I guess I didn't notice that iTunes disappeared as an Application on my iMac. Now when I open Music, I see my list of artists, albums, songs, etc, but it can't locate them to play them. They are in an iTune library on an external device. I try to point Music to them in Preferences, but it doesn't allow me to do it. The iTunes library shows up, but is greyed out. Any help would be appreciated.
iMac 27″, macOS 11.2
The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.
In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.
If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:
See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.
tt2
The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.
In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.
If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:
See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.
tt2
As noted:
If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:
See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.
Sometimes it is a question of redefining the media folder in preferences, sometimes you can move the media folder and thus content to where the library expects to find it, or my script may be able to carry out systematic repairs if the other approaches won't fly. I need the three details requested to offer more specific advice.
tt2
Set the media folder to /BUFFALO/612264/Music and Back-up/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ and see if that improves matters.
tt2
Thank you for the detailed reply.
It was very helpful to use the CMD-I to learn the file path Music thinks is where the file should be.
A few things first: almost all of this music was ripped from Physical CDs that I have owned for decades, and still have, so I have the original "hardcopy" for most of them, so to speak. The others are almost all from Amazon, and I have them in my Amazon music cloud, or download to iTunes.
I should have mentioned in my original post, that the external device they are on, is new (six months old). I had my iTunes library on a different external device for about seven years, but I got worried it was getting old, and moved everything on it (iMovie libraries, back-ups, etc. and the iTunes library) to a new external drive around November of 2020.
If I useFinder and navigate to the new external device, I can double-click on any song and it plays in Music. So, all the music is there, it's definitely a path issue. The question is, how do I change the path to roughly one-thousand songs.
There may have been a couple of dozen songs loaded to the local hard rives, Music library since last November, but that is a small fraction of what is in the new external drives "old" library.
Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks.
Here it is, I wanted to provide it yesterday but didn't have time:
1) (I have Music, is it even possible to still have iTunes? But that is a secondary question)
For advanced, with Music, I see no mention of media path, However, under Preferences> Files, I see:
/Macintosh HD/Users/MatthewStickler/Music/Music/Media
2) file:///Volumes/BUFFALO/612264/Music and Back-up/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Baden Powell/Os Afro Sambas/Aerosmith/Get Your Wings/01 Same Old Song And Dance.mp3
But, it's odd, I think I accidentally changed 1, yesterday to:
/BUFFALO/612264/Music and Back-up/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Baden Powell/Os Afro Sambas
Buffalo is the name/brand of the external hard drive.
3) /BUFFALO/612264/Music and Back-up/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Aerosmith/Get Your Wings/01 Same Old Song And Dance.mp3
So, this might be a bit confusing, in that when trying to "fix" it yesterday, I think I set the "Files" media path under Preferences, from
/Macintosh HD/Users/MatthewStickler/Music/Music/Media
to
/BUFFALO/612264/Music and Back-up/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Baden Powell/Os Afro Sambas
Thanks, that makes sense, and I just did it. When I hit "ok" it asked:
Would you like to move and rename the files in your new Media folder to match the “Keep Media folder organized” preference?
I wasn't sure if I should answer Yes or No?
Unless you have a reason not to use the standard iTunes/Music naming conventions I would normally suggest you say yes, but it may be quicker to say no at this point. I know someone else had an issue where they hadn't specified the media folder correctly and this caused a problem. Say no. Once your library is working you can always turn Keep organized... off and back on again to enforce the layout.
tt2
Thanks.... I think I understand. I might have the same issue with my iMovie library.
Yes, a similar approach might be needed to fix up your video content.
tt2
How do I point Music to my iTunes Library?
