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

Mar 11, 2010 12:17 PM in response to gizmonic

This has happened to me to. My iTunes completely froze up (and froze my computer with it) a couple days ago and so I had to stop it (Crt altdel). when I rebooted, all the music I bought from eMusic.com (mp3s) was gone. So random. I purchased that music over the last three months and its all gone. The music is still on my iPod, but as we know, there is no way of getting music off an iPod back onto a computer. So I'm one accidental sync away from losing that music forever. VERY FRUSTRATING!!!! I had been planning to back that music up, but never got the chance. Little did I know iTunes would erase it before I got hte chance. I think I'm just about done with iTunes. I like the way it organizes music, but to say it comes at a high price of perpetual aggravation is an understatement.

Message was edited by: esprit15d

Mar 11, 2010 12:19 PM in response to jmpelletier

This problem has been going on for years and Apple has NEVER addressed it, much less fixed it.

Mar 19, 2010 9:19 PM in response to gizmonic

Hi Guys,

I'm no Apple expert but I also experienced this problem and discovered that the songs were still on my hard-drive, they had just been renamed by iTunes and moved to a different folder. If you are having this issue my suggestion is that you:

1. Uncheck the "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" option (Edit-->Preferences-->Advanced)
2. Search for you music files in folders named "Unknown Artist" or "Compilations"
or "Various Artists" (the file name may be slightly different)
3. Organise the songs into the folders you want
4. Re-point your song listings in your library to the new song file locations

Good luck!

Mar 27, 2010 11:51 AM in response to jamierichards

I've found random tracks that were stored in the "compilations" folder, but shouldn't have been there. I used the "get info" multiple item window under "options" and checked the "no" box for "Part of a compilation". I looked at the iTunes folders immediately after and saw the tracks had moved out of the compilation folder and into the artist folder. Why and when they moved to compilations originally I have no idea. I suspect this also occurred in reverse, when tracks that are truly part of a compilation got moved into an artist folder.

It is completely random, but I suspect it has to do with a change of compilation status before and after iPod syncing, when the iPod is set to take random tracks from a playlist that is too large to all fit on the iPod. If just a random few tracks from an album that is not designated a compilation get on the iPod, and the computer album designation is subsequently purposely changed to a compilation, upon re-syncing the iPod some confusion occurs, because the iPod knows those tracks as non-compilations, but the computer knows them as compilations. Is that possible?

May 10, 2010 9:26 PM in response to gizmonic

Just wanted to bump this thread.
I've been having this issue for a long time now, and I've lived with it for years. However, I now have a Time Machine backup.
I have the exact date and time when I loaded an example album onto my computer 2 months ago, yet it has been wiped clean off of my internal drive, as well as every backup date on my Time Machine drive. How is that possible?
Very disappointing.

Jul 22, 2010 7:37 AM in response to gizmonic

I've noticed this phenomenon before most recently in regard to about 7 or 8 songs I purchased back in March. Went to listen to them yesterday but guess what they've totally disappeared... So annoying. I "reported a problem" on each and apple's response is their typical one: tough luck, your problem...

I NEVER delete purchased music. Why would I? But nevertheless I’ve noticed this several times in the past. I really think there is some type of software glitch (intentional?) that causes this occasionally and then the only recourse is for consumer to repurchase. I think some class action lawyers need to be contacted about this to see if any of them are interested.

Kurt

Level 2

320 points

Aug 3, 2010 9:26 PM in response to illgiveumorality

Another thread bump.

I bought three Devo albums from the iTunes store back in January of this year. All the tracks are now "!" missing, and none appear in any of my Time Machine backups (not even backups from the date I purchased the albums).

RC178

Level 1

0 points

Oct 15, 2010 6:42 PM in response to gizmonic

It's nearing the end of 2010 and I have the same problem. Music appears in my iTunes library but is physically missing off my harddrive. I thought I was going crazy too, but apparently I'm not. Any solutions yet?

Nov 2, 2010 4:25 PM in response to RC178

I have exactly the same problem, I have erased newly created playlists and deleted them but that doesnt delete my songs. I went to a mac store nearby and the technician suggested that it was user problems but I know I haven't deleted any of the songs that are missing and Im worried because each time more and more songs are missing.

KA Obee

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2010 1:07 PM in response to gizmonic

Same here. Just last night I installed Snow Leopard on my iMac. My music is stored on an external hard drive. After I installed the new operating system I went to the hard drive because I wantted to copy all my music to another hard drive for extra safe keeping. Wish I had done it before I installed SL! More than half of my music is missing! But I didn't worry, because I'm fanatical about backing up and have used Time Machine for ages, so I'm safe, right? Wrong! It's gone in Time Machine too! (On a Time Capsule) The last time I synced my iPhone was only a week ago, and the music is there - but it's not in Time Machine at all. I"m making an appt at the Genious Bar. I'm bringing a printout of this thread so they can't say I did something wrong. This is nutty.

Nov 29, 2010 8:30 AM in response to dkohlhaas

@dkohlhaas I started to have this same problem this year. Maybe 3-6 months ago....I don't remember. But I have started to notice that songs I bought from iTunes recently on my phone may disappear from my hard drive. I discover this because I do a sync one day and it copies any newly purchased songs to my library from my phone. All is well. Then two days later I do a sync and I get a warning dialog that says. "Imagine was not copied to the iPhone "Doug Thompson's iPhone" because it could not be found." So when I look for the song in iTunes it is still showing up but will not play and has the exclamation point by it. I search my hard drive, an external WD 500 Gb, and the individual song file cannot be found anywhere with a spotlight search! This has happened to single songs and entire albums purchased from the iTunes store over the last several months. I do not believe it happens to every purchase.

I bought PhoneView and when ever this occurs I have to use PhoneView to get back what ever tracks I am missing from my machine. They are still present on my iPhone luckily. Very annoying!! I have been an iTunes user since it came out and have had several iPhones over the years and never had this problem till these last 3-6 months.

Dec 7, 2010 7:37 PM in response to gizmonic

Disappearing songs is happening to me, too. ALL of the MPEG audio file songs I downloaded from EMusic about three years ago. Now CDs I've ripped as well in various formats. Starting to become a real problem. Noticed it now that I got Apple TV v.2 and I am going back to more music than in past years.

Aurgh! That about sums up how I feel about it.

Lew

Dec 17, 2010 7:46 PM in response to captain lew

Just found this thread. I rebuilt my 30 GB library by finding all the original cds to import back in to get rid of the ! marks. I thought the problem was solved and now I'm noticing some songs missing again. There's no rhyme or reason. One song here another song there. The really strange thing is that I backed up the entire library when all the songs were there and now my time machine from that date doesn't have the song either.

Crazy.

KA Obee

Level 1

0 points

Dec 17, 2010 8:08 PM in response to crowejoshua

When this happened to me I noticed that there were instances where random songs were missing from albums. (There were also plenty of situations where entire albums were missing!) When I requested Apple send me my library, they claimed there was some music that either had been changed in iTunes or that they no longer had. They sent me a list of the songs they would not be able to re-instate. Oddly enough, the individual songs they listed were the songs that I was missing! They listed random songs from albums - and those were the EXACT songs that I was also missing!
I ended up getting third party software and getting the songs off my iPhone. Now I back everything up to a separate hard drive that I keep disconnected from my computer. (just in case) This has been a very frustrating process. No one at Apple has gotten back to me with any answers as to why this would happen. They offered me a few credits to buy songs, but no where close to the number of songs I lost. I don't even care about that - I just don't want it to happen again.
Apple! What is happening?

Dec 17, 2010 8:34 PM in response to KA Obee

This is starting to sound like an X-Files conspiracy.

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Songs Disappearing from iTunes