Songs Disappearing from iTunes

Yes I realise that now but mine never have until now for some reason and I've always updated iTunes whenever needed. Why were the files not showing in Finder, any ideas?

Why were the files not showing in Finder, any ideas?

I find the Finder is kinda flaky when finding 😉 sometimes. Not enough for me to worry though so I haven't looked into it.

If you have both an /iTunes/iTunes music/ and /iTunes/iTune media/ folders, I suggest you do this...

1. Go to iTunes prefs Advanced.
2. Set iTunes Media folder location to /iTunes/iTunes media/.
3. Make sure to tick both "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes media folder organized".
4. Go to iTunes menu File > LIbrary > Organize library and tick Consolidate library.
5. This makes sure everything is in /iTunes/iTune media/.
6. After it is finished, quit iTunes.
7. Go to /Music/iTunes/ folder and move /iTunes/iTunes music/ folder to the desktop.
8. Launch iTunes and make sure everything works.
9. If so, you can delete the iTunes music folder on the desktop.

Yes I did that earlier today thanks as I couldn't see the point in having two folders containing basically the same things. I did check it all worked first though as you've suggested! Thanks for your help anyway.

DON'T DELETE THE FOLDER...as painful as it is, if you don't want to lose any MORE media than you already have, you're going to have to have two copies of your ENTIRE LIBRARY. That's right, you can't trust your media player to keep track of everything, so YOU have to. Luckily, Apple has made a point of selling highly compressed audio and video files, so it shouldn't take up TOO much space...

A couple of other comments...number one, I have read SO MANY POSTS that say "oh, you must have moved the files..." STOP. If I NEVER see that response again, it'll be too soon. I HAVEN'T MOVED ANYTHING. I have not TOUCHED the songs outside of iTunes, and I even told iTunes to consolidate them in the hopes that allowing it to sort everything out the way it wanted would help. Long story short, IT DIDN'T. Songs are still disappearing left and right! Music from two weeks ago has ceased to exist! Number two, it's NOT just songs that were not downloaded from the iTunes Store, although those do seem to be the most targeted...iTunes has erased several music videos and songs that I purchased from the store. Luckily, I was able to re-download them, but since I've started using smart playlists, the loss of stuff like the original date it was added to the library and the play count has been extremely frustrating.

All told, if this ******** continues much longer, I am going to find another program to communicate with my iPod, and I may even stop purchasing music through iTunes altogether. Oh, and you want to hear the best part? I still can't figure out how to make Apple forget my card information, which makes me VERY nervous, since they obviously can't handle things too well...If I lose money because of them, there's no telling what I'll do, but there will be much blood shed in the name of righteous anger.

Also, I suggest that we try and

with the same problem to come to this thread...maybe if it gets large enough, we can get some kind of petition thing going, get Apple's attention and MAKE them fix this...

Maziekit wrote:

DON'T DELETE THE FOLDER...a

Why not? You have already checked that everything is in iTunes and everything works (step 8).

Just chiming in to note I've recently had this same issue, thankfully not to the extent of others, but I had an album of podcasts and an album of music dissapear. What's weird is the album was still in my itunes media folder in the finder, and it was on itunes with the exclamation mark, so I did the option to locate the media source through itunes, I did that with the first song, the song then succesfully showed up in my itunes, but then all the other files were deleted both from itunes and the itunes media folder in my finder (as in I had the finder window open with all the music there, after syncing the one song with iTunes, I literally saw the entire rest of the album simply dissapear from the finder, not in the garbage bin, not in another folder, just plain deleted for no reason).

I suspect with the number of replies to this topic and the sheer amount of time this has been a problem, Apple has no interest in solving why its deleting its users music, but thought I'd add my complaint to the chorus anyways.

I know exactly what you mean. The links were not broken, the files had totally disappeared off the hard drive. I did spend a couple hours on the phone with apple and thankfully they were helpful. I half discovered the answer myself. Here is what I did:

1. I broke down and purchased a subscription to Itunes match. I was reading about it and it sounded as though music is copied to the cloud so I thought, why not. It took forever to catalog things but I was then able to get my music to download again by going to My Library, Music (now has a cloud by it). This is all before getting Apple on the line so I was halfway there (BTW, Apple did not suggest the subscription that was my own desperation).
2. The next thing was I was also missing some purchased movies and tv shows. To get these back I went to Purchased on the left pane in itunes.
3. I double checked that the movies were not on my hard drive. I then selected the movie entry with the "!" next to it and deleted the entry.
4. Next go into the ITUNES store and select Purchased on the right. I clicked on Movie under that option.
5. Click on the movie and you should be able to download it again. A couple times it took a bit for the store to realize I had removed the entry from my itunes but after a bit it showed perfectly.
6. I did the same for the tv shows I was missing.
7. Only bad thing is downloading movies again is a long process.

Hope this helps other people that are pulling out their hair.

Just noticed today, that some of my albums were gone. Then after some detective work found seven thousand songs in the TRASH!!!

and when I double-click in iTunes and choose to locate the track, it only locates tracks of the same album "10 of 7XXX were found".

And were the files moved? NO! They were still lying in the trash!

I went into Library -> Organize Library -> Consolidate Library, and now it seems to copy more than just ten more tracks. Let's see if it'll move all my files back to where they belong.

Question is, why, all of a sudden, did iTunes move the files in the first place??

Darn it! iTunes spent a few minutes moving files into the library. But which files? I should have paid attention, because it didn't move those 7000 files that are still missing!

How do I get them all back without having to locate every single album?

Did you try a file restore right from the recycle bin?

I wasn't given the option to restore, and CMD-Backspace didn't do anything. Before I found this thread I had already moved all songs from the trash into another folder on my desktop.

Then I dragged all files at once onto the iTunes library, and it's copying everything. Not done yet, so I'll post the results.

edit:

I can already see that I'm getting DUPLICATES in my library now. What the h*ll?!

iTunes 11 can't be released sooner!

if I dare installing it...

Update 2:

The files were not duplicated, but the entries in the library were! So all albums have twin-songs, one with the old ratings and playcounts set, one which is "clean" - both leading to the same bloody file!

Thanks, iTunes, my library is completely messed up now.

How would I do a safe Time Machine restore of the iTunes library?

How would I do a safe Time Machine restore of the iTunes library?

1. Quit iTunes.
2. Go to /Music/.
3. Open Time Machine.
4. Go to the date you want, select the iTunes folder and Restore.

That fixed it! Thanks, Chris!

ℹ People, keep your time machine engine running!