the new update DELETED ALL OF MY SONGS

Are the music files still in your PC? The default location for them will be in the iTunes Music folder arranged in folders by artist/album.

If the music files are still there, it is just your library database that is damaged and you may be able to recover as follows:

When you upgrade to iTunes 8, a backup library database is created in the iTunes\Previous iTunes Libraries folder. The name includes the date of the upgrade reversed. It will have a name like iTunes Library 2008-10-03.itl

SO try this - close iTunes and drag iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music library.xml from the iTunes folder to your desktop.
Next copy the backup library file from Previous iTunes Libraries to the iTunes folder and rename it iTunes Library.itl - i.e. remove the date from the file name.

WHen you open iTunes it will have to go through some updating, but with any luck you should get your previous library database back.

Poly it worked perfectly. I thought I was going to have to manually repopulate my playlist again. You just saved me 4 hours of tedious work. My playlist is back exactly as it was yesterday. Thanks again. The weird thing is when I tried to import the backup library the program said it was invalid.

This is not an isolated incident! I just 'upgraded' to itunes 8.1 and it cleared out my entire library.

Poly - your steps work! Apple needs to either promote your steps to their front page or (better yet) fix or pull back that 'upgrade'!

Thank you for your help!!

Poly,

Many, many thanks! I just upgraded to iTunes 8.0.1.11 and lost my library. A Google search turned up this thread and your procedure worked like a champ. I was envisioning a lot of time and effort going up in smoke. So thanks again!!

But it begs the question, what happened and is Apple fixing this bug, as it's obviously not a unique occurrence?

i have the same exact problem. i updated my itunes software and now all of my songs are gone and i cant find anything. how did you get it back? i don't get what you mean with all of the copy this to that. and what if we didn't have a backup?

Message was edited by: madd.

i have had a similar problem when updating iTunes in the past, but only some of my songs/album art/etc. were "misplaced" by iTunes. trying to restore via time machine didn't fix the problem except in those cases where i found a folder for a particular artist/album empty! pulled the tracks "forward" and things worked fine. this time however, with iTunes 8, restore via time machine didn't work. some of the albums did not display album art in front row either. the fix mentioning the replacement of a previous iTunes library did the trick!!! all the songs are now locatable by iTunes, album art shows up correctly both in iTunes and Front Row... so far at least. excellent suggestion!!!

Such a dumb thing for such a 'genius' company... same here, luckily had a backup library file from sept that had all my artwork/file locations for my songs saved in it, and once i did the copy paste/rename of that copy into the current directory, worked like a champ, great suggestion and fix ... thx for saving hrs of wasted time...

apple, shame you allow your developers to put this crap out!

Ok, I am having this same problem also, but this happens to me every single time I close the program. Is there anyway to prevent it from happening? Would it be fixed if I uninstall and then re-install itunes? Or will I have to find an older version of itunes somewhere?

This happened to me too when I also updated
It was really annoying >_<

mk1234l
Other folks with VAIOs are having this problem. It's some Vaio software putting a lock on the itunes library file.


Read redkeefy's post here
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8545376&#8545376

All my playlists disappeared when I upgraded. I could punch the lights out of that idiotic Genius logo. iTunes has proved to be such a clunky useless program if it can't simply back up all the playlists. I've just tried recopying a CD I burned of one playlist and the stupid programme duplicated the songs into the library - after I told it not to - and won't let me copy the playlist. So I have days of work now to recreate the 100 or so playlists I had. You guys - I am speechless with irritation. There is no backup iTunes Lib file with a recent date on it for me to copy and use. What's the point of this Backing Up music and all these iTunes files if it can't simply recreate playlists. Thank God all the music is still in the iTunes folder. That'll be next, This is a dreadful mistake you've made with this upgrade.