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Iphone Music Gone iOS 8.2 Update

After updating to iOS 8.2, all the music on my iphone 5s has disappeared. The music shows if I connect my phone to a laptop, however an exclamation point pops up when I try to play the songs. I've attempted to drag the songs in my library over to my phone and play them but those songs display an exclamation point as well.

iPhone 5, iOS 8

Posted on Mar 10, 2015 8:22 PM

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Posted on Mar 12, 2015 10:52 AM

Hi, Mrs. Orange.


Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.


I understand that your iPhone is missing music and your iTunes library shows an exclamation mark next to songs. This means that iTunes is unable to locate your media on your computer. Here is the article that will walk you through some steps to locate your media. Once your iTunes library is corrected, you should be able to sync music to your iPhone.


iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads


Cheers,


Jason H.

23 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 12, 2015 10:52 AM in response to Mrs. Orange

Hi, Mrs. Orange.


Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.


I understand that your iPhone is missing music and your iTunes library shows an exclamation mark next to songs. This means that iTunes is unable to locate your media on your computer. Here is the article that will walk you through some steps to locate your media. Once your iTunes library is corrected, you should be able to sync music to your iPhone.


iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads


Cheers,


Jason H.

Mar 15, 2015 8:56 AM in response to vanhalen26

... OK - this is completely messed up. I added a couple new playlists and an album, and they loaded onto the phone just fine. Then I deleted one of the missing playlists from the iTunes interface, and the music I just added to the phone evaporated.


Apple - please do the following:

1) Release a fix.

2) Advise if the music/videos showing in iTunes but not on the phone can be recovered or if its gone for good.

Mar 28, 2015 7:34 AM in response to jason269

Hi,


i have the exact same problem as Mrs. Orange.


for all my years of using Apple's iPhones, my option has always been 'manually manage music and video'.


i had 639 songs on my latest iPhone 6. after the iOS 8.2 update, i tried to add one song to the device, making it 640 songs in total inside the phone. the message on iTunes will say "preparing to copy" and the new song would appear in 'on my device' in iTunes, there would usually be a grey circle beside the song title which would fill out, once the transfer is complete. but for this instance, nothing happens, the grey circle is there. and when i checked on the iPhone, it says "No Content" when i open up the music app. and that all the space were freed up, meaning all the 639 songs originally inside the phone were all erased.


back on iTunes, with the iPhone still plugged in, the 639+1 songs are still listed in playlists, still visible in 'On My Device", but just not playable, there's an exclamation mark next to the songs, like what Mrs. Orange had described. but that's because, i assume, the songs were no longer on the phone, they all got erased.


so when you said "This means that iTunes is unable to locate your media on your computer", i have to disagree, because that was not what Mrs. Orange was saying, this has nothing to do with iTunes library on the computer. the issue here is the media on the device, ie the iPhone. when you plug your phone into the computer, and open up iTunes, on iTunes, you can see music in your library (computer) and music on your device (the iPhone connected), we are referring to the latter, music on the device. there is nothing wrong with the music library on the computer.


i believe it is an iOS 8.2 problem, because prior to that, i never had this kind of synching problems whereby all media (music and videos) get erased and disappeared from the device.


hope this clarifies, and i hope there would be a fix to this iOS 8.2 update soon.

Mar 28, 2015 9:23 AM in response to vanhalen26

yeah, that was my guess too, because i never had that problem before iOS 8.2.


it can be frustrating speaking to Apple support officers, because i spent close to 3 hours on the phone, listening to them asking me to do all kinds of 'testings' to see where the problem was. they asked me to restore phone from backup. issue occurred again, and then they said my backup was probably corrupted. so they asked me to restore the phone and set it up as new. problem occurred again. i got transferred to a senior adviser, who then said maybe it was iTunes, and asked me to delete it fully and re-install it back, problem persists. and they said maybe it was my PC (i'm using windows 8) that had issues working with iTunes. or maybe it was the hardware on my new iPhone 6 and suggested me to get a replacement.


its like, they just cannot seem to see that the problem could be due to iOS 8. and they had suggested that maybe my iTunes library was corrupted, and providing solutions that are not making sense. i am using an iPad mini as well, and the iPad does not have this problem. so there's nothing wrong with my PC nor my iTunes library, nor my backup. which was why i wrote that lengthy and thorough explanation above, i am weary of getting solutions that aren't related to what i was describing.


while i agree the support officers needed information, more data and testings so that they could pin point the exact problem, i'm surprised that when i called them again after the 4th time my content got erased, they asked me to repeat the same steps again, ie, to restore my phone/set it as new... etc. like, please, i did that already the first time, did not work, so please stop asking me to do it again and wasting time. one quick search in this discussion forums can tell them i am not the only one with the problem, so i am really wondering why can't they look into the synching and content issue seriously, instead of telling users to re-start/restore the phone etc.


it is really frustrating, i already had my media content wiped out 4 times this month. now i am scared to add anymore songs to my phone. even making changes like re-naming a playlist can trigger the erase. to think that i bought the 128G iPhone 6 so to accommodate my needs to have alot of space for all my songs and videos (about 60G worth), it is time consuming to have to keep transferring 60G of media into the phone, when it would get erased for no reason. 😟

Mar 29, 2015 1:04 PM in response to vanhalen26

Yeah. I attribute my problem directly to 8.2 update. It occurred after updating, I went to play music a few hours after performing update, I noticed the phone itunes was "empty". It was clearly caused by the update, that was poorly rolled out.


It appears from all the forum posts I've read, and apple techs I've talked to... I'll either have to restore my phone, cross my fingers (and very likely spend hours manually copy my preferred music selections over). Or to listen to music, use streaming Radio until an 8.2.1 or 8.3 comes out...


The one workaround to this, is to store your 'phone music', in a playlist in your PC/MAC iTunes. Then whenever Apple is too lazy to fully test their updates and causes this problem (this happened to me on one of the 6.something or 7.something updates too), you can just copy that playlist over to the phone, and you get your curated content there without having to handpick it. Sad to have to build workarounds to Apple's poor software.. If i wanted to spend hours building workarounds for a poorly made device, I would have gotten a Windows phone.


But hey! At least I have some unremovable Apple Watch software taking up space on my Phone now... Joy!


-G

Mar 29, 2015 1:48 PM in response to Mrs. Orange

I too am having issues with my music after the new iOS upgrade. My music shows it is on my iphone 5 when I am linked to my macbook (and even when it is disconnected) however my iphone does not show my Playlists. Under the Playlists icon it shows "Purchased," "New Playlist," and "Genius Playlist."


(Oh why does Apple screw up a good thing...new improvements are not better this time).

Mar 31, 2015 1:34 AM in response to vanhalen26

Apple does not seem to think the issue is widespread and happening to a lot of people.


and it is responses like this, that make my blood pressure go up. this guy is not listening to my problem at all. although to be fair, he is from iTunes store and not a tech advisor.


Greetings from the iTunes Store! My name is Justine, your iTunes Store Advisor. First and foremost, I would like to extend an apology for the delayed response to your email. Thanks for your patience.


I’m sorry to hear that all of your songs were disappeared on your device and saw an exclamation point next to the songs. I can imagine your eagerness to get this sorted out and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. I will be happy to look into this for you and provide you with all the information you need regarding this matter.


Eileen, please know that the ! mark means that iTunes is unable to locate the original file and as iTunes can not locate the item it can’t be played. The good news is that these songs are probably not erased; however, you will need to help iTunes locate it. I found a few articles that explain how to search your hard drive for missing purchases:


No content shows up in iTunes after updating

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1967


This article may also be helpful:


Instructions for finding missing music and video downloads

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408


If you are unable to restore all the items that have a ! mark next to them, you may be able to re-download eligible content using the steps in the following article:


Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519


Please understand that not all items can be re-downloaded for no additional cost and any items removed from the iTunes Store or modified from the original file you purchased will not be made available for you to re-download.


I certainly understand how valuable your purchased files are to you, as Apple is not responsible for lost, damaged or corrupted items and as items available for re-downloading within the iTunes in the Cloud purchases can change at any time, I would highly recommend backing up your purchases. This way if files do become lost, damaged or corrupted you can restore them. This article explains how to create and maintain an up-to-date backup of your iTunes library:


Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751


I hope this information will help you. Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Support, have a great day.

Apr 10, 2015 12:58 AM in response to Mrs. Orange

I have the exact same issues.


And I apologizes about the following but it has to come out...

Apple obviously don't like people managing themselves their library... It's like everything is made so that if you want to manage things yourself life will be a lot harder for you... I hate this, I don't have that much space on my computer so I purposely have some songs on my phone and not on the computer, so I don't want to sync exactly my library... I will have to redownload a lot of songs/video now...

Are you guys seriously not angry that a sync misconfiguration can delete all the content of your media library WITHOUT ANY WARNING ???? This should not happen and this should be followed by a swift response from Apple support not those very bad response we received so far !

Iphone Music Gone iOS 8.2 Update

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