Q: Songs Disappearing from iTunes

Hello,

I had the EXACT same issue happen to me and I FOUND A SIMPLE SOLUTION tonight that worked for me! This solution can be used on an Iphone. I know some of you use Macbooks to organize your music, so if you'd like me to help you with a Macbook issue, leave me a comment/message.

Over the years I've purchased thousands of songs using the same apple ID and password. A few years back I purchased songs on the library on my Macbook, but recently I've been purchasing all my music on my iphone.

Over time I noticed some of my songs were missing from my itunes library. At first I was just annoyed and confused, so I'd end up re purchasing the songs. A week ago I purchased the Iphone 6 plus. I discovered that even after I downloaded all my music from Icloud, many albums were missing. I was very annoyed because I felt that apple shouldn't be making these mistakes, especially after we pay so much for apple products. Many of my family members and friends told me they experienced the exact same problem. I was upset and thought my music was lost, until I started messing around with my Iphone tonight.

I don't work for apple- I'm just a semi tech savvy college student. I will try to explain this the best that I can.

Try these steps on your Iphone.

1. pick up your iphone

2. click on the "Itunes Store" icon, and sign into your apple account on itunes

3. navigate back to your home screen

4. click on the "Music" icon

5. click on the "more" Icon (should be on the very bottom of screen, to the right of the "songs" icon)

6. five options should appear. The last option will have a little house Icon and have the word "shared" printed next to it.

7. click on the "shared" icon

Although I've always used the same apple account to purchase all my music, for some reason their were two apple libraries in the "shared" folder.

The first option under the shared folder said "Blakely's Iphone" and the other option said "Blakely Jones Library" I clicked back and forth between the two libraries and I found that all the albums I thought were lost before were actually in the second library, along with songs I'd purchased way back in middle school!

If you are lucky, there will be two different libraries in your shared folder, which simply means your songs were divided into two libraries. I have no idea how this happened. For some albums, half of the albums songs are in one library and half are in the other library. I believe this is a mistake on the part of apple. Not everyone has the time to mess around with their phones and recover their missing music, so apple really needs to solve this. However, I'm just really happy I found where my songs were hiding!

My next question is, how can I combine these two libraries on my phone so that I don't have to constantly switch back and forth between them? I will bring my iphone in to an apple store tomorrow and ask them to help me combine the two libraries on my phone. I'll post an update once I get an answer! I really hope this information has helped you! I'm unsure if this method will work for everyone, but you should try it just incase! There could be so many other issues going on with your itunes account, but this is the method that worked for me. Good luck!

Just wanted to add to this thread - six years on! I have noticed over past year or two (with some frustration) that itunes goes to play a song in the library but can't find it. Figuring it's just a broken link, (it shows in my itunes list under my music but displays ! next to it BUT ONLY AT THIS POINT WHEN THE SONG IS ASKED TO PLAY) I then discover (via spotlight) that it doesn't exist on my computer anywhere, nor on my backup (which I sync with the entire MUSIC folder periodically). I recently had to reinstall my my entire system software and upgrade to Yosemite - so I backed up every file on my computer and now use these files to repopulate itunes. However, it appears that songs were missing before the upgrade because that backup is still on another computer and they're not there either. I had 3 Kings of Leon albums which featured heavily in my 'favourite' playlists so have played many times - all gone. I did not (would never) delete them and I'm very angry about the prospect of re-purchasing them at great expense.

Also frustrating is that until I try to play each song, I can't tell which songs in my library do not have a corresponding mp3 file in the itunes media folder. So I can never tell how widespread the problem is.

Why can't itunes give you a summary/alert to highlight when a file is suddenly not there? And does anyone know a way to easily check the integrity of the library vs interface?

In the meantime I am creating a separate folder for MASTER COPIES of music, putting all my music there and letting itunes create a (less reliable) duplicate library. I'll also backup from the MASTER COPIES folder and consider Google Play or other itunes alternative. Sad day.

iTunes will not back up any songs you did not buy on itunes. I found this out the hard way. AFTER I downloaded hundreds of CDs and then sold them or gave them away. Thousands of dollars down the tubes. iphoto recently deleted hundreds of pictures and videos too. Just random deletions. When their "tech support" tried to help me retrieve them they made a huge mess. All the dates are out of whack, photos misdated no longer in their correct order. A real mess. I vowed to never give Apple another dime of my money. IF I want music this way I'll get it for free. If I want a whole album I'll buy the CD. I'm DONE with Apple. No trust, no love. That's how you solve your problem. Disconnect from the source of it. Get a computer that has never seen the light of the internet or anyone's "cloud". Put everything you value onto it via a pin drive. And surf and get your FREE music on the contaminated one you're using now. That's what I'm going to do.

My iPhone doesn't have that configuration. I'm still on the 5S. And I don't plan on ever buying an Apple anything ever again. How could I find out if I have 2 libraries?

lunatec2 wrote:

iTunes will not back up any songs you did not buy on itunes.

ITunes doesn't back up any songs whether you purchased them from iTunes Store or not.

AFTER I downloaded hundreds of CDs

How exactly do you "download" CDs?

and then sold them or gave them away.

After you sold or gave away the CDs, the music was no longer your to keep. 

Perhaps you should find the nearest 14 year old and ask them how to internet properly. 

lunatec2 wrote:

My iPhone doesn't have that configuration.

Okay. This discussion as this forum is iTunes for Mac.

If you have iPhone issues, you should post a question in the iPhone forum.

yeah I got a new iPhone and all of the music i uploaded to my library from CD is gone.  Bye Bye!  AND NOW MY COMPUTER JUST HAS THE SONGS I BOUGHT FROM I TUNES.  SCREW ITUNES!!!!

I am not going to use ITUNEs as it is faulty. I've lost 50% of my music and if Im going to re upload it from CD minus what is lost and gone forever, I need a system that isn't prone to destruction of content not paid for from ITUNES!!!

See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

tt2

I had discovered this years ago....there has been various comments and speculation over the years...my theory is that they deleted them after a certain time...which was how this was set up to be in the beginning but then they were legally told to not do that and now it is just what happens...Most of us are just too busy to deal with it..but for me this is getting to be a big! problem..that amounts to a lot of money.  We all need to file a class action law suit.

I've been using iTunes heavily since 2007. Apart from a settings hiccup that deleted some old podcasts iTunes hasn't ever deleted anything I haven't told it to (arguably I told it to do that too since I let it merge settings). I was able to restore the lost podcasts from my backup. The way I backup also means I know exactly which files in my library have been added, updated or removed every time.

tt2

I've had all sorts of problems with iTunes over the years (songs that won't play or sync with devices, etc), but now I have a new one. My music library is on an external drive, which I forgot to plug back in after moving the Mac. So when I tried to play a song, it reported that the song could not be found. Fair enough. I plugged the hard drive back in and restarted iTunes. But what iTunes has done, is take the liberty of removing the song it couldn't find from its database altogether. I have confirmed that the song is still there on the external hard drive, but it simply doesn't show up in iTunes anymore. The album now has no track one, and starts at track two.

Obviously I can just manually drag the missing song back into iTunes, but this is madness, and has left me wondering what other tracks iTunes might have deleted from the library database without me knowing.

II've lost $12.5k of songs, 3 drives that held my backups and spent $300 to make sure it doesn't happen again. I even have a full library that will demonstrate this yet Apple exec support wants to play hard *** and doesn't care. So I have the DOJ on them. Even tcook@apple has been silent. But I have the before music with a correct name and after turning on Apple Music under the newest version will scramble metadata. Forget them finding out why or giving compensation even though it's a legal requirement when an offered service corrupts the product.

I Have had 4 separate issues with Apple products and had to solve everyone myself.

Hey Gizmonic,

I apologize if I am repeating someone else's response; I am not going to read through every answer to your question. I have had your problem off and on. This is the solution I have found: open iTunes; open your Program Files/iTunes/iTunes/iTunes Music folder (which should have a copy of every song you have downloaded and/or burned to iTunes - by the way, what I typed here is not a typo and applies to Windows 8.1); copy the whole folder (or just the files missing from iTunes); copy and paste to iTunes. I have had to do this more than once, but it has worked . . . at least until the next time Apple decides to delete more than half of my music. Good luck!

Maleficent13

An apple article is there : Locate and organize your iTunes media files - Apple Support