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

Aug 23, 2009 3:54 PM in response to gizmonic

Is there a way to batch fix permissions without installing any third-party whatevers? This is enough of a mess already that I don't want to screw it up any farther. I just want my files back so I can take them the **** off this computer.

Thanks for replying, I do appreciate it!
-Mike

El Chode

Level 1

0 points

Aug 23, 2009 4:09 PM in response to Mike Valmike

In my experience the 3d party software simplifies it. The other nice thing about macs is that the install/uninstall process will be cleaner than with a pc, so if you don't need Cyberduck or anything like that afterwards, you can just nuke it from orbit.

Another option is the fireftp plugin for firefox if you use that.

HWStone

Level 1

30 points

Aug 23, 2009 4:11 PM in response to Mike Valmike

I had a young lady make a suggestion that "got me some songs back" but did not cure all the problems-- like three minute songs that play forty seconds.

What she suggested was to turn off ALL authorization for all computers, do an archive install, then turn the authorization back on.

It went from 33,400 to 44,200 in one jump, but a lot of those appear to be duplicates, too-- the dupes that could not be found before. I have been removing dupes, and sometimes one copy plays fine but the other is bad, so it isn't just wing through it.

See if that authorization off, then back on helps you.

Aug 23, 2009 5:33 PM in response to Mike Valmike

OK, we're getting somewhere...

I can set the file permission one by one.
I can set it by folder and use the "apply to all included files" gear thingy.
When I tried to do it for my entire iTunes folder, the system choked. But that might have been because I had a Mozy backup, a TM backup, etc, running. I'm going to let the backups finish, try to apply permissions to the entire iTunes Music folder, then delete my playlist and reload. HOPEFULLY this does it.

Still a ridiculous bug... changing permissions should virtually never happen when a system is not being used as a network file server...

zzok

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2009 7:47 AM in response to xGx

This just happened to me as well...
I lost songs from artists beginning with the letter J..weird thing is I back up my files on an external drive with time machine and while, strangely, the lost songs are on my iPod, which I JUST synched , they are missing from my backup as far back as I can go. I can't find them anywhere. How can they be on my iPod but not on my computer or back up drive dating back a month ago? What the hey??!?!??!??

kian777

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2009 10:48 AM in response to gizmonic

I have this happen about once a year. Its happened on different computers but only with itunes. I have never been able to figure out why this happens but for what seems like no particular reason a bunch of my music will just go missing. Usually its songs purchased from itunes. Apple has always been helpful in letting me redownload my music but I try to back up my music better now. In any case its frustrating when you have a music library of 1000s of song and you don't know how many you lost.

Definitely a problem and by the responses to this post it seems like we are not alone.

SageRad

Level 1

0 points

Dec 12, 2009 9:09 AM in response to kian777

This just happened to me, as well. Random songs, here, and there, that were still on the ipod, but no longer in the itunes library, were removed. Fortunately, I had recently back up my music and did not lose anything but time.

I would like to know if there is a fix or anything that I can do to prevent this from happening in the future.

Dec 13, 2009 12:18 AM in response to gizmonic

I would like to add my voice: I also have random songs disappearing apparently for no reason. The files are on an external FAT32 drive and the library is on a local machine. I never touched or moved the files after ripping them from my CDs. Like others have said, the actual file is missing and no trace of it is to be found anywhere.

This is an extremely frustrating bug that absolutely must be addressed.

evan e

Level 1

0 points

Dec 13, 2009 8:47 AM in response to gizmonic

I have had a similar experience:

I have second hard drive installed in my early 2008 Mac Pro, dedicated to media. I realized mp3 files were being arbitrarily deleted after attempting to sync a genre playlist with my iPhone and receiving warnings that the files do not exist.

My question is how do I find out what files are deleted? iTunes still recognizes the files as existent until I click on the song to play, and then gives the broken link warning. Is there a way to list what's in my iTunes library that does not have a link to a file on the hard drive? This is frustrating and worrisome, as this must have occurred so long ago that my external back-up hard drive using Time Machine does not recognize the files either...what the eff Apple...

Dec 13, 2009 10:44 AM in response to gizmonic

Same thing here...
Album in Music folder all songs there
all songs listed in iTunes
Later....
Album in Music folder all songs there
some songs missing in iTunes
I started adding them by hand, but there were way too many.

I found the solution ...

In iTunes Menu ... Select File -> Add to playlist...
Select the entire Music folder
Let 'er rip!
Took about 1/2 hour to do 20,000+ songs but they were all sorted and missing songs were back where they belong.

Shucks

Level 1

0 points

Jan 24, 2010 9:26 PM in response to gizmonic

Another "me too" post.

I am having seemingly random songs disappearing from my 5000+ library. I will go to look for a song (generally that I haven't played for a while), to find it gone without a trace from my library. Not like I'm getting the "!", but completely gone. As others have said, the fact they are gone from iTunes and not just my computer, suggests to me that it's an iTunes deletion issue.

Any solutions found yet? It's driving me CRAZY, especially cause I have no idea what's been deleted!

Cheers, Shucked

Randz

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2010 5:24 PM in response to Shucks

I'm losing my purchased songs! What I did was to download a ripper to copy back my songs from my ipod back to my Macbook. When I plug in either my Ipod Touch 2G or iPhone 3gs and a backup happens, I start losing songs again.

Stulle

Level 1

0 points

Mar 9, 2010 6:46 PM in response to Randz

same or similar issue here.

i am losing both itunes purchases and CD rips.
i want to add that i was tidying my library and did delete few albums manually. tested it with an album and the "keep files" option did not make a difference!! the files were gone anyway! And cant be found in the recycle bin either..

Sandman6

Level 1

0 points

Mar 10, 2010 1:42 AM in response to gizmonic

Background: Music loaded to ext HDD using Apple Lossless.

My problem was not disappearing tunes, but music files moving themselves from directory to a different directory, usually just a few songs from an album.

This problem seemed to be associated with the "compilations" directory more than any other.

After I'd loaded an album, sometimes it would land in the "compilations" directory rather than the directory for the named artist. After renaming the album artist using "get info", I then manually moved the music files on the iTunes Library on the ext HDD from "compilations" to the correct artist directory.

If any of the files still kept jumping back to the "compilations" directory, I moved them back to the right place again, went to each track using "get info" and clicked the lock file button on each track.

So far, so good, all of my wandering files have stayed put.

Mar 10, 2010 7:33 AM in response to Sandman6

I USED to have my 175 gigs stored on a server but I moved it an external in november.

Since I bought a new iPhone in January, iTunes is synching its backup to my user folder on my computer, and is reverting back to thinking things are stored on the server. I know this because when I am connected to the server, things play fine. When I am not, it asked for a connection, even tho it is pointed at my external.

things arent been deleted, it just seem to know where to find stuff.

as I am typing this, I am "adding to library"...it wont copy the music a second time because it will be "keeping it organized"...plus there is not enough room. Its my test to make sure we are not duplicating things

lets see if I have tunage again.

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Songs Disappearing from iTunes