Itunes 11.1 deleted almost all of my music! WHY?

I did what you suggested and dropped a line to iTunes feedback. In fact I have dropped 3 lines to them but have received no replies what so ever. As a suggestion would it be possible to reimpose update 11 on to the system. This presumably get rid of the problems created by 11.1. As you can see from my previous posting a back up is useless with 11.1 as when you put the files back on the same problem occurs. Any further suggestions would be welcome as at this moment iTunes is entirely useless to me and like other people I am going to have to switch to an alternative music manager unless these problems can be rectified.

Apple don't generally respond directly to feedback, but they do claim to read it all so I imagine someone has the task of collating it and passing concerns up the line.

When iTunes starts up it normally assumes that all media is available ready to be played until it has some reason to find out otherwise, such as trying to play a track or edit a tag. If all your media is still in place but iTunes "thinks" it is missing the most likely cause is that a configuration file has been amended to show the wrong layout for your library. <Media Folder>\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album> is the new/current layout. Libraries created before iTunes 9 would not orginally have had the Music folder in the path though can be updated to use it. Check the location given under Get Info. for a single "missing" and the true physical location of the coresponding track assuming you can find it. I can explian how to fix things if that is the problem.

If iTunes really is deleting files or somehow moving them and then not being able to find them, I'd be interested in more details, in particular exactly what path the media folder is set to and whether or not the media could have been imported from an alternate path to the same source. For example the normal location of the media folder under Windows 7 would be C:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes but I believe it may be possible that under certian circumstances that media could be imported using the older \My Documents\My Music\iTunes path. If so I can see a potential for mistakes to be made if iTunes is allowed to reorganize media. I've not personally seen evidence that there is an issue, but while working on a deduping script I became aware that having multiple paths to the same physical file is a situation that is easily overlooked and any assumptions about file management need to be explored carefully.

tt2

This issue has happened to me TWICE now! The first time, I hadn't backed up my itunes to my computer because I had over 1,000 songs and not a huge gb space on my laptop. After having my iPod be deleted of nearly all 1,000 songs the first time around, I was super ****** and I started backing up to my computer all the new songs I've downloaded.

The issue is happening again now!! I restored the latest back up I had (from yesterday) and the problem isn't fixed. So that's probably about 500 songs absolutely gone. Again. I don't keep the files on my laptop because, again, they take up space that I don't have available on my laptop to be begin with. I am completely done with ipods from this point on.

Ok, so at first I lost almost 2000 songs from my iPhone. My last backup was 5months before, so I just signed my device as a new one for iTunes (it erased all the music files completely) and put on about 70% of what I had before the issue on. Unfortunetally it happened again, so that is not a solution.

I looked into my iP with SharePod application and the songs 'are still there', but all have 0MB.

After this issue, look and functionality of iOS 7 Apple is doomed for me. It's the last time i've bought anything from them.

Thanks Apple

This may be misplaced, since I see that this is the forum for iTunes &amp; Windows. I have all- Mac: iphone5c and MacBook Air, the new 2013 model. But I post here because I've been having precisely these same issues.

The really weird thing is that I have not updated ANYTHING. I changed nothing. Everything was working fine -- and now it's not. Songs are disappearing all over the place. And none of my downloaded podcasts will play. I get a message that says "this podcast is not available". Moreover, most of my movies will not play. They seem to be there, but when it try to play them, the screen immediately closes out of that movie.

These are all issues on the iPhone. I've not yet tried to do anything with the computer yet. Backing it up tonight just in case.

But I am utterly dumbfounded as to why this should suddenly happen when I changed nothing. Unless this is fixed, the iPhone is essentially useless to me.

Apple, I hope you're listening.

I have the same problem....the updates that iTunes does have deleted a great number of music files from my computer. Many of the songs I burned from CD's I owned (but got rid of when I went digital), others are songs purchased from Amazon or Google Play, and iTunes conveniently deleted them during an update.

Support forums say 'load from a backup'....which didn't work, and the files are literally gone.

I believe this is something that could warrant a class action law suit in that Apple / iTunes has deleted hundreds of files/songs I purchased through a variety of means.

This is unacceptable, and there seems to be no accountability by Apple/iTunes.

If you're interested in exploring this, please let me know.

Hi TT2 - you seem like the "go to" on this problem so I'm hoping you can help.

I too have suddenly lost my itunes library.

I just spent two days uploading my CD collection into Itunes on my macbook laptop, connected to an external drive. The library was 40 GB, and as of an hour ago it was up to 60GB. I was downloading artwork, when suddenly I noticed that something had changed. The size of my Itunes folder was now 20GB and all my recently added CDs are gone from the external drive. Not just from today, but from yesterday, as well.

I replaced the library file per your instructions here, and that restored not the very latest, but at least a few day old version, but NONE of the actual music files are on the hard drive. I followed your step and searched based on the file path, and they are no longer visible on the drive. Interestingly the only remaining media appear to be audiobooks, and a few things I just bought from Itunes. Also, most of the albums have a "cloud" icon in the itunes album display, that I don't believe was there before.

what a mystery. Nothing crashed. Nothing even froze. The hard drive is brand new (yesterday) and appears to be functioning normally. How could the files just disappear like that?

Any other thoughts, or am I simply back to the drawing board (CD bored that is...)

The cloud symbol is used for your past iTunes purchases that are not in the library but could be streamed or downloaded from iTunes in the Cloud. You might also sometimes see an exclamation mark when the library knows that you should have a particular track, but it isn't where iTunes is looking for it. The exclmation marks may not show up until you attempt to play or access the tracks in some way.

If iTunes doesn't list the missing content then it would seem most likely that either you had inadvertently deleted it yourself or some kind of crash has corrupted the library. In general iTunes doesn't delete media files unless you've confirmed the operation, but there are odd reports that files go missing for no apparent reason. Backing up regularly to another drive is the obvious way to guard against this. It might be possible to restore the deleted files from the drive if you haven't started overwriting the space they were stored in and you can find a suitable program. I don't have any personal experience with OS X data recovery, but a quick Google turned up TestDisk which is a free command line tool that claims to be able to undelete files from EXT2 or NTFS drives.

tt2

Hi TT2,

I understand what you've written, however, it's not only songs purchased from iTunes that disappered and therefore could be re-downloaded from the cloud), but many songs uploaded from my own CD collection also disappered. Moreover, there's no way I accidentally deleted these songs myself: this happened to well over a thousand songs, and all I did was sync my iPhone as usual.

The WAY they disappeared from the iphone is also strange. One of two things would happen: 1) a song would look fine until I clicked on it. Then it would immediately disappear - literally disappear from the phone screen. When I searched for it, the search would come up blank. 2) Same thing, but it would reappear grayed out and unplayable.

Then there is the movie problem I described above. Again, these were home videos I had uploaded myself; they were NOT purchased from iTunes. Most stayed there, but were unplayable. Others disappeared. There was no logic to it at all.

I want to emphasize that this happened WITHOUT UPDATING ANYTHING. I'm still running 10.8.5 on my MacBook Air, and 7.0.3 on my phone. I am not an early adopter of updates - precisely because I want to see if others experience any problems. I certainly did not expect to have problems suddenly appear without my changing anything. How could this happen?

This morning I synced my iPhone again. (Again, I did not update anything; I just synced.) iTunes took some time, and replaced over 1100 songs and movies on my iPhone. So far it seems fine. But I still want an explanation of why this happened. And judging from everything I've read here, I'm certainly not going to do any updates on either the phone or computer. I'm going to wait until this is sorted out.

Very worrying.

Oh, I forgot to add one other thing: when I would set the phone to shuffle all songs, here's what would happen: it would play one song, then it would skip ten or so songs - and I would see it skipping past them on the phone screen: one after another the titles would appear and then move offscreen. (It had never done this before.) Finally it would settle on the next song in the shuffle - and this would be one of four things:

1) a random song

2) the next song (alphabetically)

3) another random song but from the same album

4) it would repeat the same song it had just played.

Again, very worrying.

headoforpheus wrote:

Hi TT2,

I understand what you've written, however, it's not only songs purchased from iTunes and that disappered Iand therefore could be re-downloaded from the cloud), but many songs uploaded from my own CD collection also disappered. Moreover, there's no way I accidentally deleted these songs myself: this happened to well over a thousand songs, and all I did was sync my iPhone as usual.

On your iPhone > Summary tab when connected to iTunes do you have the option Convert higher bitrate songs to... selected?

Are you syncing via a cable or over the air?

Syncing copies tracks from iTunes to the device, but in general not the other way. If you'd noticed problems with the library then you should not have synced until they had been resolved. It might have been possible to recover the missing media from the device.

The WAY they disappeared from the iphone is also strange. One of two things would happen: 1) a song would look fine until I clicked on it. Then it would immediately disappear - literally disappear from the phone screen. When I searched for it, the search would come up blank. 2) Same thing, but it would reappear grayed out and unplayable.

There are a number of phases to the syncing process. If it is interrupted it is possible for the device to have an entry for a track which isn't actually present. Normally at this point I'd be suggesting you backup and then immediately restore the device to resolve that issue, but first you're going to want to rebuild your library.

Then there is the movie problem I described above. Again, these were home videos I had uploaded myself; they were NOT purchased from iTunes. Most stayed there, but were unplayable. Others disappeared. There was no logic to it at all.

Unplayable in iTunes, or on the device? If the media is in iTunes it can be sorted out later. If it has gone missing from there too, and you have no backup, then we're back to the long shot of file recovery software.

I want to emphasize that this happened WITHOUT UPDATING ANYTHING. I'm still running 10.8.5 on my MacBook Air, and 7.0.3 on my phone. I am not an early adopter of updates - precisely because I want to see if others experience any problems. I certainly did not expect to have problems suddenly appear without my changing anything. How could this happen?

i don't know, but sometimes software behaves unexpectedly, and disk drives will fail without warning. A solid backup strategy is your only defense against the inevitable.

This morning I synced my iPhone again. (Again, I did not update anything; I just synced.) iTunes took some time, and replaced over 1100 songs and movies on my iPhone.

Syncing should resolve any inconsistencies between the device's index and its media folder. If the iTunes library has been reconstructed in some fashion (which can happen occasionally happen automatically following a crash) then it may also replace tracks that are already on the device. In iTunes each track is represented by a unique ID and when syncing the list of IDs in the library and on the device are compared with each other to work out what needs to be synced, and to transfer ratings, play counts etc.

So far it seems fine. But I still want an explanation of why this happened. And judging from everything I've read here, I'm certainly not going to do any updates on either the phone or computer. I'm going to wait until this is sorted out.

Sorry, I don't have any explanation. Golden rule is to backup before updating, and restore from backup when something goes wrong. Whatever the underlying reason for your data loss it cannot be repaired by an update to iTunes. Even assuming a problem with iTunes is the cause it is unlikely to be "sorted out" unless it is properly identified, the circumstances that trigger it can be reliably reproduced, and enough people submit cogent feedback/bug reports. Generally best to keep up to date so that at least known bugs have been addressed.

tt2

As above, a mismatch between the device's index of media and the contents of the media folder on it. Backup & restore is the usual resolution, but obviously you want your main iTunes library in a healthy state when you do so.

tt2

Good morning H.o.O.,

Really, REALLY clearly written, thanks. TT2 is a really thoughtful, knowledgable and clearly committed forum moderator, but he seems to keeps coming back to updates/back ups/corrupt files/etc...for his diagnosis and this is NOT correct. What you have written about here, is the same for me, on my iPad, touching - on my Mac/PC - clicking, that particular song either; immediately disappears or if the song was greyed out, it just keeps refreshing the screen, has a little red square in a little red circle (the universal STOP playing icon) on the far right side of the screen (again, like the grey font color instead of the black, for this play/pause/stop function, this red is uncommon, clearly is meant to signify something, but does not function, nor does any pop-up or message appear.

All I know is nearly 6 out of 10 times iTunes is rendering MY legitimately owned and acquired music oddly usable but UNPLAYABLE.

This is NOT a backup/missing file/improper upgrade path/etc problem.

Would somebody PLEASE respond to headiforpheus' perfectly written description of the problem?

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

I'm not a moderator, just another fellow user. I don't have a diagnosis as such, not least because this thread has contributions from people with different problems.

I've had my iPhone develop songs that it wouldn't play with similar effects on screen. As far as I can tell this is the equivalent of the "missing track" exclamation mark within iTunes. Once it randomly dumped all of my music content except the track it was playing at the time. That was a boring journey! Obviously the iPhone isn't supposed to do this, but if it happens using a backup/restore cycle with iTunes should correct the problem while also preserving the settings, data & documents for other apps.

I've seen a couple of reports of media files being deleted from the iTunes Media folders during sync operations that might be associated with the "Convert higher bitrate..." function., but so far I've not been able to replicate it personally. I also had iTunes throw away the bulk of my archived podcasts when I updated to iTunes 11.1. Again it should not happen but having a backup of library meant it was an inconvenience, not a total disaster.

Apple don't actively monitor these forums for reports of problems with their software, That should go through the feedback or bug reporting pages. The chance of real action is much greater when using the latter if, and only if, the details of the problem have been properly identified in a way that it can be reliably reproduced.

tt2

Hi I have the same problem. And no I don't have a backup of music, too much on. The upgrade saw most of my music on the MacBook Air disappear and unable to be located. So I did the restore from ipad. Now I went to play the music tonight from my ipad and now my ipad has lost all the songs that were not bought on itunes! This is gb's of data destroyed by apple. Up until now I have been very happy with itunes but now facing finding my CDs and uploading days of music after years.

I tried updating from old libraries on mac but it appears the music is gone. Has anyone found a fix? I have not deleted anything but it is all gone.