTunes Match session has not completed, you will likely see song titles on your iPhone, but the actual files have not been uploaded from your computer to the cloud. Itunes first copies your database (which includes song titles) then it determines which songs are matches to ones for sale in the iTunes store and links the song titles you see to those songs. Then it uploads the rest. Often times until every song that needs to be uploaded for an album has made it to the cloud, none of the uploaded songs for that album will be available for you to play.
Second, you may want to check the settings for your music app. There is one toggle that will let you see only the songs that are on your device. If that is the way it is set, you won't see what is in the cloud unless it is also already downloaded to your iPhone.
You said you guess the songs are in the cloud, but you are not sure. When iTunes Match is on, you can go into your view options and check the box for "icloud status." If you sort the new column you will get, you can see what has been matched, what has uploaded, what has been identified as "purchased" (from the iTunes store, and most importantly for you, what songs are "waiting." Waiting means iTunes Match has not processed them. Most of the time "waiting" means "waiting to upload." but it can also mean you have one or more corrupted tracks that will keep Match from processing the rest.
I should also mention that you may see songs listed as "ineligible." Some time ineligible tracks are low-bitrate songs, so low Apple won't allow them in. You can get around that by highlighting them, going to the Advanced menu and selecting "make AAC version" Whne you run iTunes Match again, they should either match or upload.
The other major category of ineligible music is DRM-protected tracks. Now if your computer is authorized to play them, they should process fine, but if authorization has been turned off, or if they came from a different computer, Apple won't allow them in until you get the computer authorized to play them. There is a lot of information here on how to authorize your computer, if it comes to that.
Hope that helps you

Some CD-Ripped Songs Fail to Play--HELP!!!

Okay, I see that some people have trouble with songs purchased via the iTMS; however, I have a different problem.
I have songs that were ripped from CDs via Apple Lossless (uncompressed) that are now unplayable via iTunes (no error) or Quicktime Player (a generic error--no number). I was using iTunes v7.0.2 when I noticed this last night and I'm now using v7.1--no change. Also, this problem is rather random--only a handful of files have been noticed (of thousands) and never two from the same album.
First, I need a way to automatically (or procedurally) verify the health and playability of each song in my library. Doing this manually would be far too time consuming and apparently this is something that would need to be run periodically to very song file health.
Also, I need to fix the problem. I would prefer to fix the problem if possible since it would be far more convenient. BTW: Retrospect and Disk First has not detected a problem with the file... it is still referenced as a playable file (no exclamation points...) within iTunes.
Help! I need an AppleScript or something that could at least locate the songs that have crapped-out. Okay?
Thanks!
Robert

The indicates that iTunes cannot find the file
and has nothing to do with the 'health' of the file.
Exactly! There is no exclamation point ("!") since the file is being located by iTunes; yet, the file is NOT playable by iTunes or QuickTime Player...
Is your Quicktime up to date with v7.1.5?
Yes.
You can check Dougs Scripts to see if you can find a
script that will help you.
Where can I find Doug's Scripts?
Thanks,
Robert

Does anyone know if there is a way for the number of time a song has been played on your iPhone/iPod be transferred to the songs on your iTunes number of plays?

I mainly just use my iTunes for organizing and adding new songs. Most of the time I listen to my music on my iPhone. I wish it would keep track of how many times I play a song in my music and transfer it to the computer under the 'number of times played' column. It would help out so much! Does anyone know if there is a way for the number of time a song has been played on your iPhone/iPod be transferred to the songs on your iTunes number of plays?

Hi @imobl,
You sound like an Apple support guy who hasn't been able to answer my questions.
To respond to some of the points you made,
- I did not ignore Ocean20's suggestion. If you has read my post, you would have known that I took my phone to the apple service centre where they tried this restore on THEIR machines. I am assuming that Apple guys know how not to block iTunes. So I actually do not understand your point about me trying the hosts file changes on my machine. Do you not believe that apple tested this issue with the correct settings?
- you also give a flawed logic of why the issue is a hardware issue. You mentioned that If I thought that the issue was with the software, i should try a restore and getting it to work. The problem is that my error (23), and many others comes up when the restore fails. And you would be astonished to know that not all errors are hardware errors. Sometimes even software errors prevent restores. Funnily enough Apple itself mention that 'in rare cases, error 23 could be hardware related'.
- all Apple has done so far is replicate the issue. I don not know how anyone can conclude that the issue is a hardware issue.
And by the way, I am not certain that this is a software bug. Again if you read my Posts, you will notice I only want a confirmation,/proof that the issue is hardware related as they mention..
Please refrain do. Responding if there is nothing to add.

Some random songs/albums won't play on iPhone

I bought an album off of iTunes but after I synced my iPhone to my mac, the songs won't play on the iPhone. I did a spotlight search on the phone and it says they are on there but they won't play. I have my phone hooked up to my computer right now and it says i should have 1818 songs on the phone but in the phone's about section it says I only have 1773 songs. The unplayable songs range from being imported cd files to purchased songs from iTunes. I've tried restoring my phone, performing some disk utility stuff, reimporting my library on my mac, a lot of restarting and what not. Can anyone help me out here? Thanks!

I've had the exact same problem, and I think it's related to the iOS 4.2.1 update. Certain songs will simply not play on my iPhone after the 4.2.1 OS update, even though they work fine in iTunes. I've re-synced multiple times to no avail. The problem also happens with ringtones, which means I've missed a number of alarms because the ringtone I chose for the alarm no longer works on the iPhone!
I really hope Apple is planning to release a fix for this. It is incredibly frustrating.

HT1391 I started download on my iphone and cancelled the same before it could complete. There is no option of removing the incomplete download and also it is affecting my songs in 'Music'. The next or previous song is being played instead of the song sele

I started a download of a video in the app "Free gift for 12 days". I cancelled the download before it was completed. It is now affecting the music in my phone library, as the next or previous song is being played instead of the selected song. Any suggested solutions?
I have an iPhone 5 wid the latest OS 7.0.4 installed.

Nobody knows? Not even administrators?
Please it would be really nice to have help on that to take all the benefit of the remote app.
Thank you very much in advance.

I have an iPhone 4 on IOS5. I signed up for itunes match. After everything uploaded to the cloud, my songs are messed up. I'll select a song and the title will show with the right art work but a different song will start playing. Anyone have a solution?

I have an iPhone 4 on IOS5. I signed up for itunes match. After everything uploaded to the cloud, my songs are messed up. I'll select a song and the title will show with the right art work but a different song will start playing. Some songs won't play at all even though they do appear in the itunes store. The artwork almost always shows u blank until you turn it to landscape then it will appear. Anyone know what's going on?

I have found that scrolling through the album list (past albums without art) triggers the progress wheel next to the wifi symbol. You can scroll quickly through the whole collection and then wait! Artwork will appear gradually...
However, repeat visits to the Music App might initially show no artwork again, but it might spontaneously appear more quickly this time. The bad news is that the whole Music App is now sluggish as ****...

How can I show album art in the mini player when playing songs from a plugged in iPhone?

How can I show album art in the mini player when playing songs from a plugged in iPhone?
When I play from my phone and switch to the mini player it's always showing the music notes in the thumbnaill. It'd be nice if it could get album art off of the phone.
I'm on iTunes version 11.0.4.4

He @mracole,
it is very nice that you post a solution to complete the library with artwork for album's that do not have an artwork. Your solution perfectly addresses the problem for assigning artwork, BUT this thread is about CHANGING artwork for albums already uploaded into iTunes Match. Just try to replace for example a blue artwork cover for an album with a red one. If you made it in a simple way (without deleting the album from iTunes Match and local changes on the files with an external ID3-Application or 2 or more iTunes libraries on different Mac's) this is the right place to give a solution. I really tried for hours to change the artwork to make them visible in landscape cover flow mode on my iPhone5. In rare cases I made it, but then the covers sometimes where restored to the old onces - exacly how it is mentioned by Starhawk
As long as there is no simple way to change the cover of an iTunes Match stored album (you can change title, artist and so on without hitting "update iTunes Match" over all distributed Library on different devices - this date will be synchronized almost instantly) I considered the behaviour from iTunes as BUGGY! For me the local artwork cache (and if there is any iCloud artwork cache - I don't know) do not interfere with iCloud. Even when I delete the whole local cache (album artwork music - everything) I do not manage to change the artwork.
Regards from Munich, Germany

I downloaded several cds to my external hard drive in .mp3 format. Later, I copied them to iTunes. The songs only play when the external hard drive is plugged in. I tried to load the songs from iTunes to my iPhone and the songs don't play.

I downloaded several cds to my external hard drive in .mp3 format. Later, I copied them to iTunes. The songs only play when the external hard drive is plugged in. I tried to load the songs from iTunes to my iPhone and the songs don't play. I thought iTunes allowed me to transfer music to my iPhone and play it. What am I doing wrong?

Hi skoorb1,
When adding music to iTunes, you can set it to either make a local copy of the file, or simply point to the original location of the file (for example, on an external hard drive). If it is set to do the latter, it will not be able to play or transfer those files when the external hard drive is not plugged in. You may find the following article helpful:
iTunes: About the Add to Library, Import, and Convert functions
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1347
Regards,
- Brenden

Song fails to play on iPhone

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for