Think about you are waiting to play your favorite song Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” on your iPhone Music app, but the Music app pops up an error saying “Item Not Available, This item can’t be played”. Of course this will let you down.
In fact, lots of people got the same issues when downloading and playing songs using Apple Music app. And we can easily get some instances on twitter and Apple discussion forum.
I’m currently playing the item that can’t be played. I feel special 🙂 #AppleMusic pic.twitter.com/4rCmMn9xu4
— Matt Colman (@matt_colman) May 5, 2017
ST4VROS also reported the same issue on Apple Discussion long ago, she/he said,”Since the last update, half of my Apple Music has now been greyed out and gives error messages (This item can’t be played).”
Why Apple Music Item Not Available and How to Fix the Issue of “This item can’t be played” on iPhone Music?
The cause to this Apple music playing problem varies from people to people, so it’s hard to find what causes yours. It may be the iCloud server issue, network connection status or iOS bugs. But there are some tips people said useful to fix this issue. If you can’t play music on your iPhone, it’s advisable to have a try.
1. Check the internet connection on your iPhone.
Make sure you connected your device to Wi-Fi or cellular data. Because only in a good network connection, you can normally download songs from iCloud Music Library and Apple Music to your iPhone and start your playing.
2. Check whether you turn on iCloud Music Library.
If you use iTunes Match or iCloud Music Library, make sure you have enabled iCloud Music Library on your iOS device and computer. Sometimes iCloud Music Library may be automatically turned off so that songs won’t be downloaded from iCloud. That’s why you have the song list but can’t play any songs on the list.
To enable iCloud Muisc Library.
- iOS devices: Go to Settings > Music.
- Mac: Go to Menu > iTunes > Preference.
- Windows PC: Go to Menu > Edit > Preference.
3. Check the server status of Apple Music.
If you are one of Apple Music subscribers and meet “this item cannot be played” issue, you can check the server status of Apple Music. Because if there is something wrong withthe server, you definitely can’t use this music streaming service.
4. Re-sync songs to your iPhone.
If you can’t play songs that you synced from computer, you can turn off Apple Music and iCloud music library and try again to play songs. Besides, people said re-syncing all songs from computer to your device with iTunes may work on this issue.
Also Read: How to Sync Music from Computer to iPhone
5. Contact Apple Support.
If all of these tips don’t work on your iPhone music issue, you can contact Apple technical support team for help, or directly write your issue by @AppleSupport on Twitter. Many users have done these.
6. Use Alternative to Apple Music.
You can use alternatives to Apple Music, like Spotify or some similar apps, to listen to your favorite songs. Generally, music lover uses more than one Music apps on smartphone.
You may not find your tip here or you have some better tips, just post them on the comment section.