Q: Songs Disappearing from iTunes

I agree that 4 songs is nothing to write home about when others have lost hundreds.

If you haven't seen it already, I found this method of scanning an iTunes library for missing files gave me some peace of mind that nothing else is missing for the moment: http://forums.ilounge.com/itunes-mac-pc/242332-how-isolate-missing-tracks-exclam ation-mark.html

It still works in iTunes 11.0.1 but the scan only happens when the standard playlist called Not Missing is created. If a song is added to the Not Missing playlist before it goes missing, the smart playlist cannot tell that it is not present and will not update accordingly.

I will have to re-create the Not Missing playlist from time to time to keep an eye on things as I'm not sure if this issue is hardware or software related.

Not belittling the volume of losses in any way there - if it's 4 or 4,000 it's still a faulty system.

I appreciate the link, but having spent countless hours in the early days trying to recover songs, I've lost all faith in I-Tunes and I'm moving to the Sonos system now.

And I think this is the point.  We shouldn't have to be spending time in forums trying to find solutions to a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place or battling with a support team that constantly denies the problem exists and blaming customers for deleting files.

OK, backing up files is sensible, but I don't want to be having to go through this kind of ball-ache every week trying to recover and reload files.

As I said earlier, I-Tunes is a flawed system and not throwing resources at resolving it will be a massive own-goal by Apple in the long run.

Yep, I absolutely agree that it shouldn't be happening.

Sonos looks like a pretty impressive system. Hope all goes well with the switch.

I have never heard of or had this problem until today.  A few minutes ago I was going through my iTunes library and deleting some stuff that I didn't want anymore.  All the sudden every artist from A-C is missing.  I check the trash, it's empty.  I check for the actual files on my hard drive and they are gone.  Nothing from A-C.  The songs literally disappeared from the library and from the hard drive in an instant.  Looks like it affected my iCloud as well, because i'm also missing everything from A-C when I look on my iPhone music app which is controlled by iCloud.

Freaking out a bit here... most of this music I've had for years and years!  How could this be?

This is probably just my inner conspiracy theorist talking, but I have a strong suspicion that it has to do with DRM, and that even if we legally own the music (which I did), the music that's disappearing is music that iTunes can't verify that we legally own.

Has anyone had anything disappear that they *did* purchase through the iTunes store, I wonder?

Anything that was ripped from a recently purchased CD or downloaded from another major music service?

Or is it only stuff off CDs that predate DRM, or purchased from artists' own websites (or, not that I'm asking anyone to admit to anything, bootleg)?

My experience doesn't support a pattern that is related to an inability to verify legal ownership.

The files that disappeared from my system had the following origins:

- iTunes Store, post DRM pre iCloud

- iTunes Store, post iCloud

- mp3 files purchased from the Ghostly music store

Just to ensure I've made it clear. All the music files that disappeared from my system were DRM free. Some were purchased from, iTunes and others were purchased from the Ghostly store.

None of the music I've ripped from CDs has disappeared yet.

Just my inner conspiracy theorist, then. As I suspected.

I just had a thought, not sure if anyone has suspected this or not but what if some of the music is being stored in a folder that the system views as a temp folder... and when we go to clear our caches or run cccleaner for example the music is then removed from the system?   Is this possible?   I have no idea but it just dawned on me that this could in fact happen if the file locations were mismanaged on the hard disk.

snowdream wrote:

 

I just had a thought, not sure if anyone has suspected this or not but what if some of the music is being stored in a folder that the system views as a temp folder... and when we go to clear our caches or run cccleaner for example the music is then removed from the system?   Is this possible?

Possible yes but iTunes is a bit flaky as I have NOT run CC Cleaner or emptied any caches and a few things have disappeared.

TLDR;  Your iTunes database and file storage is losing connection in some way (virus protection, NAS, unstable storage, cloud issue, sync issue). iTunes auto-management / cloud / sync then deletes files files that were added to the not found list by various ways mentioned below.

How are people so calm about this?   I just had this problem too.  Only a few songs, but still.    My thoughts are that iTunes does a look for a file at some point and in some cases the directory and file is not found due to interferrence from an application or security software.  That would be the case for those that are missing only a few files.  For those that are missing thousands or hundreds of files, are you storing them on a NAS or other attached storage that can lose connection or become timed out?  That is my guess as I have had iTunes lose links to files once when i was using it and unplugged my NAS (when i used to store my music on a NAS).

My thoughts on why some users are losing physical files in directories is a pretty direct speculation that iTunes is set to manage music or does something with the cloud in a way that causes the previous mentioned unlinked files to become removed during a sync process.  Basically iTunes sees files are missing in the database removes them from the sync location, then when the files link back into iTunes database the sync'd location decides that "hey these were deleted here so we better delete them in iTunes too".  Automation with computers can only be taken so far before people lose what is going on and the system fails.  Also engineers and programmers that are too arrogant or lazy to place human checks on computer management tasks.  What I mean by this is that regardless of rights, location, time, color of the sky or any factor, the 'system' should never be able to delete assets without some kind of confirmation from a user with a link to dig deeper into what is being deleted or changed in some cases.

Here's what I have been able to troubleshoot.

Windows7 PC.  iTunes stored on a USB connected 2TB drive.  setting in iTunes:  F:itunes

Exclamation points started after upgrade to iTunes 11.  First I thought as many here, "hey, iTunes is deleting my files" but interesting, it only appears the files are gone if you are performing the search via the pop-up iTunes windows (the...do you want to locate the file?)  No matter where you look the file does not appear to be present.  If one navigates with Explorer to the exact same folder, the music file is present.  If clicked on, it will play.  The file can then be located via the iTunes folder.  I do not have an explanation for this.

The other thing I have found is folders and music are getting renamed to their original import names. I have "keep iTunes library organizied" activated

Here's an example: 

Album name: Heavy Metal 2000.  Artist: Pantera Song: Immortally Insane

Inserting the CD into drive, iTunes comes back with album name, song titles, but all artists are Various Artists AND it considers this a compilation.Also list type of music as Soundtrack.  Folder gets created on F drive under Various artists and all songs are in that folder

Once I copy the song into iTunes. I rename the artist to Pantera, change the type of music to Heavy Metal and unticked compilation box.  itunes performs its cleanup and the song moves under a new folder (Pantera).  This is how it should be. Since iTunes11, I am seeing the original import file with the song in it AND the one iTunes created when I renamed the artists from various artists to Pantera.   If I attempt to locate to the Pantera folder, no luck, itunes does not see the file (but it is there via Explorer), if I attempt to locate to the Various Artists folder, then the Heavy Metal 2000 folder, the song file is there.  Unfortunately, I do not know why it is doing this either.

Although I beleive part of the issue may be the external drive, it was never an issue before the upgrade to 11.  I suspect whatever backgrond processes are going on within iTunes, if the drive goes to sleep, itunes doesn't know what to do and its song pointers get all confused.  As much as I like using the external drive, I do not enjoy having to repoint each song in iTunes back to the actual song file.

Nice description. Don't blame the external drive: I have the same problem (plus file deletion when I sync) with an internal drive.

metalmikeLV - "itunes performs its cleanup and the song moves under a new folder (Pantera)."

Automation of your file system by iTunes.  Scary stuff man.  Maybe I'm a control freak.

I use my Itunes fairly regulary and tonight I have had a total of 1340 songs flaged with an !

I am so p'd off its untrue. They are a mix of CD's I've imported and downloads from itunes.

Some tracks I was palying just yesterday and today they have disappeared?!?!

They cannot be located and are not in their folder with the iTunes folder. There are a lot of very important rare albums missing, of which I had the CD's stolen from my car years ago which I am worried cannt be found again.

On some albums just one or two tracks are missing and on others all but one or two are gone???? It doesnt add up?

I know there are alot of us with the same problem and nothing seems to being done about it.

What can I do to ensure this doesnt happen any further?

Cheers