Dotted grey circle

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Pavb2

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Hi all

Had no problems before syncing between new iPod touch and iTunes library. I just added some songs to iTunes on the laptop and they play ok but when I try to sync those songs to the iPod all I see is the dotted grey circle and they are not on the iPod.

I've tried syncing automatically and manually and those songs won't copy across to the iPod. I then bought some tunes of iTunes and these will go on to the iPod but likewise the dotted circle is against them and they are greyed out in iTunes on the laptop.

Any help much appreciated.
 

cjmnews

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You don't say what version of iTunes you are running. Some of the older versions had issues with syncing that version 12 supposedly fixed.

You can try, removing the songs from your iPod Touch, then add them back on. If that does not work, you can try restoring the iPod Touch to see if that resolves it.
 

Pavb2

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Thanks I'm running the latest version of iTunes I wanted to avoid restoring if possible
 

cjmnews

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OK, I just noticed you said Dotted Circle not Grey Circle.

Dotted Circle songs are ones that were streamed over the network to your device. They are not technically on your iPod, but there is a reference to them in a cache on your iPod. You can right click on them, choose Get Info, then look at the file tab and it will say Stream for the Size.

If you open the Music App (and are on IOS 9) and you search for these songs, they will be there. If you tap the ... symbol next to the song it will show you the cloud symbol stating that you can download it. These you have to ignore.

I did find one track that did this that was not streamed. So I guessed that a single quote was the issue, removed it, synced and it appeared on my iPhone. Then I searched for tracks with single quotes in my library and found many. So the single quote is not the issue. I put the quote back where it belonged and it synced fine.

My guess is these songs have something funky in their track information. Altering it and putting it back resolves the problem. Since I can't tell what was wrong it is hard to inform Apple of the issue. The track I was messing with was purchased from the iTunes Store in December.

Try altering something in these tracks, sync, undo the alteration, sync and it should be resolved.
 

Pavb2

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the songs were on an external hard drive Not all were purchased some were cd's that were burnt that I brought into the iTunes library. They play ok in iTunes but won't transfer to the iPod.

I purchased some songs from iTunes which went on to the iPod but again they had the grey dotted circle on them in iTunes. I did notice that when I synced the iPod it did not show the message "Transfering Purchases" which it usually does.

I tried with a different cable but no luck.
 

cjmnews

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The suggestion was to edit the song info through the Get Info window.
Then change it back.
 

Pavb2

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I was installling a new hard drive and Windows 10 and not sure what happened but the problem resolved itself
 

offroad

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couple years later. am having this same problem. can not get a way to fix the greyed dotted circle music. cant seem to delete it either. Tried completely uninstalling ITUNES and deleting residual directories. Then imported my music again. Still having problems.
 

cjmnews

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Have you tried altering the tracks with the dotted circles with the Song Info window, saving the change, then changing it back, then syncing?

That was the suggestion 3 years ago, and it seemed to work for me.
 

offroad

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found a fix sort of. iTunes is such PITA. Rebuilt the library completely. First I made sure to EXPORT all my playlists to a saved text only directory (been doing this for years so not a new process, when I save them to dropbox. Playlists are such a big part of ITUNES and yet saving them should be an easy process, but I digress). Then completely uninstall ITUNES and kill/erase the directory that ITUNES is in.

Reinstalled ITUNES. Reimported all my owned MP3 music that is saved local (17000 songs). Made sure that APPLE MUSIC is turned off, and that ICLOUD MUSIC LIBRARY is turned off. Also make sure that the laptop is in AIRPLANE mode so ITUNES does not spend then next day trying to synchronize across the internet (again because ITUNES is screwed up and should not be doing that unless I tell it to, by default should not do that). Of course ITUNES then tries to level out my music audio amplitude automatically (and should not be as it just slows the ITUNES app again).

Re IMPORT ed all my text playlists. ITUNES will do a library IMPORT of the playlists very nicely as it searches for the song as it exists and puts all the correct links to the song in the IMPORT playlist. ITUNES will now recognize that my owned music is owned as MP3 files. Then I can set my IPHONE to MANUALLY MANAGE MUSIC. Then I can move artists and playlist to my IPHONE and they will copy over instantly. RESULT -- NO GREY CIRCLE EVER!!!

Noticed that ITUNES tries to match songs as something in my ICLOUD first, and completely ignores that I have a local MP3 copy of the song. That is a major flaw that creates GREY CIRCLE errors. Well the work around as mentioned above fixes this issue. Hope this helps someone else down the road. This all works with the latest version of IOS on my iPhone, and the latest version of ITUNES 12.
 

cjmnews

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There is no need to rebuild the library completely. This does nothing to resolve this issue. (documented for future readers)

Apple Music is a problem all on it's own, where it prevents the user from syncing their local music. Apple Music use will ALWAYS produce dotted grey circle music on your iOS device. Just ignore it.

Manually managed music (and automatically synced) will prevent grey dotted circle, as long as you never access the cloud version of the music. Tip: In the Apple Music app tap Downloaded before selecting Albums, Artists, Playlists etc.

Offroad's issue is caused by Apple Music. And it really isn't an issue. These songs were streamed from Apple Music and will be grey dotted circle songs because of the streaming aspect of Apple Music.
 

offroad

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then APPLE MUSIC should be disabled by default in ITUNES. Think we are agreeing that ITUNES just has messed this situation up completely with how it technically does not work correctly (even though its commented that its APPLE MUSIC not ITUNES, which its the same app controlling the music collection). Obviously APPLE understands this problem, as they are cancelling ITUNES and will not be using it from now on, as already announced by APPLE. Just not sure when they will be canceling the app for former WINDOWS users. Have already taken steps to migrate my 200 song plus curated and controlled playlists to other platforms, as a 17000 song collection really cant not handle the random
 

cjmnews

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Apple Music is disabled by default. It is a pay service. If you choose to pay for it, you don’t get to sync local music. This is how it is designed and works fine. It is a service that runs in iTunes and on mobile devices.

iTunes is being replaced, the replacement will probably be announced September 2019.

iTunes can manage average library sizes like 17,000 songs it does have troubles with huge libraries over 150,000 tracks. Hopefully the new solution will improve this.

Unfortunately, Apple has let their smart playlists stagnate the last 12 years, making them useless for audiobooks and podcasts, and barely usable for music. This is the feature that no other music service had, a difference from the others. I am hoping the new music management tool will put the smart back into Apple based playlists and all their player apps will utilize them.
 
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