Why has iTunes Match deleted my playlists?

How would I go about doing this on an iPad? Any idea? My playlists still exist on my Macbook but when I enables iTunes Match on my iPad all the playlists disappeared. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

I lost my playlists after updating iTunes. I tried rebuilding the iTunes Music Library.xml file to get my playlists back, as suggested on several online posts. It didn't work, since iTunes tried to copy all my music files onto my main computer harddrive from the external drive where I keep my media. So, I replaced the old iTunes Music Library.xml file and the old iTunes Library.itl file and restarted iTunes. Still no playlists, of course. So I clicked on add a playlist (+ sign under "Now Playing" album photo box) and all the playlists magically reappeared. Problem solved. Hmm. It seems iTunes stops loading the xml file for some reason. Trying to add a playlist apparently forces iTunes to reload the xml file.

Thank you, regriff!! That was PERFECT!

EmmanuelM wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for the tip.

In my case, I had a backup from Time Machine, but every time that I restored the iTunes folder at ~/Music/iTunes, and then started iTunes, the playlists that where deleted earlier disappeared again after a couple of seconds. I followed regriff recipe with no avail. I tried to disabled my iCloud session, power off my iPad and iPhone, and disabled iTunes Match on all my devices without any success.

And then I decided to first restore my iTunes folder but before relaunching iTunes, I powered off my router so to not have any internet access. This worked pretty fine. My playlists that were deleted stayed there, so I exported my iTunes Library just in case. And then, I started again my router, iPhone and iPad, enabled again iCloud and iTunes Match. And now, all is good.

I think the trick in my case was to restore a previous iTunes folder at ~/Music/iTunes from Time Machine, and then disable all internet access for one minute to let time for iTunes to recreate a new iTunes Library.itl with the correct count of playlists.

HTH

Thank you thank you EmmanuelM! I was having the same problem and had tried multiple times replacing my corrupted iTunes library file with a backup version that had all of my playlists. Every time I would launch the new library, everything would look fine for a few seconds but as soon as iTunes Match did its thing all of the playlists would disappear again. Turning off iTunes Match didn't help because each time I launched the new library it seemed to revert to the old settings, with iTunes Match enabled. Turning off my WiFi so my computer did not connect to the internet and putting my iPhone in airplane mode did the trick. With all of the internet connectivity disabled and iTunes Match turned off, the playlists stayed put. I plugged in my iPhone, selected the playlists I wanted to sync, and performed the sync. Then I turned WiFi back on and enabled iTunes Match. Everything stayed the way it was supposed to be. Just to make sure, I quit iTunes and relaunched it and everything still looks good. What a relief, after spending hours on this problem and reading multiple support articles and discussion threads. Thanks again!

Anne 🙂

Kudos to regriff (Ryan)! This helped me restore my accidentally deleted playlsts although I had them on another iTunes Match synced Mac at home. Switched off router before starting iTunes to stop it updating (deleting) my playlists, exported them, switched router back on, waved goodbye to my lovingly crafted playlists, and broght them back from the dead!!

I hate these Apple idiots, same problem here, lots of playlists missing. Something that I thought was going to make my life better has just created a pile of work. These morons at Apple should at least warn us that their products suck!

Thanks to Robert Knight's mention of hitting the"+" sign at the bottom of the iTunes page, I just hit "+" and the playlist came back. The Regriff fix sounded too complex, though glad it worked too.

As an Indiana U grad, Robert Knight has always been a special name!

Thanks, Bobby.

Thanks, this worked and I have my Playlists back. Hopefully Match won't undo all my hard work again!

This didn't work for me. Apparently iTunes has deleted all of my music that was not purchased through iTunes. I have gone back through my Time Machine backups for the past 2 weeks and the music is gone. I purchased iTunes Match yesterday so as much as I would like to blame that, I don' think that is my problem.

Any ideas where my music is?

C

I have all my songs but none of the fixes above have restored my playslists. This has happened to me several times, sometimes after itunes updates sometimes simply after turning the computer off and on again. Previously, I've just copied over the library from backups, but now I've bought new music and don't want to wipe it. Also, even if I go to the hassle of saving the new music separately, this clearly isn't a sensible solution - it's ridiculous that I keep loosing the playlists!

Any new suggestions on how to fix this?

And any ideas on how to prevent it happening again?

Any advice much appreciated.

They only had to get just a few things right. Preserving people's playlists was beyond them.

Thanks, Emmanuel! You just saved me hours of work. I simply turned the wifi off on my computer, restored the previous iTunes library and waited for a few minutes before turning Wifi back on. When Match started, everything stayed put! 🙂

Thanks! Your fixed worked. I didn't even know what Match was, but I accidentally touched it on the iPhone and then cancelled it. Then tonight I was surprised to find all the playlists empty. I'm going to do an epic drive bringing my son home from college. It's not that I don't enjoy some of his music, but twenty hours is probably more than I could handle.

I Only use an ipad an iPhone so I don't get your solutions. I literally spent hours putting a running playlist on my phone and then thought, gee wouldn't it be great to sync this to my ipad. $25 bucks later I have NO ******* PLAYLISTS!!!!!!!!!!! What kind of ******** is this??? Does Apple really not give a **** about any of their billions of customers? I've never felt more ripped off.

In my opinion. iTunes Match is terrible. It takes forever to sync when you switch it on or back off. There's a lot of bugs that need to be worked out and it tends to be very inconvenient. Apple is very selfish when it comes to media. They make it very difficult to share your own music between your own devices if not purchased from them. Say if you make a playlist on your iPhone. You can't transfer it to your Mac of another iDevice even if you have iTunes Match activated on all your iDevices. They only way to seamlessly sync your music between all your apple products is to purchase it through Apple. I purchase a lot of music that is not available on iTunes. Music from Beatport and Juno Downloads. Which makes thing more difficult. I have to transfer all these purchases into iTunes and then either transfer it manually or update iTunes Match. That's fine but it takes forever for iTunes Match to sync. They are copying all the music they don't have on their network to make it available to stream. I wonder if they have the rights sell the music that they just copied from me. Thats another good question and a little off topic. Back to the issue at hand. When I first set up iTunes Match I was very excited. I thought it would match my music on all my devices no matter what changes were made on whatever device. Apparently that is not the case. The Mac/PC that you set up iTunes match with is the only location that you can make changes. If you make your changes there it will change on all your devices. So don't bother making playlists on the go because your just going to have to recreate it on your computer. Apple needs to figure this out and make it easier to manage. I absolutely love their products but nothings perfect. I'm sure the service of iTunes Match is a very intricate legal web of rights and rules, but improvements can be made to help us all out. Only time will tell what the future of iTunes Match will become. We just have to sit back and wait for it to happen.

P.S. I'm not going to renew my iTunes Match account. I'm going to manage my media manually. If you want something done right you gotta do it yourself.