Apple Music doesn’t work on flights

vasilis71 wrote:

The ONLY reason to pay for this service is to have offline songs. One of the most common places to need offline songs is an airplane.

Actually, the reason to pay for the service is to have access to the song.

Again, I can guarantee the songs are successfully downloaded since they work offline in every other circumstance. This only happens on airplanes and I’m wondering if it’s to do with location, something completely unacceptable since the songs are on my phone, paid for.

Do they work when you are completely offine in the other locations? With no Internet connectivity at all, even cellular data connectivity that is restricted to allow data transfer, but not music streaming?

What happens if you successfully play some of the offline songs in the airport, right before you board a flight? Does that make a difference as to whether offline listening works aboard the plane?

I'm wondering if the issue has something to do with authorization - with the Music app wanting to occasionally "phone home" to make sure that you are still paid-up and authorized to play the offline copies. (Presumably it checks every now and then, so you can't just stop paying for the subscription, keep the offline copies, and use them forever, free of charge.)

Please fix your problems or provide me with a workaround. Spotify is looking very attractive once more; I might have to sell my Apple HomePod but I guess that’s life.

If this ("your problems") is addressed to Apple, you need to contact Apple. You are talking to other customers here.

Settings, Music, Sync library off then back on, re download music. Voilà

vasilis71 wrote:

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I was under the impression I was contacting Apple through this post but obviously I was wrong.

I found this Web page, which may be of interest. At the very bottom, there's a "Get Support / Start now >" link. If you follow that, it appears to give you the option to chat with an Apple representative or call Apple. (I stopped there, and didn't actually chat with, or call, them.)

Music - Official Apple Support

I wouldn't think you'd need a lot of fiddling around – but I have had occasional problems at home where I have tried to play a song, only to be told (incorrectly) that I am not authorized to play it. When I try to play the song again, things work. This has happened at home, where my phone has a WiFi connection to the Internet.

So there may be some glitches in the authorization system – and hence my wondering whether playing a song successfully before boarding the flight, might help in avoiding an authorization error during the flight.

vasilis71 wrote:

Thanks again for the workaround. I do think it’s kind of silly that these access checks don’t get done on payment date and saved till next payment date, but then I’m not a software engineer so what do I know.

I think the authorization system should have been designed with enough flexibility (of some sort) to keep the problem from happening. Whether by the implementation you propose, or a different one.

Your offline listening copies should work for several days after the last time that you had Internet connectivity (assuming that you were still an Apple Music subscriber at that time). Maybe not forever – to keep somebody from loading up an iPhone, turning on airplane mode forever, and getting an "iPod" full of "free" music. But a few days, anyway, to reduce the chances of what happened to you.

You might want to contact Apple, and let them know of the problem. Maybe there is a bug in their code that they can fix in a future iOS release.

Music - Official Apple Support

I also recently started paying for the subscription service and can no longer listen to any music when I’m on a plane. Why? How can I fix this?

This sounds exactly like what I get when purchasing Music from Apple.

For grins and giggles try “connecting to airline Wi-Fi while on board plane” and see if it will then play song.

If it doesn’t play on plane while flying after getting a Wi-Fi signal, then I would suggest you call 1-800-MY-APPLE. They will help determining what needs to be done.

And by the way, as my opening statement says, this happens to me when on the ground AND when the songs have not been ‘told to download song’ to my device.

Apple assumes you will be streaming songs to your device, to save space.

But I believe you in what you’ve reported, just checking first. Call Apples Tech support as I listed above. Music is too important to not have on an airplane these days.

Best of days to you

This happened to me for every single flight. I decided to switch to Spotify and everything works smoothly on it. I suggest going to spotify as even though the audio quality is slightly worse(barely noticeable) it doesn’t have these glitches and bugs. Overall a better experience on Spotify.