Apple Music: "Item not available in your country or region" error in iOS.

Odd and irritating problem this. I have a large music library comprising lossy AAC, MP3 and Apple Lossless files, all stored on an external drive. These were added to Apple Music in macOS running Ventura 13.7.2 without copying the files over to my main Music folder and ensuring the lossy and lossless files were kept separate ('keep music media folder organised' is unchecked as I don't want lossless and lossy albums mixed up). I also subscribe to iTunes Match so that I can access my music anywhere without having to carry a hard copy of the library around with me. All is well and good for the lossy but not the lossless files. In the latter case, many (but not necessarily all) of the songs in an album won't play. Instead, they're grayed out and I get a "This item Item is not currently available in your country or region" dialogue when I try playing them on Apple Music in iOS in or out of the house. The curious thing is that the same files are available to play on the Mac housing my music folder (on the external drive) through the Music app and will play just fine in iOS over my local network using Airplay and the 'Remote' app. So this is a problem restricted to file access through the Music app on iOS. I have tried clearing caches, signing out and then back in again on multiple devices, clearing my entire library and then importing everything again (after deleting the locally stored musiclibrary file). But nothing seems to fix it. All my devices are signed into the one Apple account registered in the UK and I have no other. Any other suggestions for a fix gratefully considered!

Posted on Jan 13, 2025 02:35 AM

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Jan 13, 2025 07:18 AM in response to David Miller7

Update! The problem also affects Music synchronised via Apple Match on another Mac and I think this problem only appeared after I'd moved my library to an external drive. The thing is that there's no obvious difference between songs that I can play and songs that I can't! They all match OK, but for some obscure reason, Apple seems to arbitrarily decide that some songs on the same album cannot be played in my region.

Jan 14, 2025 04:43 AM in response to David Miller7

See Make a split library portable - Apple Community and Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community. It is perfectly possible to place your entire library on an external drive, you just need to do it in a way that is sympathetic to the way Music operates. In general cloning a typical library from one location to another, then option starting Music to choose the library on the new path works. It gets more complicated when you have legacy content in old iTunes Media folders, at which point you should probably consolidate to the new path so that Music has all of the correct path references.


tt2

Jan 14, 2025 02:24 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for responding. I solved the problem by copying the library from the external, back to the internal drive again. All tracks are now available (well, cloud copies that is) on other devices! As the problem only began after I'd moved the library off the internal drive to save space, I can only assume either that it needed to be on the internal drive (in the Music folder, which is unlikely) or copying them to the external drive outside Apple Music and then adding them without copying in the process, somehow corrupted metadata on some files that couldn't be fixed by logging out and then back in again etc.

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Apple Music: "Item not available in your country or region" error in iOS.

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