Q: Songs Disappearing from iTunes

In April of last year I had just over 30,000 songs on my computer.  I know this because the girl I was dating at the time commented on it and her and I spent hours going through my collection. 

Today I have just over 17,000 songs. 

I have never deleated any myself, I've never had any viral problems with my computer, no one has "hacked" it or done anything malicious to it, but for some reason iTunes deletes 100's of songs from my PC monthly.  I really didn't start to notice this until my number dropped below 25,000 and now I check it daily and like clockwork there are missing songs.

Odd thing is that I've got over 200 songs on my ipod that were put on there by itunes less than 2-3 months ago and yet they aren't on the PC now...

This is crazy.

Most of the songs of mine that have been dropped are all from CD's and other music libraries that have been imported, but some are songs I know I purchased from the itunes store.

Still no response from Apple...

Also having this problem.  I have about 6000+ songs on my ipod, and just every now and again, I will get the grey exclamation point with small batches of songs.  Look around on my computer and they are completely gone from where I had originally placed them, sometimes even leaving other songs in the same folder intact.  Very, very weird, Apple.

Your description of this problem is EXACTLY what i just discovered happening in my itunes last night!

I noticed that hundreds of my purchased itunes songs and albums was not playing. after some digging around, I also discovered that the songs that were still playing were directed to users/jenny/music/itunes etc.

However, the hundreds of unplayable songs were directed to file://localhost/users/jenny/music/itunes....

I have not touched any setting at all. no clue why this happened. to make things even more frustrating and weird, i have everything back up on my time machine and all of these files are also gone from my time machine! I checked back to some purchases that I made two years ago, went back two years in my time machine to check for the files and NONE of the files that i was looking for were there.

This is beyond disappointing and extremely frustrating. If anyone has come up with a fix for this, please help! Now onto filing a lost music claim with itunes....ughhhhh

Yes I join the fray.  I have noticed recently I have many many individual songs missing from my library.  The interesting thing it is only the 1st song of a ton of my albums.  In some cases it is the first two.  My library consists of about 10,000 songs probably about 9,500 have been ripped from CDs I have purchased over the years.  Most of the missing songs are from discs ripped quite a while ago.  Now I'm faced with the fact that if I want complete albums I have to rip JUST ONE SONG off the majority of my collection.  I can say with 100% certainty that I am not responsible for deleting one song per album in my collection.  Did I mention they are no longer in my master iTunes folder and most start from the 2nd track.  This blows....

Update...  I just noticed something.  I took my iPod on a trip this past weekend.  I was just reviewing my iTunes library and noticed one of my songs is unable to be found.  The funny thing is I can see it on my iPod.  I was out of town for 4 days and in no way was my library on my Mac modified.  Something is FUBAR here.  Just realized that a complete album is getting the dreaded exclamation point in iTunes, however it is available on my iPod.

The investigation continues.  I am finding out more as I compare my library on my iPod with my library on my Mac.  I am seeing many of the 1st tracks that I'm missing in my iTunes library available on my iPod yet there are some still missing on the iPod with no apparent pattern.  It seems that over time they are just disappearing.  aarrhggghhh!

Here I am, another victim.  A--gasp!--Windows user, I have never had any problems using iTunes, except, that every so often random songs disappeared.  Now, I have discovered that a huge section of my library is gone, can't be found in my computer anywhere.  The pattern?  ALL the files that are gone are those I ripped from my own CD collection--dozens and dozens of albums.  Those that remain are all purchased from iStore. 

Not to be paranoid, but this does reek of Apple trying to control my own property, and force me to purchase from them.  I support the control of copyright that Apple has attempted to enforce, but whatthefuck!!??

All of this music remains on my iPod, but I am now afraid to synch.  Any ideas?  Is anyone out there?  Apple?  Hello, Apple????

I believe that this is what has happened in my case as well.  I synched my iPod so recently, after a purchase, that I have to wonder if the songs, though gone from my iTunes, were somehow left on my iPod.  They're all there!  But I am wary of testing this theory by re-synching my iPod, for fear that it will all disappear.

Download Senuti.  Free trial allows for 1,000 transfers from iPod to computer. Worked for me.  Still have no clue how they disappeared in the first place.  Apple seems disinterested.  In my case they were all ripped CDs and the songs that disappeared were the 1st tracks.  650 of them.  I'm guessing Apple somehow integrated some bug deleting these tracks expecting me to purchase them rather than sort through 650 CDs and rip one son a piece.

Thanks, glad to hear it worked for you.  Unfortunately, Senuti only works for Macs, and I have a PC.  (Though I have been thinking of biting the money bullet and switching, this fiasco with iTunes makes want to say Screw You Apple.  Anyway, I'll do a search for other software--it must exist.

Update on my previous mail:  I was wrong about the pattern I thought I'd found. Three albums ripped from CDs are still there (out of maybe two hundred whole or partial albums).  And though I thought my iTunes purchases were intact, a sampling of those are gone.  This seems totally random and insane.

My next question, if I can get this righted, is how to back up my music files differently in the future.  When I copied them to an external drive, I didn't think to check to be sure they really existed, rather than just appearing as "ghost" album artwork.

This has been happening for years and years and years and years. Last night I discovered that an audiobook that I had bought was missing one of the three files so I went to the apple store to redownload it. I got a dialog that informed me that since I had bought it before, that this download was free. 4 hours later, my CC was charged for $21. Massive deletion of random files. Or are they random? Is apple intentionally removing these files from our computers? The time machine laundering is a big clue. Is this Apples new business model? This happens on macs and PCs and has happened in every version of iTunes I have ever used. One telling fact is that the files that are missing are the ones that apple no longer has the rights to distribute and have been removed from the store.

I have had enough.

Can Apple actually decide what songs we can have on our ipods?  Is that legal?

Apple cannot remove content from your iTunes or iPod.

To AdamKB:  So can Apple explain everybody's concern about the exclamation signs and missing files in our playlists?  One minutes it's there and then it's gone?  Is my pc eating my files.......

Without actually sitting down at a machine experiencing this problem, I would presume it's a case of file corruption or data loss. Been known to happen.

That's what backups are for.

Back ups???  Why is it only itunes files disappearing???   I'd like to hear from someone WHO has actually sat down at a machine and experienced this, not just presume.  Don't need someone answering me that hasn't seen this.  I don't presume my songs are gone, they ARE gone.