iTunes Purchases Won’t Play on iPhone: Reset Your Iphone
Currently, we cannot play ANY songs (hundreds of songs) that have been purchased from iTunes on our iPhone. Effectively, all orders from the past few years do not work on our iPhone.
However they do work in iTunes on our G4 running 10.5.4 OS and our new MacBook (4,1) purchased in February 2008. Both machines are running iTunes 7.7 with iPhone firmware 2.0. (5A347).
We are also running/syncing this iPhone on both machines (which maybe isn’t a good idea. We’re just not sure about that.).
The two computers (the G4 desktop and macbook) are the only two authorized to play our itunes music. We are awaiting an answer from Apple Support and will follow up here.
Update on 7/22: The iTunes music now works on our iPhone. The trick? Reset your iPhone!
This is how to reset your iPhone according to Apple Support:
July 21, 2008 – 1:45 pmTo reset iPhone, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least 10 seconds. During this time, a red “power off” slider may appear and the screen may go black, but do not release Sleep/Wake and Home buttons until the Apple logo appears.
8 Responses to “iTunes Purchases Won’t Play on iPhone: Reset Your Iphone”
Hi — I tried this on my new 3G, and it didn’t work. Any other suggestions? I’ve checked the boxes under the music tab, etc. They will play on my computer, but won’t transfer.
thanks!
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By amy on Aug 1, 2008
I have a similar problem. The ringtone sounds fine, so it is not the speaker. The music plays fine if I insert the iphone into a dock, so the music is still there ….it must be some setting.
I tried reseting the phone, as mentioned in the previous log…that didn’t work either.
When I wake or turn on the phone there is a message, “This accessory is not made to work with an Iphone, do you want to turn on airplane mode?”. This indicates to me that the phone thinks it is connected to some device and is sending the “sounds” to that non-existant device, rather than to the iphone speaker.
Does anybody have any suggestions about what I can do to fix this?
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By Jeff G on Sep 7, 2009
I have a new 3GS and the resetting doesn’t work for me either.
The songs play fine on my laptop.
On the other hand I have some songs purchased on my laptop, that I can only play at my iphone.
Could it be some DRM issue, even though its the same account on the wo devices, that somehow you can only play it one place or another?
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By Ceciliy on Feb 15, 2010
I’ve had the same problem. Tried a reset, a software up load but no luck.
However, some of my purchases in the last two years work, but any before that wont play on my iphone, but they work fine on my ipod, and my computer.
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By wyatt on Jul 5, 2010
I’m having the same problem too. I purchased and downloaded an album from iTunes on my iPhone this morning, the music played fine all day from the phone; now after this evening’s sync and transfer to my laptop’s iTunes none of these new songs will play on my phone. Anyone have any ideas?
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By Jeremiah on Sep 8, 2010
I had the same problem on my iphone 3gs. i was running software version 4.2.1 and had itunes version 10.1..0.56. when i brought songs off of the itunes store on my computer, and then synced and tried to play on my iphone, the album artwork would show for a couple of seconds and then just skip song. I rang apple and they said my 90 day phone support had run out so i either had to pay £25 for a one time phone support session or go into my local apple shop (miles away)
SOLUTION.
(1) The file i was trying to play was an m4a file- the iphone is supposedly able to play this file (obviously not)
(2) to find out if the song is an m4a file, go onto itunes, right click a song, get info, and at the bottom where is says ‘where’ should be the location of the song on your pc and the type of file at the end
example: c:\Users\mrexample-pc\music\itunesmedia\music\foals\antidotes1 the french open.m4a
(3) if the file is m4a or any other kind, try converting it to mp3 easily with itunes.
all you have to do is select the songs you want to convert (Ctrl+Left Click) and right click and click ‘create mp3 version’. a duplicate file will appear in an mp3 format.
(4) delete the m4a file unless you sync using playlists.
Hopefully you are done. I hope this helps- i spend hours trying to find an answer.
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By peeoeey on Dec 29, 2010
THANK YOU!! This worked like a charm.
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By Wendy on Jun 7, 2011
I had previously put songs on my Iphone 4 with my husband’s account at Itunes and now created my own account. My songs I just purchased on my account will not go to my phone. How do I get to use all of these songs?
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By k-k on Jun 11, 2011