I've got odd and annoying music issue

Hi,

If I understand correctly your music purchases continue to play in your Mac, and you have this content backed up, so that is a good start. What is the exact error you get when you try to play some of this transferred content on your iPad Pro? If it says something along the lines of "This song is not currently available in your country or region" then I think you've run into an obscure file transfer bug that triggers an inappropriate error message. The Music app "thinks" the tracks have been added to the device, but has an issue playing them, perhaps because the storage location isn't entered correctly, or there is only a partial file, or some other problem, and then delivers this very unhelpful error message. What you actually need to do is remove the affected tracks (or at least their entries in the database) from the device, then add them back again. This can be done from Settings > Storage > Music > Edit, and then potentially artist by artist for affected artists, or via All Songs > Delete. Once this content has been removed from the iPad you can try syncing it once more from the library, where hopefully this time all transfers will be successful.

tt2

Painful. You shouldn't have to worry about losing access to content that you have paid for. That said, purchasing Music within the Apple Music store is merely a licence to listen to that content while it remains available within the Music Store.

As for your issues with Mac and iTunes, the most knowledgeable of our senior contributors is turingtest2. I'll see if I can enlist his help; hopefully he will drop by when he sees my call for assistance.

I'm a fellow user, so I cannot give you any promises about what may or may not happen with Apple's products and services in the future, but my understanding is that unprotected digital music that you've bought and downloaded to your computer remains yours and should always play in any suitable app. With pre-2010 purchases of 128k DRM protected content it gets a little more complicated, partly because these were originally sold on the basis of a single successful download with no redownload rights, and it is possible that at some point Apple could decide to stop supporting the old decryption system as they move to supporting higher quality streaming content. (I had some stealth protected WMA content that Microsoft broke back in the day.) While the rules on redownloading past purchases have changed there are still circumstances in which Apple may no longer be able to provide content that has been withdrawn from the iTunes Store. I note today, for example, that an Adele track may be pulled worldwide due to a copyright strike.

Assuming the issue here is old 128k AAC DRM content that isn't playing on the iPad but plays on your Mac then you can potentially burn this to audio CD, then rip back the recordings for a tiny loss of quality. The replacement tracks should be able to transfer to your iPad. Call me cynical but the idea that you need to rebuy everything, or purchase a subscription service, strikes me as upselling when they don't really understand the problem, or want to acknowledge that their software may be at fault. Sometimes it is actually necessary to wipe and reload a device to get it to behave properly. You may get away with reloading all music, or you might need to completely restore and then reload the device. Repeated syncing doesn't fix any issues with content that is supposed to be already on the device.

FWIW Zurarczurx's suggestion above can sometimes help with higher bitrate content as this translates to an instruction to remove the existing item and replace it with an alternate file, however I suspect you to take need the more radical approach of removing all music from the iPad, and then adding back fresh copies. Start by syncing back a few albums that you know won't play right now to see how that goes.

tt2

Try synching a few of the problem tracks from Mac to iPad and when you synch click on the "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps" at the bottom of the Finder window. I don't know if this will work but I'm wondering if the tracks that won't play have been corrupted and perhaps converting them will make the work. It doesn't change the bit rate of the songs on the Mac, so you won't lose anything. Only do it with a few tracks because the conversion takes a bit of time.

As long has you have backups you should be fine. I think Apple support have given you the wrong information. The software on devices is programmed by humans, and humans are fallible. Support personnel are not necessarily experts and may well be working from a script rather than hard won knowledge. I've probably restored the firmware on my various iPhones and iPads four or five times over the years as a last resort to fixing unwanted problems. Once Siri completely ceased to work, another time all but one song from my music library on the device was unceremoniously deleted at the outset of a two-hour drive. Restoring and/or reloading are the tools for fixing these types of issues.

I'll repeat, my advice is that you open Settings on the iPad, then go into General > iPad Storage > Music > Edit > All Songs > Delete and confirm. Once the process has completed connect your device to your computer and sync content to it again.

Should that not work a factory restore, followed by restoring your back up (ideally take two, one on your computer, and one in iCloud), and then reloading your media should do the trick.

tt2

Many thanks turingtest2 for picking-up this thread.

-LP

You're most welcome. 🙂

tt2