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Level 1

22 points

Songs Disappearing from iTunes

I've seen other threads on this marked as answered, but they clearly were not based on the posts in them. At first I thought I was going crazy, or maybe had lost some music when I transferred from my old machine to my new one, but now I have songs I know I bought since moving to the new machine that have disappeared. Not just randomly missing songs, but entire missing albums too. Of course, since backing up my music consisted of simply copying the iTunes folder to an external drive (admittedly lazy way, sure) it happily overwrite the folder as I told it to and thus my backups are missing the songs too. This is complete crap, and is NOT answered as the other threads claim. Even if support allows me to re-download everything (at this point, I couldn't even tell you for sure what I am missing since I don't recall everything I've bought) what stops this from happening in the future? If my hard earned money is just going to vaporize off my hard drive at random when I am trying to play by the rules and be legal, give me one good reason not to just save that money and just start pirating everything? Because as much as I don't like pirating, I don't like buying an entire CD for one good song even less, and I like having stuff I bought simply disappear even less than that.

What is the fix for this problem? If Apple lets me redownload everything, where is the proof this won't happen again? I NEED to have a legitimate answer to this question or you and the music industry can kiss my money goodbye. Limewire will be my new music source.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 11, 2009 8:34 AM

633 replies

Wedger1

Level 1

4 points

Jul 9, 2017 9:41 AM in response to gizmonic

I bought plenty of songs and albums and all were fine until my free 3 month Apple Music finished then a lot of stuff has gone or only two or three left on a album, don't know if this is the case for anyone else out there ? Can I get them back or do I have to join Apple Music again to recover them ? Cheers .

Jul 25, 2017 10:36 PM in response to Limnos

I've noticed that some albums on the iTunes Store are missing the first song off of an album. Two examples of which are Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye and To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. Also I noticed that an album I purchased a song off of a few years back is completely missing from the iTunes Store completely. I'm not sure what's going on but I'm pretty sure it's on Apple's end not us the users.

Jul 31, 2017 8:34 AM in response to gizmonic

I know it's over 8 years later, but I'm still seeing songs, albums, artists disappearing from my library. Seems to be at random. Also, is there anyway to go back to an older version of the itunes interface as a bunch of features have disappeared too.

Rubor

Level 1

4 points

Sep 15, 2017 11:01 PM in response to gizmonic

I too have lost music that I have paid for over the years. It came to a head today when, after updating iTunes , I selected a track from my playlist and a screen popped up directing be to pay a subscription to Apple Music . I had a subscription to Apple Music for a while to discover new music . Anything I liked , I would purchase.

I never saved Apple Music tracks to my playlists. So all music in my library is music I've paid good money for.

The last straw was when I tried to phone Apple help and found that I was unable to get any help unless I fronted up with another $39 for the service (which I shouldn't have needed in the first place). I'm not sure what I'm gonna do now as I had over 3000 songs in my library that I have paid for, but I will definitely cancel all subscritions and cancel my preorder of the new IPhone X until I decide.

Sep 28, 2017 5:42 AM in response to gizmonic

This JUST happened to me in the last couple of weeks! I lost about 10 songs (that I've realized so far!) and just thought it was a glitch, so i REPURCHASED them!! Then yesterday, I see that at least a couple WHOLE ALBUMS are gone!! Who do I contact about this?

turingtest2

Level 10

272,783 points

Sep 28, 2017 5:55 AM in response to kristajill76

See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy so you are able to properly identify, document, and reverse any unexpected changes in your library.

tt2

Limnos

Level 10

411,229 points

Feb 11, 2009 10:35 AM in response to gizmonic

Well, after filtering through the 90% of other stuff my basic question is, are the files disappearing from itunes or the whole computer? I have never seen anybody comment on files vanishing off iTunes. Links breaking, yes.

If files are vanishing off your computer then you have a more serious issue than just iTunes. Is there evidence of other files vanishing?

pixigirl

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2009 10:51 AM in response to gizmonic

Gizmonic: I, too, have had all my "purchases" disapper except for downloads from the last month and first month. 8 months of downloads in between have disappeared. How do I get them back? I paid for them! I have email receipts and credit card receipts to prove I purchased these albums. what do I do?

gizmonic Author

Level 1

22 points

Feb 11, 2009 11:28 AM in response to Limnos

No other files are missing. Just some songs and albums from itunes. And yes, the files are gone. If just the file was missing the itunes music list would have the red exclamation point by the file name. But, in this case, they are completely gone, not just the files, but the listing as well, meaning something in itunes deleted them entirely. I suppose it could be possible that I somehow might have accidently hit delete and then yes, and then remove from my computer and all that for a song or two (highly unlikely, but, I suppose possible). It is NOT likely that I would do this for whole albums.

This is not a case of a bad hard drive or something in OS X or whatnot. ITunes itself knows the files are completely gone, not just "missing" since I don't even have the red ! next to the names. And despite admitting it may be possible to accidently delete them, personally, I never delete music from ITunes. If I get tired of something, since I paid for it, I merely uncheck the playlist checkbox.

And while you state that you have not seen anyone else mention this, I found this forum searching google for missing songs and found other threads in this very forum saying exactly the same thing I am. They were closed as answered despite multiple people saying that they were having the problem and why was it marked as answered when it clearly wasn't? A little searching and you too can find these threads I am sure.

This is a real problem, not user error. I can't imagine with the volume of posts I've read that this is simply something with me alone, or bad hardware, or even an accidental delete here and there. There is more to it than that.

Something is up, and I am not sure what. I know Apple went through and deleted purchased music that had been hacked with JHymn or whatever back in the day? (Not 100% sure as I didn't use ITunes then, just remember friends talking about it.) Maybe this is something similar, only gone awry and deleting valid songs?

I don't know. I just know that ITunes is losing my music. Not just the files alone, but the entire song is gone as if it had never existed.

I just what to know what's up and why it happened and what they are doing to fix it (assuming it's not already fixed in the latest release).

Mar 2, 2009 12:51 PM in response to gizmonic

I've got the same problem as Gizmonic - MP3 files and their folders are vanishing from my iTunes library. The files affected seem to be random.

It's happened now and with Mac OS 10.4.x and earlier version of iTunes.

EDIT: So it's clear - it's the MP3 files themselves that are vanishing, as well as their entries in iTunes. Playlists seem unaffected.

- Richard

Message was edited by: rcosgrove

Mar 3, 2009 9:57 PM in response to pixigirl

This is happening to me too. Random songs disappearing from iTunes. Help!

Mar 4, 2009 1:04 AM in response to gizmonic

I'm having a similar problem. When I opened up iTunes last night, my entire music library had been wiped. Luckily, the files are still in My Music folder like they should be, but I honestly don't want to have to go about adding all my playlists and stuff again. Does ANYONE have an answer for this?

Mar 4, 2009 5:21 AM in response to gizmonic

I am having a similar problem.
All my podcasts are disappearing along with any songs I add in. I have noticed this only happens when restarting my system. I always empty my recycling bin before logging off and when I log back in there are itunes backup files in my recycling bin!
The files are:
iTunes Library Extras
iTunes Genius

Both are database files.
I try restoring the files to no avail.
I look in my iTunes My Music folder and all my downloads are missing.
I am ready to start copying them over to another location every time so I don't loose my information that I've spent time in the slow iTunes Store for!

Mar 4, 2009 12:27 PM in response to gizmonic

I am not only losing songs, albums, and audiobooks from my music library but I have also lost all of my playlists. Since this is such a common problem, is there an software expert from Apple involved in this discussion?

Mar 7, 2009 4:38 PM in response to gizmonic

I've been searching like mad for an answer to this, too.

Let me be clear. This is not user error. Here's what's going on:

For no reason that I can determine, iTunes encounters "dead" tracks, i.e., songs that are in my library (imported by me), both AAC and MP3. I go to the directory where they're supposed to be, and they're gone. Completely missing original file. In my case, they songs are staying in the library, but the originals are missing.

My library is in the /Users/Shared directory, and the whole iTunes directory is intact, and the right pointers to the music library are in preferences, and I let iTunes keep the folder organized. I have no idea what I've lost. I remember that my library used to be close to 60 gb in size, and right now I'm down to about 48 gb.

This is latest iTunes 8 on up-to-date Leopard system.

Songs Disappearing from iTunes