Q: iTunes 12.2.0 have deleted all of my playlists and most songs...

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Tim Cook... who cares?? You're right David, we shouldn't be spending hours online figuring out how to patch our own software. The very fact that this conversation is taking place on an Apple site should tell us all something. We've all paid HANDSOMELY for our devices and then we've paid for our music. This isn't like a bunch of tech geeks are getting together in a chat room to figure out some new idea, we are consumers blindsided by a sudden loss of our purchased material. I don't want to go into my old files and figure out how to rename then and drag then into this or that folder, man I just want to go the gym and listen to my ipod mini. We paid for the music and Apple should be WEARING THEMSELVES OUT fixing this for us.

You're the man!! Almost fainted over here lol.

I'm sorry to have been away from this thread and missed follow-up questions from ndejs and MillerWins.

The XML file is not critical in restoring your library. If you do find a file called iTunes Music Library.xml, you can rename it, delete it, or drag it out of the iTunes folder. But if you don't find such a file, that's okay too. Once iTunes is working again, it will generate a new XML file automatically.

The master file that stores all the information about your iTunes library is the one called "iTunes Library.itl" -- and this is the file that seems to be getting corrupted by a glitch in the latest releases of the iTunes app. What we need to do is find an earlier, saved version of this file from before the recent iTunes update, and use it to replace the corrupted version. The best-case scenario is probably a Time Machine backup from just before you installed the latest iTunes. The next best is a file from the Previous iTunes Library folder -- probably the most recent one, as long as it was created before the problem started.

If this solution works for you -- and I truly hope it does! -- you just need to remember that any files or playlists added very recently (between the last backup and right now) will need to be re-imported or re-created.

Now I sort of also have the same problem. I accidentally synced my phone to my itunes on my macbook pro and now I've lost all my songs/playlists that were originally on my iphone. I did initially make a backup of the phone but I tried restoring through itunes and it did nothing. I honestly just wanted to move songs on my iphone into my itunes but apparently thats not feasible so how do I go about getting my songs back onto my phone?

I tried doing this but got a little bit confused. I just dragged the latest library from the folder of previous libraries into the main itunes folder but it shows up like this now. Once I opened itunes it added about 50 old songs to my library but nothing else. Thoughts?

kjhahne, I'd be inclined to be cautious now, since this method didn't work. It's probably time to communicate directly with Apple Support, which you can do by starting here:

http://www.apple.com/support/contact/

Judging by the amount of attention these iTunes problems have been getting online, I'd say it's more likely the support reps will have some idea what's going on now than it would have been a couple of weeks ago. I've sorry not to have been of any help.

Thank you so much, Richard! Worked great for me.

Just a note to everyone, I'm running 10.9 so this might be different from 10.10.

When you rename the iTunes Library [date].itl to iTunes Library, remove the .itl extention!

I can not wait for a proper fix from apple, as we have many playlists for the various devices in our house, and we want the ability to select the playlist, rather than have them all dumped onto our phones.

Richard Grant is a legend.

Hi, can someone help,

I stil have ITune 12.1.2 release.

I had to re-install my computer and as I was resynchronising my Iphone, all my music on my Iphone was deleted.

Furthermore, I probably made a mistake in handling Time machine backup files so the bakup files could not be reached via Time machine. In other words, classical Time machine restoration is not possible.

Fortunaly, the old files of Backup can be copied. So I substituted in iTunes folder « iTunes Library.itl » file for an old one I copied in TM backup.

When I launch iTunes, an error message appears ; something like : «  « iTunes Library.itl cannot be read because it was created  with a more recent version of iTune and it propose to download last issue of iTunes.

Have you a idea about a possible solution ??

Is there any way you/someone could post a video walking us through this for Windows?

If you were standing here, I'd kiss you. Thank you.

TRY THIS FIRST!!  The box for "iCloud Music Library" was not checked after this update.  Simply by checking it I went from ~ 1000 songs to ~6500 songs in a matter of seconds. 

(Downloading them to be available offline is another optional step which I've done but in a clunky way.)

Go to:

     Edit menu > Preferences > in the General Preferences tab, check the box for "iCloud Music Library"

I had the same issue. Changing to an older itunes library got most of the music back, but there are still about twenty albums that have disappeared never to be seen or heard from again.

For the record, I'm done with Apple. The paternalistic nature of the company's "gated communtiy" policies was acceptable when their software was effective, but iTunes 12 was the last nail in a coffin built of buggy software and broken promises. Sayonara, Apple.

Thank you so much, I was gonna call Apple about the problem but my coverage was up. Saved me $35!