Lost Ratings in my iTunes Library

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Level 1

8 points

Lost Ratings in my iTunes Library

I have my master iTunes library on a Windows computer. It has 16,000 songs, of those 5,000 were rated, driving hundreds of smart playlists. Recently, I problems with missing iTunes songs on my iPhone. I let iTunes Match expire, and around that time all the music on the phone was wiped out. I was told by Apple I needed to resubscribe. I thought that as long as I still could physically connect despite being able to iTunes on my Windows computer and "sync" - all the songs, playlists, ratings would be there. This was not the case.

So I resubscribed to iTunes Match, now I'm finding that the thousands of songs (maybe 5,000 rated songs out of 16,000 total) I had manually rated (which drives hundreds of playlists) are now NO LONGER showing up in my master library on my computer. Hundreds of smart playlists are empty! I have iTunes classics which have the ratings (although not precisely current) - can I synch my computer iTunes library with one of those and get the ratings uploaded back into the master library on the computer? Are there older copies of the library (or at least the ratings, playlists, etc) kept on Windows that I can find to restore? (I've not explicitly made any backups of the master :-( ). How should my iPhone be set up so it can be kept synched (as i add songs, playlists, ratings to my windows library as the main computer) but without it effecting the any of the information on the computer (ex: ratings, playlists, etc). I previously thought that the iTunes library on the computer was the main hub and that anytime you connected a device it wouldn't change the ratings on the iTunes library on the computer - at most, it would update the "# of times played" counter but not the ratings!?!

Any ideas are appreciated, this literally was thousands of hours of listening and rating songs...seemingly gone.

Posted on Jun 26, 2024 12:27 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

274,570 points

Jun 26, 2024 1:53 PM in response to bapriest1

You can potentially connect to an older version of your .itl file in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder. Export the details you wish to recover, reconnect to the current library, and then import the details. See https://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp#ExportImport for a script for this task. Given you have an active iTunes Match subscription I would recommend you make a backup copy of the library file that you're going to open, and disconnect from the Internet so that the library you open cannot update with current data from your iCloud Music Library. Once you've exported data you can swap back to the current library, reconnect to the Internet, and then attempt the import. You might experiment with a small sample first, as a proof of concept, before attempting to work with the whole library.

tt2

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