Music Disappeared

You can select tracks that are in the cloud, right-click, and click download from the context menu to download them. With tracks with broken links that you know to be in the cloud you can use the same menu to first remove the download and then download to fetch a new local copy. If these were matched tracks they might not be absolutely identical to your originals, so you may want to try to repair when you do have the originals. Something else you can try since you have iCloud Music Library is to import the whole of your media folder to the library. Tracks that Music already knows by path will be ignored. Any duplicates with existing cloud items should resolve down to a single entry. True duplicates should be marked as such (see Identify cloud status icons in your music library on your Mac or PC - Apple Support) and can be tidied up later.

tt2

shadow2350,

Thanks so much for following up with us.

Just to confirm, it seems like some music came back, but other music is still missing, is that correct? 

To help us get a better understanding of the issue, we’d like to ask a few more questions. 

1. Do you show any available updates for your Mac? Here's how to check: Keep your Mac up to date
2. Is all of the affected content music that was imported from CD's? Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac
3. Do any errors appear when you try to access the affected songs or albums? If so, what does the error say?

Thank you!

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:

1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2

See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.

tt2

Hello shadow2350,

We understand that music is missing, and we'd like to help however we can.

Just to confirm, is the music missing when accessing Apple Music from all devices? Were any changes made before this issue occurred? For example, was the "Sync Library" feature recently enabled?

If the Sync Library feature was recently enabled and music is missing, the information and steps outlined on the following page may help: If songs are missing from your music library after you turn on Sync Library

If songs are also grayed out, please check out this link as well: If your songs are grayed out

Thanks!

Hi,

Have you confirmed that the iCloud music library/sync library is enabled on all devices signed in with that Apple ID? For the content to remain matched, a file must still exist downloaded on one of the associated computers. If files are deleted from all physical hard drives of said computers, they may stop playback on all other devices using iCML/Sync Library.

Majority of playback issues, incorrectly matched content, or missing data can be resolved by erasing the currently matched track or album and re-uploading the original file.

If content is missing from other devices and has been matched, make sure that Sync Library is enabled on those devices. If so, disable and re-enable Sync Library to resolve. You can also try to update your iCML in the menu bar > File > Library > Update iCML to resolve issues with the exclamation mark icon.

To confirm the cloud status or upload status of the matched content, in the menu bar click view > show view options > select Cloud Download and Cloud Status.

Hope this helps!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203564

andrewSolov wrote:

thank you for help, but Iam really stupid in IT, could you help me please?

Was it this question you wanted help with or something else?

Hello, why my debit card doesn't except? - Apple Community

tt2

Difficult to know exactly how this happened without knowing more about the history of how you have used your library, e.g. whether it has been moved around, how much metadata editing you do, whether you let iTunes/Music reorganize the files etc. As for helping fix the damage if you can show me all of the paths associated with a specific album I might have some ideas. It also depends a bit on whether you have ratings and playlists you want to preserve, or are prepared to start over with a new library and import the media you have into it.

tt2

OK, that's a good start. The default location for media under iTunes used to be ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media, with music going into an additional subfolder called Music before being organized by album artist and album title. The extra Music folder serves to put each type of media in its own subfolder of the media folder. The fact that your examples 2 & 3 both end /Music/Music suggest at some point your media folder got set to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music. With Apple Music in Catalina or later the default media folder is ~/Music/Music/Media. Again there is by default an additional Music folder before the division by album artist and album. Ideally you wouldn't move content around by hand, although Mac is more forgiving than Windows as long as the files remain on the same volume. You can however delete files on a Mac by copying one folder over the top of another so again manually manipulating files should be done carefully if at all.

Do you have a mix of artist folders in both ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music and ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Music? If you point the script at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music it might be able to fix broken links as long as the tracks are in one subfolder or the other.

tt2

shadow2350,

Understood, thank you.

From here, we'd like to get you in touch with Apple Support for further assistance. You may be able to contact Apple Support here:

Get Support

Take care!