Q: Songs Disappearing from iTunes

Add me too - and to the smart @rse who smugly suggested people contact Itunes support - done that AND the Apple suport I purchased with the Mac book.  They also said they'd not heard of this problem before. 

I'm not sure what's worse, the telephone support person who said I should just keep clicking around the computer until I somehow found the files then book another appointment, or the iTunes standard emails tripping out the same stuff as they give to everyone; my name, some sympathy statement, followed by a load of jargon that basically says 'stuff you'!

I've not touched a darn thing, but 1200 songs have gone, the majority of them iTunes purchases - and they offered to give me 5 free downloads to compensate me.  All I can say is that it's a good job it was email and not face to face.

I used to get this kind of attitude from Microsoft but never expected it from Apple.  I switched to Apple less than a year ago so I don't know if these problems with poor service are routine, or a recent loss of customer focus?

One thing I do know if that if it's not sorted, they'll kill 'the brand that Steve built' overnight.

First of all how can an apple guy say - wow never heard of it - with 15 pages of complaints on here.

Secondly - after the most recent update to iTunes I tried restoring some songs I lost - and guess what - iTunes told me that it was able to find and restore 3 out of 383 songs. 383 songs lost? 383?????? *** and that includes some songs I purchased on iTunes adn I mean ***! Sorry asbout the language but at 14 or so songs on one CD that eans iTunes was kind enough o remove 30 CD's from my computer? what kind of crap it that and why is it after all those complaints still an issue??????

To busy I guess with iPhone 5 and 6 and 7??

Apple fix this, you used to be great at comping up wth solutions to problems, and responses to customers, dont be litke other places that do no longer care about their customers!

Sorry I can't help you, but, thank god, you helped me - I thought I was losiing my friggin' mind! I kept telling my boyfriend that songs were missing from my Itunes library. He thought, because I'm a complete tech ignoramus, that somehow I was responsible for the missing tunes.  It seems that everytime I get an update from Itunes something goes missing. This last update, which happened a few days ago

took many, many songs from my library. I'm ******, like you, because I've paid mucho $$ for this stuff.

I've had it. My boyfriend is somewhat tech savvy but even he didn't know what the heck was going on.

At least I know it's not me and that Apple had better do something about it. It seems as if most of the

music that's missing (I don't even know the extent of the problem) is music that I've bought on-line. There are a few albums that I burned from my own cd collection that are missing but just a few. Whew! I've decided, now that I

know a bit about the problem, that I am going to make sure I have a recent back-up before I update anything

I get from Itunes. It ***** but I can't think of any other way to keep my music from disappeariing. I would also

suggest to those of you out there that you make a hard copy of the cd(s), too.

Oh, another thing, I spent eight hours one Saturday trying to find the files. They are NOT on my computer.

Well I am in the same boat, this ***** I lost 50 songs, I cant download again from the cloud. I am going to stop buying music unitl I recover my old music.

Well Apple this is not rocket science I have no degree in any of this **** and figured out just by observation that its iTunes vs. device issue if you have devices that sync, the coding between iTunes and manage your files manually ticked or not actually attaches the song/files to your device as when you go to the back end of the device the songs are there thats why your 'other' yellow bar keeps growing and the only way to get rid of it is to restore bang songs gone as they were not physically on the mac or pc HD they were on your device. Reason why missing songs still play on your device.

Now your billion $ company aplease these people and fix this freaking issue.

Dronewolf,

I don't believe that your root cause explanation covers everyone on this thread. In most of my cases the deleted (not just missing) file was never loaded onto an iPhone or iPod ever.

In my case they definitely were on my device.

OK, I've had this problem myself today, I purchased an album from iTunes last week and also imported a CD of my own but today they were both completely missing from iTunes and I couldn't locate the files anywhere on my iMac using Finder.  Mysteriously I still couldn't find them when I opened Time Machine and went back to when they were added! 

I eventually managed to find them by pure luck, they are no longer stored in iTunes>iTunes Music but in iTunes>iTunes Media>Music for some reason but weren't showing up in Finder...  So I simply went to the files there and re-added them to my library.  It seems very strange that Finder couldn't locate them even though they were clearly there.  So while it doesn't explain why or how this is happening at least I was able to relocate my missing files.  Hope this helps.

leebaker71 wrote:

 

 

I eventually managed to find them by pure luck, they are no longer stored in iTunes>iTunes Music but in iTunes>iTunes Media>Music

They are supposed to be in iTunes>iTunes Media>Music.

Yes I realise that now but mine never have until now for some reason and I've always updated iTunes whenever needed.  Why were the files not showing in Finder, any ideas?

Why were the files not showing in Finder, any ideas?

I find the Finder is kinda flaky when finding sometimes. Not enough for me to worry though so I haven't looked into it.

If you have both an /iTunes/iTunes music/ and /iTunes/iTune media/ folders, I suggest you do this...

1. Go to iTunes prefs Advanced.
2. Set iTunes Media folder location to /iTunes/iTunes media/.
3. Make sure to tick both "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes media folder organized".
4. Go to iTunes menu File > LIbrary > Organize library and tick Consolidate library.
5. This makes sure everything is in /iTunes/iTune media/.
6. After it is finished, quit iTunes.
7. Go to /Music/iTunes/ folder and move /iTunes/iTunes music/ folder to the desktop.
8. Launch iTunes and make sure everything works.
9. If so, you can delete the iTunes music folder on the desktop.

Yes I did that earlier today thanks as I couldn't see the point in having two folders containing basically the same things. I did check it all worked first though as you've suggested!  Thanks for your help anyway.

DON'T DELETE THE FOLDER...as painful as it is, if you don't want to lose any MORE media than you already have, you're going to have to have two copies of your ENTIRE LIBRARY. That's right, you can't trust your media player to keep track of everything, so YOU have to. Luckily, Apple has made a point of selling highly compressed audio and video files, so it shouldn't take up TOO much space...

A couple of other comments...number one, I have read SO MANY POSTS that say "oh, you must have moved the files..." STOP. If I NEVER see that response again, it'll be too soon. I HAVEN'T MOVED ANYTHING. I have not TOUCHED the songs outside of iTunes, and I even told iTunes to consolidate them in the hopes that allowing it to sort everything out the way it wanted would help. Long story short, IT DIDN'T. Songs are still disappearing left and right! Music from two weeks ago has ceased to exist! Number two, it's NOT just songs that were not downloaded from the iTunes Store, although those do seem to be the most targeted...iTunes has erased several music videos and songs that I purchased from the store. Luckily, I was able to re-download them, but since I've started using smart playlists, the loss of stuff like the original date it was added to the library and the play count has been extremely frustrating.

All told, if this ******** continues much longer, I am going to find another program to communicate with my iPod, and I may even stop purchasing music through iTunes altogether. Oh, and you want to hear the best part? I still can't figure out how to make Apple forget my card information, which makes me VERY nervous, since they obviously can't handle things too well...If I lose money because of them, there's no telling what I'll do, but there will be much blood shed in the name of righteous anger.

Also, I suggest that we try and

with the same problem to come to this thread...maybe if it gets large enough, we can get some kind of petition thing going, get Apple's attention and MAKE them fix this...