If after you update to 4.2 your iPod app seems to be devoid of media...

The solution as many have suggested, worked great on my iPhone, but of course it's definitely something consumers shouldn't have to do in the first place. Now to resolve the issue on all my other device.

For those wondering about it not being picked up in beta, I can confirm that all 4.2 beta releases made available to developers never had this problem. It is only since the official release of 4.2 has this problem occurred, and it's happened to ALL of my iOS devices. I couldn't agree more that this is definitely a slap on the wrist for Apple.

Changing the language in Settings on my iPhone and then changing back to English worked for me. All content restored.

Yes. That works. I describe the steps in this earlier post:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2667269&tstart=15

Thanks and Kudos to "slouchsock8",
Your simple Rx immediately fixed the shocking disappearance from my iPhone4's iPod directory of thousands of songs upon upgrading to 4.2.1. (Settings-General-About still indicated the songs remained on the iPhone after the upgrade, so that was a clue not to get too worried.) Hearty thanks for the quick fix formula!

Why does each iPhone upgrade from Apple need to be such an "adventure"?
Couldn't the iOS Development team test each upgrade in advance with a panel of fairly typical users to see what happens before unleashing each 'exciting' upgrade on all of us with no guidance as to what to expect and what to do?

I'm very thankful for the cooperative presence of the Apple Discussion Groups community.

It is a hideous bug which also affected me. It was not until I played a 4th random song from my iPod Touch in iTunes that my playlist on the iPod began updating. That process took only about 10 seconds.

I do not sync my music, so was quite reticent to hit Sync Music under iPod > iPod Touch > Music.

Apple scared me real bad!

Just upgraded to 4.2.1.

Still have all my content on the iPhone 3GS but the album art is completely hosed. You can see it in the tiny window on the upper right that's used as the album track listing button but I only get a grayish note graphic for everything else.

Tried the solutions listed here and nothing. Come ON, Apple!

Thanks for this tip! Much faster and better than having to sync! Worked great with no problems!

For those english speakers that are worried they may not be able to navigate after changing languages, just select British English!

I got the same problem after upgrading my iphone 3GS to iOS 4 and then iOS 4.2.1 , it is a shame that Apple caused such a major regression ; I can't anymore listen to my iPhone/iPod music in my Renault car.

a 2 cents question : what Apple is doing ? when Apple plans to release a 4.2.x bug fixing release ?

Hey,
I asked the same question 3 week ago but no one replied to me:)))) i have no music in my volvo and that is the major issue for me.


regards
sz

That worked!! Thanks!

It worked for me too!

Thanks for this, I never updated but my iPod touch weirdly had no music, followed the steps and the songs were on there again 🙂

Thank you 🙂

didn't work for me Apple ??

I had just purchased an iPhone4 and would like to watch my videos from there (during travels)
I have a few videos that I have been able to upload/sync to my iPod Touch and iPhone4 but I can't seem to be able to find them in my iPhone4...
Clicking videos in th iPod app opens podcasts...
Could any of you guys help?

Had same problem with iPhone 3GS. Did the upgrade using a different computer, which did not have my media on it. I'm out of town, so could not do sync. Instead, I performed a backup of the phone again, which I had done just prior to upgrading. Doing this backup (NOT A RESTORE) caused all the media to re-appear.