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Music: Cannot play this item. There was a problem playing this on your iPhone

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Bill Av

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 21, 2006
285
207
"Music" can't open the files I have on my iPhone. I can control music if I’ve already initiated playback on my phone. When the album finishes, I can’t choose anything else from the watch.

I’m sadly using all the latest OS versions on my devices
 

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looks like other people might have solved it with a hard reset on both devices. beyond that 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Tried the hard reset and it didn't work. Did a factory wipe on both and it didn't work. It's odd, I can select from "Songs" and they play. If I choose from "albums" or "artists" it won't - unless I choose "shuffle". However, if I choose something that I bought from iTunes, it will usually play without any issue.
 
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I have this exact issue too. AW4 and 11 Pro Max. I’m almost glad it’s not just me.

Shuffle works, but selecting individual songs, artists and albums just doesn’t. Tried a watch hard reset, an iTunes album reset and resync. Still broken.
 
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When I select an album (stored on phone) from the watch and start play, it plays the first album it comes to when listed alphabetically instead of my chosen album. Exactly the same as my Parrot car system used to before you selected something - at least that then followed my instructions, unlike the watch!
 
davejsb said:
I have this exact issue too. AW4 and 11 Pro Max. I’m almost glad it’s not just me.

Shuffle works, but selecting individual songs, artists and albums just doesn’t. Tried a watch hard reset, an iTunes album reset and resync. Still broken.
Click to expand...


Apple Watch and music

That’s my setup, too- Apple Watch 4 and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Good to know. I was on with Apple support yesterday for about an hour and a half. No resolution, but they’re going to call me back on Friday. I made a video of the problem, and will upload it to them if they want it. They asked me when the problem started and I couldn’t really answer. I know that it worked fine when I had my old phone (7+) running iOS 13 and the Watch had Watch os6 on it. (I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the UI was, I didn’t expect the ability to pick individual songs again).

Question for you: do you know when the problem started for you? Was it when you switched to the iPhone 11 Pro Max or was it when you upgraded to WatchOS 6.1? I’ll mention it when they call back.
 
Bill Av said:
Apple Watch and music

That’s my setup, too- Apple Watch 4 and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Good to know. I was on with Apple support yesterday for about an hour and a half. No resolution, but they’re going to call me back on Friday. I made a video of the problem, and will upload it to them if they want it. They asked me when the problem started and I couldn’t really answer. I know that it worked fine when I had my old phone (7+) running iOS 13 and the Watch had Watch os6 on it. (I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the UI was, I didn’t expect the ability to pick individual songs again).

Question for you: do you know when the problem started for you? Was it when you switched to the iPhone 11 Pro Max or was it when you upgraded to WatchOS 6.1? I’ll mention it when they call back.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it started for me when I upgraded the WatchOS. I remember it working fine when I started with the new phone.
 
Yeah, I noticed. Apple didn't call me back today. And since we're the only people complaining, this might not get fixed.
 
I got this issue myself. It’s annoying this current IOS and watch OS has been pretty buggy.
 
Latest watch. So hopefully it's just an AWos problem. I'd feel a little more confident that this would be fixed if we had the outpouring of complaints that the overzealous app closing bug had.
 
I tried an experiment today and found that if my BT earphones are connected to the watch when I select music (music is on phone), then the correct album plays.

However unfortunately, when I then switch to audiobook listening, the sound switches back to the phone. If I want to listen on earphones, I have to disconnect from the watch and connect to the phone. Surely both music and audiobook audio should work the same way?
 
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I called Apple back. Turns out that they sent me an email (that I ignored) with all the information to call back in with, so I wound up talking to someone else. But eventually they took the logs from my phone, the screenshot of the error message and the video I made of the problem. Hopefully they’ll be able to do something with it.
 
davejsb said:
I’m so glad that I’ve not spent £2,000 on the phone and watch.

Oh.
Click to expand...
I shouldn’t be so negative. It’s just that I’ve just had similar problems that took years to get fixed (literally two operating systems long) with no acknowledgement of the problem from Apple. However, Apple added the “now playing” complication to the Modular Infograph watch face and they brought back full functionality to the music app on the watch - both of which I had given up on ever getting. So I’m more confident that this is just a bug that they’ll iron out within a patch or two.
 
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Add me to the list here! I’m running iPhone 7 (iOS 13.2.2), Apple Watch 4 (6.1 (17S84).
I almost always have my Beats Solo2 wired headphones connected to my iPhone with the lightning x 3.5mm adapter and when I try to play music by selecting it on my Apple Watch (an album) it gives me that “There was a problem....” on the Apple Watch screen.
So then I have to pull the phone out and initiate play in that.

I remember this functionality working in the past and around the time I upgraded to watchOS 6 is when it broke. Maybe it’s worth noting I was part of the iOS 13 public beta and upgraded to GM from there rather than wiping?
Anyway, hope this gets fixed eventually! I’ll submit this to Apple.
 
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I also noticed that asking Siri to play music (from the watch) has the same issues. Also if I hit "Love" on the watch, it doesn't get tagged as such on my phone.
 
Still not working on 13.2.3

hopefully a new WatchOS will be out soon to fix this, reported to Apple!
 
Count me in on this extremely annoying bug. I'm on the latest iOS / WatchOS versions on my AW5 and iPhone X, it drives me mad that I always have to get my phone out of my pocket to play a song from a different album instead of simply doing this on my watch.
 
Apple called me back two days ago. They thanked me for the video. I didn’t think to ask if they were able to reproduce the problem, but I didn’t get the feeling that they could. They did say that this isn’t the proper behavior, and to download updates as they come.
 
Any idea when the next WatchOS version is going to be released? Haven‘t followed the beta releases recently but I‘m also sure it had worked fine when I got the watch running an older WatchOS version.
 
Went to the Apple Store and showed them the problem on my watch. They said, I should file a bug report online (which I did). Let's hope for Apple to fix this in the next WatchOS update.
 
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