Itunes 11.1 deleted almost all of my music! WHY?

This is just a **** poor end-user experience. Music content disappears for no apparent reason, have to jump through hoop after hoop to restore. Does Apple ever do any UX testing? Much more of this, and I'm done with Apple, iTunes, the whole screwed up system obviously designed for the engineers and not the customer.

During my problem solving, I happened to check my TRASH (I"m on a mac, btw) and there was my ENTIRE LIBRARY. I had not deleted it, it was clearly a bug. It had extracted all my songs from their folders and trashed them, I was able to move the files from the trash and painstakingly reconstruct the folders.

I have been backing up my Itunes library frequently since.

Sure enough, it hapened again.

It's clearly a bug. It appears to happen around the time I select "download artwork". Either that, or when I've replaced the artwork on multiple albums at once.

Again, it moved much of my library to the trash.

I'm on a macbook air, Mavericks, Itunes 11 FWIW.

Don't know why it's happening but my only tip is: Check your trash!

i've noticed that when i update my album artwork, it throws away something in my recycle bin too, i'm on windows 7 btw

just make sure to backup always... i create my playlist via winamp inside the song's folder and then throw it to itunes

Hi, I've had the same experience and I just want to share to everyone the solution I've found for this problem, after 3 gruelling days of research -_- thankfully, i found this and it worked great for me

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3909940

(thanks to GeekDad3)

Issue: iOS Music application either has items listed in the library that will not play; or has an empty library but iTunes reports that music is present on the device and taking up space; or a combination of these issues coupled with the inability to resolve the problem through the standard resolution steps of disabling music syncing to remove all music and then re-enabling or by enabling "manually manage library" and removing the items.

Additionally, attempting to restore from a back-up does not resolve the issue and the default response from the Apple Support Community is to factory restore the device and treat as new device, resulting in loss of all settings and basically starting from scratch.

Cause of issue: Corrupted iOS device iTunes library (MediaLibrary.sqlitedb). This database stores the iTunes Media records and related information such as playcount, lyrics etc. It does not store information and settings regarding iOS Applications as far as I am aware so this should be safe.

Resolution Steps:

1. Perform a back-up to your local computer rather than iCloud if practical. This will be quicker in the event of issues.
2. Download a iOS device manager such as Phone View which will allow you to directly access the file structure of the device. (This will NOT require an illegal jailbreak to be performed!)
3. Enable the Advanced View mode so the entire disk structure is accessible.
4. Browse to the following file: iTunes_Control/iTunes/MediaLibrary.sqlitedb
5. Rename MediaLibrary.sqlitedb to MediaLibrary.sqlitedb-backup or similar
6. Hold down POWER and HOME on your iOS device until the Apple logo appears. Release both buttons.
7. When device has rebooted, connect to iTunes and synchronise it.
8. iTunes will detect that the Media Library on the device is missing and recreate it based on the items that it has listed in the iTunes synchronisation record for the

For Windows users, I suggest that you download Touchcopy in order to access the files mentioned in the thread above.

I hope this is the solution for everyone having this problem. You won't have to reset your device. |t's really simple 🙂

When I synced my iPod touch to the computer all the songs I got from my cousins accounts have all been deleted and some of mine aswell this happened when I updated iTunes to the current update. All the songs where working perfectly fine until I synced my iPod to iTunes

I have the exact same problem. I don't know what's going on and I can't seem to do anything to fix it. Have you managed to fix yours and if so, what can I do? I've tried removing my music and syncing it again but it won't even let me remove it. Please help me.

youre a troll tt2, seriously nothing you recommended was helpful or insightful. Do a backup you say? what about users who backed up before realizing all of their music was gone? i had to delete all my current music and dysnc my iphone then load all music back on to resolve this issue. please leave the forums.

A backup mechanism that will remove the backup copies of files without alerting you because the source has been deleted isn't doing what you need it to do. See this iTunes backup tip for a suggestion. The user tipRecover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device might have helped you to recover data from your iPhone.

I don't understand exactly what circumstances might cause iTunes to unilaterally remove media, if indeed it is the cause, but at least one person has tied it up in their case with using the feature to sync lower bit rate songs. I would therefore recommend that you don't use that feature. You might also want to avoid letting iTunes Keep the iTunes Media folder organized since if that is disabled it has no business moving any existing content around.

tt2

Message was edited by: turingtest2

This also happened to my iPod 5th gen months ago when I updated itunes. Although today I noticed the pattern. I download mixtapes off of sites like "Datpiff" and have had used youtube converters in the past. And I have a handful of music from other friends itunes accounts. And I frequently purchase CD's and upload these to itunes as well. These types of songs are the ones being skipped. It is more than likely because itunes changed the criteria for what is acceptable in the library. Seemingly only allowing purchases directly from itunes. The only way to play these types of songs would be to uninstall the update and revert to an older edition. Seriously Apple. You suck for this one

Dyowhena....THANK YOU! That little utility worked!!! I renamed the prefs file and voila! Library re-synched properly!

This problem has been driving me NUTS the past few weeks. I loaded iOS 7 on my iPhone 4 and regretting it for this reason and the speed.

Still no fix from apple, amazing

I don't think that they will ever fix it - which is why iTunes is useless for me. I travel alot, and i have my itunes library music on a USB drive - as there is over 80 GB of it.

However, if i make the mistake of connecting my iPhone 5s - which had about 9,400 tracks on it, to my PC, without having the USB drive connected - just to add a podcast, then iTunes will start randomly deleting music!

What is ... frustrating is that i have set music to be managed manually and there is ABSOLUTELY no warning that iTunes will delete anything - it just starts doing it. So now i have 44GB "free" on my iPhone but until i get home (in 10 days) i have no idea which tracks are deleted, as the "about" menu still shows 9,400 tracks on the iphone?.

So - i would like to ask TT2 or someone experienced - is there a way to resync without having delete the remaining music on the iPhone and recopying the 50GB of music back across?

I would also be grateful for any recommendations on a simple iTunes replacement that would allow a podcast to be copied withour unilaterly deleting everything else?

DucatiBel wrote:

So - i would like to ask TT2 or someone experienced - is there a way to resync without having delete the remaining music on the iPhone and recopying the 50GB of music back across?

Hi.

iTunes normally does a kind of optimized sync where new and changed items are copied over and any deletions are enacted. What it doesn't like is when you connect the device to a "different" library even if the library contains all the same content. In such cases it generally removes everything before reloading. I'm not sure I quite understand what has happened in your case. There was a time when iTunes, with an iPhone, would delete tracks that were not physically present on the hard drive even when there was a library entry for them, but this should no longer be the case. If you opened a different library that doesn't contain your content and then synced, then the results make sense, otherwise I can't think why iTunes should start removing things. If you've restored the working library then a sync should copy back only those songs that were removed. That said occasionly a device will need completely restoring which is why you should always keep all your media in your library, and back that up.

A few thoughts:

If, for whatever reason, there is content on the device that is not in your library seeRecover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

Connect your device and select it in iTunes. Uncheck the box that reads Open iTunes when this iDevice is connected if it is currently checked.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Devices and tick the box Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically. (Use Ctrl+B to enable the menu bar if needed.)

Go to Edit > Preferences > Store and untick Sync podcast subscriptions and settings.

See make a split library portable to get the entire library in a self-contained shape on the external drive. If you start iTunes with the drive disconnected you get a warning instead of iTunes resetting to the default media folder and not finding your content.

See this iTunes backup tip to make sure you have a complete clone of your library on a separate drive and when updating the back up you should be alerted to any potential problems.

SeeGetting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely to make sure there are no settings in WMP that can cause problems with your library.

tt2

Message was edited by: turingtest2

TT2

Thanks for suggestions - my actual music library is on a USB drive, which i now have access to, and i am trying to put back the music that iTunes so kindly deleted.

All iTunes settings are per your advice above, and i thought that everything had copied across correctly yesterday using sync on 3 separate playlists. The Itunes song count and the iphone song count tallied at 9,570 songs, and the free space remaining tallied as well. When i went to play music on a shuffle mode, all the songs that i tried were played correctly on the iphone.

This morning i made some changes to the Itunes versions of the playlists, adding 25 tracks that are in the library to one of the playlists.

When i went to sync the changes, iTunes decided that out of the 9,570 tracks copied yesterday, about 3,700 needed to be resynced! The Itunes music view of my iPhone changed to show the 3,700 tracks with the broken circle and greyed out on the iPhone, and the About menu showed over 20 GB of free memory - compared to < 1 GB yesterday!!

So iTunes is grinding away copying music again... As i have higher bit rate songs converting to 192 kbps, this si taking along time again...

This is all happening on a Windows 8.1 setup, using Itunes 11.1.5.5 on to a 64GB iPhone 5S running iOS 7.06

Any thoughts most appreciated.

I don't use the convert higher bit rate function. At least one user has associated it with their media going missing although it is not clear why since the function clearly works for others.

Repeated syncing of the same content may be a sign of duplicates in the library.

tt2