Why is my iTunes Music app suddenly skipping every track?

Question

I was listening to music on the way home today, and all of a sudden it wouldn't play the next track. On closer inspection it was skipping through every track, regardless of whether I had pressed play or not. The majority (I would say about 90-95%) of my music is streamed from iTunes Match, but the very few downloaded songs on my phone were also doing the same thing. I tried to download a few more of the songs, but it wouldn't allow me to. It looks like it tries to connect to do so, but cancels itself.

So far I have tried the following without success:

• Closed and re-opened the app;
• Restarted the phone;
• Hard reset the phone;
• Signed in and out of iTunes Match on the phone;
• Connected the phone to my Mac and tried to run a sync or two with iTunes;
• Erased all settings;
• Restored from an iTunes Backup;

It is still skipping through every track and wont let me download. This is very annoying, seeing as I pay for things to "just work" but more often than not I'm having to spend my nights doing admin for the stuff that should just work.

What else can I try other than take it into a store, which I do not want to do as I really don't have the time to deal with Apple's clueless Geniuses.

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE : I had already checked the Server Status at Apple's website, but I neglected to add that to my question

Answer 1

It was reported earlier today on multiple sources that Apple services were experiencing outages throughout the day. Service seems to have been restored after about an hour or so of outage, and Apple has yet to officially respond as the reasons why but it did correspond during the VMA announcement.

For future status of their online services don't forget to check - https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

Answer 2

I had the same issue today. Reading through various threads a common theme kept coming up. Log out/in from iTunes. I went into Settings on my iPhone 6+ then clicked on my Apple ID at the top. Then I clicked Sign Out. Then I logged back in. When I went back to the Music app, I shuffled my songs and they all played which is a mix of iTunes Match music and Purchased music. (I don't subscribe to Apple Music. I don't trust it. After all these years of carefully perfecting my library the last thing I need is it getting hosed.) Anyway, give it a try. It worked for me.