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

Mar 21, 2011 3:19 PM in response to malcintheuk

Ok this is weird, firstly this is the path for a song that is in my library and plays ok :

/users/Malcolm/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music/Eva Cassidy/Songbird/04 Wayfaring Stranger.mp3

and this is the path for one of the disappearing tracks (after i cancel the 'locate' option)

file://localhost/Users/Malcolm/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music/Depeche Mode/Ultra/08 Jazz Thieves.mp3

It's like it thinks that the file is on a network drive somewhere ?

It has only ever resided on my Mac.

Interestingly i had a few issues at the weekend with Airplay to Apple TV 2, i was streaming from my itunes library to ATV 2 and it just stopped working.

I cant stream to ATV2 now (yet i can stream music on my iphone just fine.

These things may or may not be related ?

Mar 29, 2011 12:56 PM in response to gizmonic

This is also happening to me. For example, I imported a CD recently. When I used the apple migration tool to move to a new harddrive, I noticed at least 2 albums of music missing from both the harddrive and the iTunes Library. Thankfully, I had the backups. I reimported the tracks. I just went to listen to it again, and it is again gone! I had transfered to my iPhone as well, the tracks are still on my phone. What the **** Apple! What is the point of using iTunes if it cannot be trusted with my precious music collection, currently at ~400gb.

Mar 29, 2011 1:00 PM in response to James Derry

2 years later, and this problem STILL has not been addressed. I have the exact same problem.

skiracer

Level 1

0 points

Apr 4, 2011 5:39 AM in response to gizmonic

Colour me frustrated too... this has been happening to me for a while. I moved my entire library onto a mirrored 2TB RAID to get it off the same drive as the Time Machine as suggested in a previous post, but it is still happening. Also rebuilt all permissions, and made sure no nested folders had the same names (i.e. music/music). STILL LOSING FILES!!

The entry is still in itunes, but the original file has been wiped. Happens to files from all sources (ripped from CD, bought from itunes, whatever).

Is there really still no solution?

Apr 5, 2011 6:06 PM in response to skiracer

I demand my money back with interest. I don't like it when my property disappears.

< Edited by Host >

m1ck

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2011 6:53 PM in response to gizmonic

The disappearing music just started happening to me.

Two days ago, I was editing some album info, and got a popup message "Are you sure you want to edit multiple items?" I didn't think anything about it, but just selected "yes".

Suddenly, stars appeared in the Album by Artist field, then

POOF.. almost all of my library disappeared from the playlist and from the iTunes folders. I went from over 1400 tunes to 31.

Here is a (size reduced) screenshot of what I had left. Note the weird stars that appeared in the wrong column.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/144430/iTunes_fiasco.jpg

This morning, the same thing happened again, only this time ALL the music disappeared. It happened (again) while I was editing (fixing Titles, etc).

I've restored again, but this is unnerving. Even more unnerving to find that it's a known and ongoing issue.

I thought I was going to come here to the forums and find that I needed to throw away a preference or something similar.

It is very strange to find that it's something this serious and hasn't been addressed yet by Apple.

Very freaky, easily restored via Time Machine, but.. DAILY?!

sheesh

Message was edited by: m1ck

Carog223

Level 1

0 points

Apr 14, 2011 1:40 AM in response to gizmonic

I've had this problem before as well, songs vanishing, pop up messages saying the file could not be located and such things. I got so frustrated with the whole thing that I went to uninstall iTunes from my computer. That's when I noticed that I had 2 seperate iTunes programs installed on my computer(I have no clue how that happened). I deleted one, checked out my iTunes, and all my songs were there, no grey exclamation, no pop ups, nothing. I guess the second iTunes program was using some of the songs keeping the first from using them. This was the solution to my problem, just thought I should share should anyone want to try it to see if that was their problem as well.

Apr 24, 2011 3:49 PM in response to Carog223

In April of last year I had just over 30,000 songs on my computer. I know this because the girl I was dating at the time commented on it and her and I spent hours going through my collection.

Today I have just over 17,000 songs.

I have never deleated any myself, I've never had any viral problems with my computer, no one has "hacked" it or done anything malicious to it, but for some reason iTunes deletes 100's of songs from my PC monthly. I really didn't start to notice this until my number dropped below 25,000 and now I check it daily and like clockwork there are missing songs.

Odd thing is that I've got over 200 songs on my ipod that were put on there by itunes less than 2-3 months ago and yet they aren't on the PC now...

This is crazy.

Most of the songs of mine that have been dropped are all from CD's and other music libraries that have been imported, but some are songs I know I purchased from the itunes store.

Still no response from Apple...

Apr 29, 2011 6:28 AM in response to gizmonic

Also having this problem. I have about 6000+ songs on my ipod, and just every now and again, I will get the grey exclamation point with small batches of songs. Look around on my computer and they are completely gone from where I had originally placed them, sometimes even leaving other songs in the same folder intact. Very, very weird, Apple.

PDXJenny

Level 1

0 points

Apr 29, 2011 9:39 AM in response to malcintheuk

Your description of this problem is EXACTLY what i just discovered happening in my itunes last night!

I noticed that hundreds of my purchased itunes songs and albums was not playing. after some digging around, I also discovered that the songs that were still playing were directed to users/jenny/music/itunes etc.

However, the hundreds of unplayable songs were directed to file://localhost/users/jenny/music/itunes....

I have not touched any setting at all. no clue why this happened. to make things even more frustrating and weird, i have everything back up on my time machine and all of these files are also gone from my time machine! I checked back to some purchases that I made two years ago, went back two years in my time machine to check for the files and NONE of the files that i was looking for were there.

This is beyond disappointing and extremely frustrating. If anyone has come up with a fix for this, please help! Now onto filing a lost music claim with itunes....ughhhhh

May 25, 2011 8:26 PM in response to gizmonic

Yes I join the fray. I have noticed recently I have many many individual songs missing from my library. The interesting thing it is only the 1st song of a ton of my albums. In some cases it is the first two. My library consists of about 10,000 songs probably about 9,500 have been ripped from CDs I have purchased over the years. Most of the missing songs are from discs ripped quite a while ago. Now I'm faced with the fact that if I want complete albums I have to rip JUST ONE SONG off the majority of my collection. I can say with 100% certainty that I am not responsible for deleting one song per album in my collection. Did I mention they are no longer in my master iTunes folder and most start from the 2nd track. This blows....

Update... I just noticed something. I took my iPod on a trip this past weekend. I was just reviewing my iTunes library and noticed one of my songs is unable to be found. The funny thing is I can see it on my iPod. I was out of town for 4 days and in no way was my library on my Mac modified. Something is FUBAR here. Just realized that a complete album is getting the dreaded exclamation point in iTunes, however it is available on my iPod.

The investigation continues. I am finding out more as I compare my library on my iPod with my library on my Mac. I am seeing many of the 1st tracks that I'm missing in my iTunes library available on my iPod yet there are some still missing on the iPod with no apparent pattern. It seems that over time they are just disappearing. aarrhggghhh!

Jun 11, 2011 11:59 AM in response to gizmonic

Here I am, another victim. A--gasp!--Windows user, I have never had any problems using iTunes, except, that every so often random songs disappeared. Now, I have discovered that a huge section of my library is gone, can't be found in my computer anywhere. The pattern? ALL the files that are gone are those I ripped from my own CD collection--dozens and dozens of albums. Those that remain are all purchased from iStore.

Not to be paranoid, but this does reek of Apple trying to control my own property, and force me to purchase from them. I support the control of copyright that Apple has attempted to enforce, but whatthefuck!!??

All of this music remains on my iPod, but I am now afraid to synch. Any ideas? Is anyone out there? Apple? Hello, Apple????

Jun 11, 2011 12:39 PM in response to yojimbo666

I believe that this is what has happened in my case as well. I synched my iPod so recently, after a purchase, that I have to wonder if the songs, though gone from my iTunes, were somehow left on my iPod. They're all there! But I am wary of testing this theory by re-synching my iPod, for fear that it will all disappear.

Jun 12, 2011 7:33 AM in response to gizmonic

Download Senuti. Free trial allows for 1,000 transfers from iPod to computer. Worked for me. Still have no clue how they disappeared in the first place. Apple seems disinterested. In my case they were all ripped CDs and the songs that disappeared were the 1st tracks. 650 of them. I'm guessing Apple somehow integrated some bug deleting these tracks expecting me to purchase them rather than sort through 650 CDs and rip one son a piece.

Jun 12, 2011 5:02 PM in response to yojimbo666

Thanks, glad to hear it worked for you. Unfortunately, Senuti only works for Macs, and I have a PC. (Though I have been thinking of biting the money bullet and switching, this fiasco with iTunes makes want to say Screw You Apple. Anyway, I'll do a search for other software--it must exist.

Update on my previous mail: I was wrong about the pattern I thought I'd found. Three albums ripped from CDs are still there (out of maybe two hundred whole or partial albums). And though I thought my iTunes purchases were intact, a sampling of those are gone. This seems totally random and insane.

My next question, if I can get this righted, is how to back up my music files differently in the future. When I copied them to an external drive, I didn't think to check to be sure they really existed, rather than just appearing as "ghost" album artwork.

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Songs Disappearing from iTunes