If you not have used iTunes for a long time it's possible that an update to the programme in the meantime may have caused iTunes to install Apple Music (the app, not the subscription service), Apple TV and Apple Devices. If so, your library will not be visible. The solution is to uninstall all three apps.
Something that you can also do is to check your hard drive, using File Explorer, to see if you can find the files for your music. Each song in your library is held on your computer as a file. Usually, the files have the same name as the song title, so if you use File Explorer to search for a track that you know you have, see if you can find it. Once you do, perhaps you can find the rest of it too.
The usual location for music that you have ripped from CD, using iTunes, is either:
- Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/<artist name>/<album title>/<song title>
or
- Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/<artist name>/<album title>/<song title>
Compilation albums (various artist albums) will be in:
- Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Compilations/<album title>/<song title>
- Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Compilations/<album title>/<song title>
If you find your music in any of those folders, then your music is not lost (or deleted by Apple).
brigham113 wrote:
Some of it is there, but it is not the original files of course it is now a copy in their own format.
What format is that? It might provide a clue to what has happened.
More to the point, it suggests to me that what you can see is from another source that has little (or nothing) to do with your library, because iTunes does not change the format of music that you have added to your library unless you specifically go through the process of creating a version in another format. You would know that you had done that. When you do, that's exactly what iTunes does; create a new version. It does not change the original version, so you end up with two copies; the original that you added to your library and the newly created version in the different format.
