Contributor I

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iPhone Music Library Issues

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
April 7, 2025
15 replies
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Newer Sonos user. Working with a playbar with gen 2 sub. Works great for TV/Movies. I can stream audio from my Apple Music account fine.

BUT…

I also have about 30 GB of personal music I’ve digitized from my CDs over the years and built playlists for them. When I try to stream from my iPhones internal music library via the Apple Music most of the songs are greyed out. Library is mostly AAC with some MP3 formatting. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern as to what will stream and what won’t. Even albums are mixed with some songs playable and some not which were certainly the same file type.

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Best answer by jgatie

“Your library” is not the music on your phone. It is the music you own in iTunes duplicated in Apple Music’s cloud. So that is coming from Apple Music, not the your phone. The tracks must be missing from there, because nothing in the Sonos app can access any music files on your phone. Somehow you need to sync your iTunes library (or whatever it uses now) with your Apple Music account.

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J

JLO1995Author

Contributor I

As far as the Bose Soundtouch is concerned, it hasn’t been sold in 5 years and their playing of local libraries was plagued with the same problems as Sonos. The Soundtouch line was discontinued before Apple made the final changes that caused Sonos to remove this function completely.

It may be “old” tech and the app it’s perfect like not showing album art. But it plays my local library off my phone flawlessly and the volume control it much more responsive than the sonos app. I use it daily.

jgatie

I’m angry at all. I’m just pointing out the holes in your explanation. Like why some songs works and some don’t. As the example in the AC/DC album it’s not an Apple Music streaming catalogue gap, resulting in the sonos being able to stream only part of the album. Apple isn’t missing the title track. So by the explanation the entire album would be playable with no tracks being greyed out.

It’s also not a local file format difference or DRM issue as that album was ripped to my local library from the same disc at the same time.

I really don’t know what you are trying to do. Playing songs located on your mobile device is not even partially supported, it simply no longer exists as of 2020. Whatever AC/DC tracks you are seeing (or partially seeing) in the Sonos app, they aren’t the ones stored on your device (which used to be in their own “On this iDevice” section of the app). I repeat, no tracks located on your mobile device can be played (or even seen) in the Sonos app.

So in that screenshot of the Sonos app you attached above, those cannot possibly be tracks located on your phone. They are from some service or a local library stored on a PC or NAS.

jgatie

I did a little investigating. That version of “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)” is marked with an E for Explicit. I didn’t test it myself, but I imagine if your Apple Music account is set to not allow explicit lyrics, it will be greyed out.

J

JLO1995Author

Contributor I

When I launch sonos and select Apple Music as my service it pulls up a window that looks like the native Apple Music app down to the selections available are the same (albums, artists, songs, playlists).

When I nagivate that way to my AC/DC albums Dirty Deeds is missing 2 tracks. Other albums such as back in black are not. This example is purely because of alphabetical order and was the first artist I picked.

However when I select search it allows to search Apple Music or your library. Pardon me for being mislead but “your library” gives the impression it’s going to search what’s on my phone in my native library, not a streaming service. Especially since the other option is clearly searching the streaming service.

If I search “your library” for the same album I get the same result as if I navigated there from my list of albums on the initial option screen (albums, artists, etc).

However if I search Apple Music for the same album I get the entire track list with nothing greyed out.

I acknowledge I’m not an app expert or developer. But this makes no sense to me and points to an app glitch on the sonos side, not an Apple issue. That or the layout and language used such as “your library” don’t mean what they do on every other app I have.

While searching each time for a title to listen too is a bit of a nuisance it’s more of an issue with my playlists since most of them are missing 1/3 to ½ of the tracks due to being greyed out.

jgatieAnswer

“Your library” is not the music on your phone. It is the music you own in iTunes duplicated in Apple Music’s cloud. So that is coming from Apple Music, not the your phone. The tracks must be missing from there, because nothing in the Sonos app can access any music files on your phone. Somehow you need to sync your iTunes library (or whatever it uses now) with your Apple Music account.

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