iTunes 8.0 - Genius - unknown error 4010

Addendum...
I had tried to bebuild the iTunes library per the instractions and recieved a -50 error. The resultant library was 22GB vs. 29GB. Also editing the .xml file with a .xml editor (Smultron) gave a number of unable to locate the original ⚠ errors within iTunes.

So you may try determining the offending file with Validator and delete, rename, etc. within iTunes.

File -> Library -> Import Playlist

See @Bertg's solution above.

The problem seems to be caused by having one or more 'dodgy' characters in your artist or track names.

It probably stopped at 80% because it found an illegal character. When you added the remaining 20% back in you then probably added the 'dodgy' track back in.

Try (at your own risk) checking the library XML before you re-import it. I used http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Validator.shtml and it found it for me. Fix that entry and delete the offending audio file.

Great, worked for me. Thanks!

I finally got it working (woohoo). I had a song with URL encoded characters in it (like %3D). I was actually able to find the errors just opening the file in FireFox 3.

I dumped all my tracks, restarted iTunes with an empty Music library and added about 1/3 of them back. This time I could get Genius to activate.

rebuilding ur library works...

but then when i imported all my songs again, i got the same error 😟

does anyone have a solution...

It's ridiculous. I made a separate blank library adding each folder (by artist) until it gave an error, When eventually it gave an error, I made another blank library and added the offending folder, but then it worked! ***!!!

It's like there's no way to fix it!!! :-/ HELP APPLE!!

Yay! After very many tries, I FINALLY got Genius to work. Thanks, everyone, for discovering the XML fix!

My steps:

= Got the Validator: http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Validator.shtml

= Ran the iTunes Music Library.xml file in it to discover some illegal characters in 11 song tags.

= In iTunes, searched for each offending song, and edited the tags to remove the bad characters (they appeared as harmless spaces, but were not harmless.)

= Exited iTunes, which saves the library.

= Removed the files "iTunes Library Extras.itdb" and "iTunes Library Genius.itdb" from my "Music/iTunes" directory.

= Restarted iTunes and turned Genius on. Waited a very long time (my library is 260 GB).

I suppose it is possible that it only SEEMS like the XML fix resolved the Genius problem and the real solution was that Apple's busy server finally let me through. Shrug

Message was edited by: doranchak

Worked for me too!

i found one 'bad' track in my library, and after deleting it, genius could be turned on !

Gah, if it really is an UTF encoding error, this wouldn't be the first time Apple products have failed simply because of malformed data. Several iPod models (5G, 1st and 2nd-gen Nanos, and probably others) get into a horrible reboot loop whenever there's UTF errors or buffer overruns in the database, and buffer overruns happen a LOT with independent musicians who decide to put the lyrics in the 'comment' tag (which has a limit of 254 characters) instead of the 'lyrics' tag.

I really wish Apple would learn to VALIDATE their data and also GRACEFULLY RECOVER from errors. Even being able to point to where there's errors and direct the user to fix them would be a huge improvement over their current state of affairs.

Yay, I found two songs with malformed UTF in their tags and fixed them, and now Genius is taking more than a few seconds to summarily reject my data! I wonder how long it'll take to get a response now...

I wish id3v2 weren't such a badly-inconsistent spec. It's stuff like that which leads to this terrible state of affairs, what with there being several very different and largely-incompatible versions of id3v2 out there and many apps try to support a common subset or, worse, just try supporting things in an ad-hoc manner.

Same here - rebuilding my library did not work but checking the XML file for invalid characters did the trick right away. One song I'd picked up from a friend's mix CD had a genre tag with invalid characters. I deleted that file and that was that - Genius is working fine now.

I also found that rebuilding my library failed repeatedly to pick up all the music in my library. Eventually I deleted my "new" library files and just restored from Thursday and had all my music back; then I tried the XML validation and fixed it right away.