iOS 5.1.1 Music App Issues on iPhone 4

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor]

It's good to be back at the Community for a bit. However, I have a slight issue with my recently acquired iPhone 4 that I need some assistace with...

I set up my iPhone 4 yesterday - cut my SIM card to fit the microSIM slot and activated it through iTunes. Everything went well, as I had hoped it to. Later on, I tried to play one of the songs in my library that I had downloaded fresh from my iTunes library to the phone, and for some reason, it would not play. I tried another song; same thing. I figured out that the songs would just not play, would try to play but would fail, or just skip to the next song. Only a specific 3 out of my 25 (and counting) songs would play - and they're not even my top favorites. 

I googled this issue, and figured out that I am not the only one that this has happened to. It seems to be an issue with iOS 5 in general, and users like myself are definitely not happy about it. I have tried posted solutions such as un-syncing the music from the phone, then re-syncing it (multiple times), a hard reset, and even a complete restore. It still has not worked. I have spent hours on this issue and dedicated my whole day yesterday to setting up ONE phone instead of alternating between two/three yesterday, and I am getting very frustrated. It still does not work like it should.

I thought I would try to download non-iTunes purchased music to the phone, and would you believe it; IT PLAYS! I don't want to download potentially illegal music all to my phone just to replace the songs that were purchased from iTunes that refuse to play for me. 

Help would be MUCH appreciated, as always. 

Wild Banchi

[youngjm ACE - Professor · Accepted solution]

Do you have iCloud and music match? If so, you can delete the song from your library but not from iCloud and re-download a fresh copy? Make sure iCloud has a good version.

Btw do the songs play on your computer?

Good luck and welcome back.

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor]

Let me try that.

And interesting...I followed your suggestion to play the songs in my iTunes library and they skip around until they play one of the specific three songs, just like how it's happening on the phone.

I'll follow back with you once I try the iCloud music match. Crossing my fingers.

[youngjm ACE - Professor]

Good luck definitely sounds like corrupt files.

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor]

I set up iCloud on the phone, but I went to iTunes Match and it looks like it's a $25 annual subscription, which I'm not interested in paying...so I guess I don't have iTunes Match, after all...

Am I able to access iCloud from iTunes? If so, would you happen to know how I would go about doing that?

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor · Accepted solution]

I figured out the problem. You're right, youngjm, the iTunes files were corrupt. Originally, I had my iTunes account acitvated on my newer laptop, but I was not able to use it because I was loaning it to a friend. I recently downloaded iTunes on my older laptop which I'm currently using, and the music files must not have transferred correctly when I set it up.

I plugged my phone into the newer laptop as I had just gotten it back, tried to play a few songs that were originally not working, and voila - they played! I then proceeded to download all of my songs, and now they work!

Now the two songs that I did NOT download from iTunes are not on my newer laptop, but this one, instead. They both work on this one. Would it be safe to delete the corrupt files downloaded from iTunes on this computer, and keep the other two that were downloaded from a third party? The iTunes songs are already backed up on my newer laptop, but the non-dowloaded songs do not show up because I downloaded them onto this laptop. 

Do you think I could download the two non-iTunes songs onto my iPhone without replacing the songs that did not work before? Or would that delete the working ones and put only the two songs on there?

Sorry for some possible confusion, but you have definitely helped, youngjm.

[youngjm ACE - Professor]

If I understand correctly you should be fine deleting the corrupt versions. Keep in mind too that even without iTunes match, you should be Able to find copies to download again by going into the iTunes store and finding the songs in the purchased section.

Really glad things are working out! Once everything is working right I would copy the iTunes library and all your associated media to a second external drive for backup purposes.

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor]

I really want to thank you for your help, youngjm. If you had not suggested to check the songs in iTunes, I would have had to deal with only three working songs.

Thanks again!

[youngjm ACE - Professor]

You are welcome!

[anton697]

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Wild Banchi wrote:

I thought I would try to download non-iTunes purchased music to the phone, and would you believe it; IT PLAYS! I don't want to download potentially illegal music all to my phone just to replace the songs that were purchased from iTunes that refuse to play for me. 

Help would be MUCH appreciated, as always. 

Wild Banchi

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Are you implying with your comment (underlined above) that downloading songs not purchased from iTunes onto your phone/device would be considered potentially illegal...or did I misinterpret what context you meant by "download"?

In any case, you could try redownloading your iTunes-purchased songs (at least the ones that won't play on your phone) to your iTunes library and then try to sync them again, as you can download any iTunes content that you purchased from the iTunes Store as many times as you want.   Just to be safe--you may want to delete the problematic songs from your iTunes library first, but don't delete the songs themselves from your computer entirely--move them to a different directory on your computer as backup in case for whatever reason you're not able to redownload the songs from iTunes.

[Wild Banchi ACE - Professor]

Yes, those songs would be downloaded illegally, would they not?

And thank you for your input. I did not know that I could re-download songs that were already purchased. I'll delete the corrupt songs and re-download fresh copies so that I won't have to worry about this the next time I sync my iPhone to my older laptop.

[anton697]

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Wild Banchi wrote:
Yes, those songs would be downloaded illegally, would they not?

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As I alluded to in my previous post--depends on what you meant by "download(ed)"; I've downloaded plenty of songs to my iPhone that weren't purchased from iTunes...but those were songs ripped from music CDs which I legally purchased.

[GeekBoy]

I have had a similar issue in the past, but it usuallly happens to me when I forget to re-authorize the iTunes instance to my AppleID, so as far as iTunes is concerned, it isn't authiorized to play thoise songs, so it won't.  Once I re-authorize iTunes (through the iTunes Store), everythign is just fine (of course, I have to re-sync the iDevice to update teh authoirizations on it too).