Songs Disappearing from iTunes

<Ignore>

tt2

Message was edited by: turingtest2

but got the reply from someone here it wasnt my right to rip Cds

It is absolutely your right to rip cds. Where it has been a confusion that has come up more than once in this topic is that people think they can rip their cds and then sell (or give away) the source, then complain that the songs are gone and they have no way to get them back. If you sell (or give away) the media you purchased such as a cd or tape or album them you are supposed to delete the songs from your library.

Earlier in Apple's history they did not allow you to re-download songs you had purchased; now they do. So as long as you follow the rules, even if iTunes deletes something, you should always be able to get it back, either from Apple or from the original source media.

Which doesn't mean that it's not still frustrating as heck when songs are deleted through no fault of ours...

karenfromeng wrote:

Do you work for Apple or something

or something. I don't work for or represent Apple.

you seem to be sticking up for them?

I am simply posting the info you failed to read.

This is clearly a huge problem for many people, perhaps I'm naive in hoping that there may be some response

You simply failed to read that there will be no response.

I've been an Apple guy since I bought my Apple IIe in 1983. Last year iPhoto lost a large numbers of pictures so I switched to Adobe Elements. Now iTunes has screwed up my song library so badly it will take me weeks to fix it. Songs are just gone or iTunes doesn't see them for some reason. And don't get me started on the random duplication of tracks. It's just a mix of ripped CDs and purchased songs from the iTunes store. There is simply no reason for this. I will try to find an alternative to iTunes that will work with my iPod and iPad and iPhone. This sort of thing is simply intolerable and the indifference displayed by Apple to such a serious and widespread problem makes it that much worse.

After 30 years as a die-hard Apple customer I am now shopping for a Windows laptop to replace my MacBook Pro, my tenth, and final, Apple computer. I'm not a big Windows fan but if I am going to get a second-rate operating system and software, at least I am not going to have to pay a premium price for it.

I thought I was tech savvy enough to get this to work but I can't. Very frustrating. When I tried to sync my iphone with itunes I tried syncing the playlists on my computer then tried the box that said purchased music, I cannot get the albums I paid for to be on the iphone. I probably purchased them on the phone not the computer too.

Hi tt2

I had a problem where my iTunes disappeared. I googled my problem and was directed to your instructions for removing &amp; re-installing iTunes. I duly followed your advice after reading comments from many other people with the same problem who had done as you suggested, and it worked. Yay! I was very sceptical as I'm usually useless with technical problems but am so pleased that your suggestions were what I needed that I registered to use this forum just so that I could thank you.

I hope Apple acknowledge your expertise and the time you must give to this forum in helping people solve their technical issues!

I, for one, greatly appreciate it and this forum will now be my number one choice when experiencing further problems.

Thanks again.

You're welcome. 🙂

Those still having trouble installing iTunes 11.1.4 should now refer to:

Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates

tt2

All the music disappeared from my sister's iTunes (11.1.4.62) on Win7 Pro... I went into Preferences, on the Store tab, and checked the 'Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases' and clicked OK.

Closed iTunes, reopened it, and all her songs showed up... then in the 'cloud' column, I clicked the down-arrow beside each song and it downloaded them all to her computer again.

Hope that helps *some*body. 🙂

Just wanted to add to the list of victims here. Im on 10.6.8 and running the latest iTunes 11.1. Was in the process of ripping a 1500 cd library onto 1TB external seagate drive when at about 700 rips I get a warning that my hard drive is full. Eh? I changed the destination folder to the external drive at the start of this project. Sure enough, when I check the destintion for iTunes, it's ripping to the mac hd. Had about 200 rips on there. So I re-designate the Seagate drive and rip another disc and go to check where it ended up- in this case it was a Herbie Hancock disc and it was indeed on the external drive as I planned. But wait, I had already ripped another Herbie Hancock disc and I don't see it. I check on the Mac hd- not there either. That's funny, the artwork and track listings are in my library and the disc in my "done" pile- Click on a track- cannot locate the file. I move all the Mac hd rips over to the external which is where they should have been going in the first place, check again- Herbie still gone. Restart, sign out, update, blah blah. Nothing.

I just rip the disc again and it shows up in the artist folder section like it should and I think to myself, "Wow, how lucky was I to have stumbled upon the one disc that somehow went missing." But almost before I can complete that thought I think again- "Oh no! What if that isn't THE ONLY ONE MISSING?"

Went through the whole darn library and it turns out I'm scarce about 100 cd rips. Along with a smattering of downloaded iTunes stuff which I had to delete first in order for it to be available from the Cloud since iTunes was seeing them as present in my library.

I got on the phone with Apple and I knew I wasn't going to get answers but I figured it was worth it to let them hear about it again. To me, it's not the ripping CDs that is the issue by itself since some downloaded content also went missing and in my estimation at about the same rate proportionally. It's a glitch in iTunes.

For now, I'm going to continue with the ripping project but maybe uncheck the 'Keep library organized' box and see if I have better luck. At least at this point I'm aware of it. Hopefully I can get the library restocked and then keep an active back up. I agree with those of you on here that are ticked at the principle of this issue. Really what's the point of iTunes (assuming it's iTunes that is doing this) if it can't keep your stuff intact?

It's not just iTunes. Since my last iPad Mini operating system upgrade, I've had constant app crashes, especially Safari and, in particular, when I'm watching something on YouTube. Apple appears to have signficant, widespread QC problems and either they don't care to fix them because of their hold on the marketplace for MP3 players and tablets or they can't figure out the problems.

I've abandoned iTunes after spending thousands of dollars in downloads. I moved my library to MediaMonkey and use Spotify most of the time. The free version of Spotify works fine when you have an internet connection, but I sprang for the pay version so I could download playlists for when I'm traveling or away from a connection.

If Apple doesn't fix the iPad Mini crash problem, I'm going to move to the Kindle Fire.

yikes, just found this thread.

my GF came to me last night, half of her playlists are empty. i assumed user error...checked the itunes folder, and NONE of the missing music was there.

not random missing songs, but whole albums and/or entire collections by an artist.

2 things: her TM drive is new (november), and NONE of the missing music is there (so perhaps, a problem SINCE november).

and...most of her music's from old CDs, some from amazon. so...the amazon stuff is replaceable; the CDs are long gone.

unbelievable. how does all this data disappear? as some have suggested, seems an action that takes place when syncing her iphone; too 'deliberate' to be random data vanishing.

frightening stuff...

after a closer look...my GF is missing about 70 albums. i can re-DL about 40 from amazon, but the rest were from CDs she no longer has.

late summer, all the music vanished from her iphone, and there was a link to the applestore to get music. had to do some fiddling to get her music back from itunes to the phone (she has it set to autofill).

my suspicion is...something happened then.

never seen anything like this.

This error can be fixed if the track is part of an album. You will need to download another song from that album, on your PC this will not work on moblie I divices, but you can re sync with your divice arfter you have done this. When you have completed downloading the track, open up the album in itunes and press show complete album. Your lost track should show up in here with an option to download the track from icloud.

iTunes has many problems. Consumer software should work as expected and intended. iTunes is now so unstable and unpredictable that the risk is too high to reliability manage a song collection using it. I've abandoned it and moved to MediaMonkey. I now use it and Spotify exclusively.

No consumer who had invested thousands of dollars in iPods and iTunes downloads, not to mention the time incurred in ripping CDs, should have to jump through these kinds of hoops to get software to work.

The most amazing thing about this is that I've not seen anything written about these issues in the technology or mainstream media? Are they that clueless or is that the don't want to be critical of their technology darling?

for us, the loss was entire albums...or playlists. am trying to figure out the common denominator.

all her albums are organized into playlists, but...in a few cases, the ENTIRE catalog of a single artist vanished.

and feel pretty sure this happened when her iphone/itunes relationship 'glitched', and she lost her iphone music.

anyway, will back up what i restore. still, something like this should NOT happen...