I have a number of purchased songs that I am unable to play from iTunes/Music. It says the file cannot be located. I can't play them or even get a preview from the iTunes Store where the are highlighted in blue. I am also missing a number of songs which I know I have previously had. All this happened when I went to Catalina with a new computer. How do I recover my songs?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14
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.
Alternatively, for purchases only, you should be able to delete the current broken entry from the library, without hiding from your purchase history if prompted, after which you should see a cloud link in the library which you can use to redownload that item. If you don't see the link it may help to close and reopen Music, or you may need to unhide hidden purchases from your purchase history. See Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support if needed.
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.
Alternatively, for purchases only, you should be able to delete the current broken entry from the library, without hiding from your purchase history if prompted, after which you should see a cloud link in the library which you can use to redownload that item. If you don't see the link it may help to close and reopen Music, or you may need to unhide hidden purchases from your purchase history. See Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support if needed.
tt2
Do you still have the source computer the library came from? I assume .Trash would be the bin on the source computer which won't have been copied over. You can see Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support to check on any hidden purchases. For purchased items you can delete the broken entry then redownload from purchase history. I can walk you through tidying up the layout of the library but first let us try and get what you have working.
tt2
Thank you for the detailed reply tt2.
It is a bit of a mess here. Multiple options from what you sent work for different songs - some are in hidden, for some have there is nothing at the file path but if I delete and then re-download, all is good. Now, I have things like this where the file path is file:///Users/A_A_N/.Trash/01 My Head Is a Jungle (Radio Edit) 1.m4a...where there is no ".trash" folder (and it's not the album name). The song is listed in the library, not in the hidden, and does not appear "purchased" in iTunes but I know this is purchased because I have all the other songs in the album which show purchased.
All this happened when I had my iTunes library transferred over to the new computer. Under MacHD, there is Users, then Music which in turn has both iTunes and Music where Music has several "previous libraries" which are inaccessible.
I think most of this will have to be fixed by hand. iTunes/Music is not the most ergonomic for organizing music. When the library was transferred, I expected that all songs would just appear in the new interface but a good portion of them were "hidden" or required re-download but no way to know which songs were not playing when having a playlist on, or were duplicated.
Sorry about the rant. I appreciate your help. At least I have some solved but frustrating.
songs in iTunes library cannot be located
