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Itunes 11.1 deleted almost all of my music! WHY?

After both updates (iTunes 11.1 and ios 7) everything was fine for a few days. Yesterday however I noticed my iPod was skipping songs as I had it on 'shuffle', most of them just wouldn't play. I tried selecting these songs from my iPod but the text was grey instead of the usual black colour. There were also squares next to these songs with circles around them.


When I got home I plugged in my iPod to my laptop, opened up iTunes and found exclamation marks with circles around them next to the songs that no longer play on my iPod. After ejecting my iPod I found that these songs don't even show up on my iPod anymore. They still show up on iTunes when the iPod is connected but they are still not playable.


These songs played perfectly fine the night before. I've had this iPod (5th Generation touch) for months and never had any problems. This is why I think it has something to do with either the ios 7 update, the iTunes 11.1 update or both.


I do not purchase music from iTunes. I buy CD's, download music using codes provided when I buy Vinyl records or download free music online.


The songs that don't play are seemingly random. Some albums are entirely gone but most still have a few playable songs from that album. I'm still hopeful that all my music is not gone because as I mentioned before they still show up on iTunes, they just aren't playable. Please help.

iPod touch, iOS 7, iTunes 11.1

Posted on Sep 25, 2013 7:57 AM

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103 replies

Oct 2, 2017 10:36 PM in response to R04CH

Hey, I’ve just woken up and found all of my Apple Music downloads wiped from my phone. Needless to say, I was panicking a bit but luckily I managed to sort it. Here’s what I did:


• Settings

• Music

• Make sure iCloud Music is ticked on


Not sure if this will work in your case but it solved it for me, hopefully it does the same for you.

Good luck, anyway

Sep 26, 2013 8:21 AM in response to R04CH

I'm having EXACTLY the same problem with my 5th gen iPod Touch. About 30 GB of music disappeared from my ipod. It all shows up when my ipod contents are displayed in iTunes, but they have the circle with the ! inside beside them and cannot be played. They don't appear at all on the iPod itself. The strangest thing is that when I'm on the summary page for my pod in iTunes and I click on any change (ie the button for "Open iTunes when this iPod is connected"), the slider that breaks down capacity and usage at the bottom suddenly shows my previous state (12.52 GB Free) until it prompts me to apply the change, at which point it returns the the new state (43.91GB Free). Is this an iTunes issue?

Sep 28, 2013 2:46 AM in response to Nephilimx1973

Nephilimx1973 wrote:


having the same problem and its really p*ssing me off!, it seems everytime a plug in, it wipes new songs, ones that were fine the day before. i always update manually. once i have added the album to my ipod, i usually delete it from my itunes library (never had a problem before until I updated to 11.1) any ideas?


Mainly that you should always keep copies of all your media in your library, and back it all up. Managing an iPod via a selection of playlists is also, in my opinion, easier, and more powerful, than manual management. Should the device need restoring it is a simple matter to reselect which playlists should sync to it..


tt2

Sep 28, 2013 3:35 AM in response to turingtest2

all my albums are in seperate playlist. i have just imported a CD into my library and copied it to my ipod 5th gen. unplugged it and tested, everything was fine. replugged in, ipod connected, album still in library.....half the album tracks now have the error sign next to it and won;t play.......

was never an issued until i installed itunes 11.1

Sep 28, 2013 4:03 AM in response to Nephilimx1973

Select a broken track in the library. Press CTRL+I to Get Info. Say no when prompted to locate the track. Look at the bottom of the summary tab for where iTunes thinks the file should be. Please post back the path as given. It will begin file://localhost/ and end with the filename of the track. Search the entire computer for a file with that same filename. If found where is it?


I see the occassional reports of vanishing files, but I'm still struggling to ascertain if there are any common factors that could be reported back to Apple for action. Do you have the option to Convert higher bitrate songs to <bit rate> selected? If so that may be the cause.


tt2

Sep 28, 2013 5:09 AM in response to Nephilimx1973

The file name I have is

C:\users\user\itunes\itunes media\music\Big Country

And it’s in my iTunes folder. I imported it through iTunes at the normal bitrate. Created a playlist and transferred the songs into the playlist. Play a track just to make sure and it played. Unplugged my ipod and checked again, seemed fine, plugged my ipod back in in opened up itunes and the songs won’t play anymore……its driving me mad, wish I had never installed 11.1

Sep 28, 2013 3:17 PM in response to turingtest2

all songs and albums are in the itunes folder and in the itunes library, nothing has moved. bit rate hasn't changed, but i did change it for one album and there was no change (albums wouldn't play - the ipod just shuffled through the playlist and then the dreaded circle of doom appeared next to all songs in the playlist). I usually transfer all my songs when i am on my main computer but then tried it on my laptop but the same thing happened

when i installed 11.1 a message appeared on my ipod saying 22 files could not be synced, but since then all files are in the itunes library. i transfer them over to my ipod, play them to make sure everything is ok, but the same thing keeps happening.

Oct 2, 2013 2:22 PM in response to R04CH

I still have not found a solution to this problem. nor do I understand what exactly is happening.


About a week ago I deleted all music from the iPod. I spent hours attempting to add the music that I lost. (thankfully I saved most of it on an older laptop I previously used) Since then everything was fine. However the same thing has happened today.


Just like before the missing songs are just random and not even the same as the ones that were deleted before.


Is my iPod corrupted? I don't want to go through the trouble of replacing it only to have the same thing happen a 3rd time. I don't think I will be using ipods/or itunes if I don't find a solution soon.

Itunes 11.1 deleted almost all of my music! WHY?

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