Music and Videos keep getting deleted, yet I can't delete purchased music

Basically the same thing happened to me I went and rented Harry Potter and the Goblit of Fire. I went to watch it and it said it could not load the video so I looked at ITunes it deleted my purchase and did not refund me.

Talked to Apple about losing music and photo's, and get the usual dialog, "oh im sorry, i know how i would feel" etc etc,

Here is a fact, Apple don't care anymore, except to sell another product to another unsuspecting customer. most of the support staff have no idea, and on two occasions have caused more issues with both my imac and iphone.

I have been an Apple customer for many years, never again, Losing thousands of rare mp3's of Australian and NZ music from the 50's and 60's, " Yes they were backed up except the drive they were on was damaged" Then discovering that 600 of the photo's i took i China with friends were deleted, all irreplacable, i actually watched some of the songs and photos being deleted.

My suggestion is if you have an iphone and a mac computer, get rid of one of them, this is what i think the problem is. whether you have sync on or not is irrelevant, even better, just get rid of everything Apple.

They need to start listening to their customers,

I'be had similar problems in the past, so I can help with some of it. Now my problem is that the music I've recently purchased keeps getting deleted off my iPad for no apparent reason so I have to keep re downloading it.

As for you not being able to delete purchased music: its all because of iCloud. Go settings>music then turn on Show all music. Then you've got to go into music and redownload the purchased music you want to delete (it seems counter intuitive, I know). Then go back to settings and turn Show all music off. Now you can finally go back into music and you should be able to swipe left on the stuff you want to delete.

This worked for me, let me know if it worked for you too. I think what happens is when you play a song off iCloud it sometimes makes a 'temporary' copy of it in your library in case you want to play it again. It's these copies you have been seeing, so it's only when you 'properly' download it that you are properly able to delete it, if that makes sense

Hi, I'm having a similar problem since the last update of iTunes. Two days ago I just dragged 2 songs from an external HD onto my iPad inside iTunes. Shortly after that a bunch of playlist were disappearing in front of my eyes on my iPad. Those playlists are still shown under the iPad tree in iTunes, but not on the iPad. At first, all the songs were still there. They could be found in the title list and also could be played directly from the iPad when double clicking on them in the playlist from within iTunes.

I realized that all the playlists that are not shown on the iPad were playlists that have been created in iTunes and then dragged to the iPad. Additionally all playlists that were created directly on the iPad were not shown anymore inside iTunes. So I can see one part of the playlists on the iPad and the other part only inside iTunes.

My iPad had still iOS 7.1.2 on it. I called support yesterday, but without any success. I got kicked twice out of the line and had to deal with a bunch of wrong information in general. So there was no way to expect a result.

As a last hope I updated to iOS 8, which as I almost suspected things got worse. First the update to iOS 8 did not bring the playlists back. I then kept experimented and created new playlists. If I create a playlist on the iPad they won't show up in iTunes. (same was true before the iOS upgrade, but it worked still a few ago). Then I created a playlist on the iPad from iTunes and also dragged a playlist from the music folder onto the iPad. The newly created playlists were showing up on the iPad and also changes to the playlist name were propagated after a while. Then I dragged a song from an iPad playlist inside iTunes onto the newly created playlist. The song showed up inside iTunes, but not on the iPad. I tried to drag more songs from the iTunes music folder and from an external drive into that playlist. None of the songs showed up.

I then created another playlist from within iTunes on the iPad and this time I only dragged songs from the iTunes library or an external drive. Those songs showed up on the iPad! But then a few seconds later the playlists that were just created disappeared again on the iPad. I tried this several times. The playlists always disappeared on the iPad after a few seconds, but they still showed up in iTunes.

At first the dragged over songs were still on the iPad and could be found in the titles view e.g. After a few tries however songs suddenly got deleted, too! It seems that all the songs that were in a playlist that only showed up on iTunes and for which I also tried to drag a song from that playlist to a newly created list got deleted. It was a few hundreds of songs. The playlist and the songs still show up in iTunes, but when I want to play them from within iTunes I get the exclamation mark. The songs also don't show up on the iPad anymore.

I don't use any sync function within iTunes. I always have been copying my music and videos manually onto the iPad. I also don't use iTunes to mange my music. Since I use music for work my music doesn't fit on my notebook and iTunes is not able to handle multiples libraries (like one local and one or more on external drives ). I manage my music with Trakor DJ. This is why I always drag music directly onto my iPad.

It seems there is again another major bug in iTunes. I'm getting so sick of it. For almost a half year I was not able to copy music to my iPad due to the snyc bugs (http://robservatory.com/a-nasty-little-itunesios-bug-may-be-causing-media-sync-i ssues/). Now iTunes deletes playlists and songs by itself. When is Apple finally make iTunes and iPad usable again.

I hope someone at Apple can look into that and provide a hotfix. No, no, no, and again no I don't want to re-set my iPad again. I'm sick of getting this advice from every support rep. It never did any good, but costs me hours of my time. Before I do that again I will buy a Surface and don't worry about iTunes anymore. Apple get your act together! Apparently it is not (only) an iOS problem, since it happened on iOS 7 and iOS 8 to me. iTunes seem to mess up things directly on the iPad.

Marcus

Add-on:

Since I upgraded to iOS 8.2 I can't change the order of playlists anymore. I can select to edit the playlist on the iPad arrange the order, but as soon as I commit the changes all songs revert to the initial order!

To hide your purchases go to Settings > Music > Show All Music > Off.

I know you don't want to hear it, but generally if syncing isn't working as it should do the following steps usually work to clean things up.

1. Backup device.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup taken earlier.

You should probably copy off the contents of the camera roll first unless you have Photo Stream set up and it reliably captures everything. It also assumes that all media content on the device is in your library. If that might not be the case see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

tt2

I have the same problem, though it's only with music that came from the "Free on iTunes" category that recently took the place of the "Single of the Week" feature.

This is not a solution we as customer should accept. Personally I'm sick of this process, because I have better things to do than to restore my device every couple of weeks. Just because Apple is not able to produce software that is working. Despite the long history of frequent major bugs with syncing and playlists, Apple still wasn't able to create a repair mode that would put the database in a consistent state again? Bugs can happen, but than offer a solution to fix it, instead of having the customer spend hours over hours each time to re-install the device, because the bug made the device unusable!

Marcus

turingtest2 wrote:

I know you don't want to hear it, but generally if syncing isn't working as it should do the following steps usually work to clean things up.

1. Backup device.
2. Restore as a new device.
3. Restore the backup taken earlier.

You should probably copy off the contents of the camera roll first unless you have Photo Stream set up and it reliably captures everything. It also assumes that all media content on the device is in your library. If that might not be the case see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

tt2

MrNostalgiaX wrote:

It took almost 15 months to get that much on it and get it organized the way I liked with cover art and everything.

If you have organized it within iTunes, in one or more playlists, all you have to do is restore the device using the steps given above. It might be an overnight run, but you don't have to babysit it. Kick off the restore and come back when it is done. And you're ready if you have to wipe the device for some other problem, or you upgrade to a new device, or lose the current one and decide to replace it. Managing devices with playlists is less effort, not more.

tt2

KillerBoogie wrote:

This is not a solution we as customer should accept.

When things go wrong for me, which I'd put at about once a year, I run through the steps that I know will work. Yes, I'd love it if Apple made the process more robust, but I'm not about to wait.

We're fellow users here, suggestions go to iTunes Feedback.

tt2

MrNostalgiaX wrote:

Hey turningtest2, do you have another solution I can use? Sorry to be sarcastic but you seemed to be pressing your idea hard on us and it still didn't work. PLEASE HELP, THIS IS GETTING ANNOYING AND APPLE WON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT UNLESS ENOUGH OF US HAVE THIS PROBLEM AND COMPLAIN!

Sadly no. I'd recommend you avoid syncing major changes over wi-fi, but I'd have guessed you used a cable, and also that you leave some free space on it. Other than that I don't really have any ideas what might cause this. I've only had the full dump of all the tracks on my iPhone once, at the beginning of a long drive which was a drag. More common is finding tracks that won't play and seem to be stalled transfers, artwork issues etc. or most recenly the ithing where iTunes says there isn't enough room to sync even though you'e only making a minor change and there is clearly plenty of free space. The only thing to do is try again, and hope for a different outcome. 😕

tt2