iTunes 12 can't locate my music

After upgrading to iTunes 12 it can't locate my music which is on the E drive. It also shows only about 1200 tracks when I've probably got in excess of 6000. When I look at the info for individual tracks it seem to think they are on the C drive. However, when I look in Preferences/Advanced it does say that my iTunes media is stored under E:\Music which is where they are.


It worked fine before the upgrade - any suggestions please.


Halli

Posted on Nov 24, 2014 3:43 AM

Reply
17 replies

Nov 25, 2014 11:25 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks I followed your note and got a sizeable proportion of my music back. There were still about 450 songs that were listed but not found, mainly in compilation albums and it took a lot of hunting to locate them. There were also a considerable number of tracks and albums I've downloaded in the last two years which were not listed in iTunes but oddly were sitting in the iTunes media/music folder with everything else. After twenty four hours of looking at what I've bought and then looking for it in the music folder and copying it to iTunes again it looks like most things are back.


Can you remind me what boxes I should tick in Preferences to make sure everything I put in iTunes automatically gets put into the right media folder? I've done it before but it look like after upgrades I've lost my settings.


Also, I've lost a lot of my recent playlists - can you tell me where I can reload them?


Thanks a lot, I'll certainly be following your back-up and split location advice.

Nov 25, 2014 12:11 PM in response to Hallix

Under Edit > Preferences > Advanced select Keep... and Copy... That way everything you add to the library should get organized inside the media folder.


Are your lost playlists on an iPod or iOS device? If so I have a script called ImportDevicePlaylists for that. Otherwise starting with an older backup of the library from the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should do it. That said you may find you need to repair some broken links again. Next time try my script FindTracks.


tt2

Nov 25, 2014 4:22 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for that but I mistakenly synced my iPod and its lost the missing stuff. I'll start again from scratch on the missing playlists!


I'm still missing a lot of tracks that are in the ITunesmedia/music folder but not showing in iTunes. I've started to look for them and drag and drop them into iTunes but noticed that they are being copied in another folder ITunesmedia/music/music. Have I done something wrong in the Preferences?


I've checked Keep and Copy as you suggested and I've set my iTunes Media location as iTunesmedia\music. I've got a feeling I should have set it is as iTunesmedia without the last subfolder. is their any way of correcting this? I also had clicked on reorganise files under Library in the file menu!

Nov 26, 2014 8:45 AM in response to turingtest2

All sorted now, thanks a lot. After I edited the folder in Preferences as you suggested everything then went into the music sub folder. I dragged and dropped everything in the folder into iTunes and it picked up all the unlisted tracks without duplicating those which were already present, picking up over 1000 which were unlisted.


I found my old playlists on my Sonos system and have spent an enjoyable afternoon reconstructing them, knowing that I've found all my music. Thanks again. Now to sort out the back-up.


Just one final point, now that I've got everything the way I want it, how do I create a new library file to save me future grief?


Thanks again.


Hallix

Nov 26, 2014 11:46 AM in response to Hallix

Ah, press and hold down shift as you start iTunes. You should get a dialog prompting you to choose or create a library. Click Choose Library... and an file browsing dialog will open. The active library folder can be read from the address bar. Click inside to get the full path. The most recently updated .itl file in that folder is the active one. Once we know where the active library is I can guide you in moving things into the correct location.


tt2

Nov 26, 2014 12:08 PM in response to turingtest2

No its becoming clearer. The folder the May 2014 file I referred to earlier was in my iTunes folder on the E;Drive where my music is.


After following your instructions this is what I found:-

the file iTunesLibrary2014-11-24.itl is in the MyMusic\iTunes\Previous iTunes Library folder on the C: drive. Although it says 24 November the properties tag shows it was created and modified earlier today.

There is also a file iTuneslibrary.itl (with no date) which is in the MyMusic\iTunes folder on the C: drive. This was created and last modified on 24 November.


Hope this is clear to you

Nov 26, 2014 12:56 PM in response to Hallix

OK, in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder you should find the following files:


iTunes Library 2014-11-24.itl

iTunes Library 2014-11-24.xml

iTunes Library 2014-11-24 Extras.itdb

iTunes Library 2014-11-24 Genius.itdb

sentinel

and the Album Artwork folder.


These together are your active library files. You can move the inactive files in the main iTunes folder out of the way, then move these into the main iTunes folder, remove the date from each of the files, rename the .xml as iTunes Music Library.xml if your main folder is User's Music\iTunes (or just delete it and iTunes will build the correct file). Finally shift-start iTunes to connect to the file on the correct path.


Alternatively you can take a look at the Make a split library portable tip and work towards making the library completely self-contained and portable on the external drive. If you want a complete set of steps please confirm the location of the media folder given under Edit > Preferences > Advanced.


tt2

Nov 26, 2014 2:08 PM in response to Hallix

Excellent, that makes things easy.


Move any anything inside E:\Music\iTunes that isn't the iTunes Media folder out of the way, e.g. into E:\Music for now.


Copy the following from your C drive:


iTunes Library 2014-11-24.itl

iTunes Library 2014-11-24.xml

iTunes Library 2014-11-24 Extras.itdb

iTunes Library 2014-11-24 Genius.itdb

sentinel (which is hidden)

and the Album Artwork folder


into E:\Music\iTunes. Edit the date out of each of the four dated files so they become:


iTunes Library.itl

iTunes Library.xml

iTunes Library Extras.itdb

iTunes Library Genius.itdb


Shift-start iTunes, click the Choose Library option then browse to and open E:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl


Personally having made the library work there I would close it, then move the iTunes folder up one level so it becomes E:\iTunes and shift-start to connect to it again.


tt2

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iTunes 12 can't locate my music

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