Missing songs and playlists after update

I am with you. It's a shame to shell out the 300+ for a device that I hoped to take on a trip with the family. Now it sits on my desk after I spent a good 13-14 hours loading and re-loading it, all to no avail.

I am seriously thinking about returning it and converting my old Samsung S3 into an audio player/camera.

A Couple ideas for you in the interim while we hope they fix.

i Have the app Isub and with it I can download music into a cache on my phone. The app does have a pretty good music player.

this same issue with music is doing the same to my videos but with plex (I have a paid membership) I can sync copies of my media (videos and music actually) to my phone. Sorry to hear you spent so many hours - that ***.

On the upside, I can swap memory cards on the S3. This allows me to change my groups/playlists on the fly, and I can still use the bluetooth for external speakers. Win/win! Less expensive too.

Not sure why I didn't think of this before....

I Am curious if the files are still on my phone. They showed up in copytrans but I couldn't actually export an mp3, so not sure if they have been deleted or not.

Since I have a new iTouch (got it Tuesday), do we think that its worth downgrading the iOS to see if this is truly the issue? Will I brick it?

Well - I found a third party software where I could look at the files on my phone and the songs were gone ... just some sort of library file was showing them in itunes. So - I did a restore from a back up. Deleted everything from itunes and re-added all my media. And at least so far after a few hours it's still on my phone, so fingers crossed that they won't evaporate on me again. I'll update in a few days.

I don't exactly know how or why, but it seems that lately I've been able to sync again my device (iPod touch 4th gen) without losing my music...

On iTunes, I un-checked the manually manage music option, then I created on my computer a playlist with all the music I want on my iPod, and on iTunes -> my iPod -> Music I checked the option Sync Music and then Selected Playlists, artists and genres. Then I selected only the playlist I created before.

Now whenever I add a song to the playlist, as soon as I connect the iPod to my computer it automatically syncs it and so far it hasn't deleted any song.

I keep my finger crossed hoping the problem won't come back again!

MIne was good for a day - its wiped all my music again.

Mine has been working fine for 3 days... I hope it won't trick me again

iPod Touch 5

iTunes 12.1.0.50

iOS 8.2 (12D508)

I just wanted to go on record as having the same issues after the latest iTunes update: even though the individual songs are still on my iPod, all of my carefully assembled playlists have disappeared. Many of my music files are gone too.

When my device is connected to iTunes, the songs on my device will not play and an exclamation point warning symbol appears to the file name in the song list.

This is a significant issue. Please fix this Apple. I use my device on a daily basis, and I should not have to go through the inconvenience of recreating all my playlists.

I deeply regret updating to the latest version of iTunes, but I wanted to add music purchased from the iTunes store to my device. I had no idea it would cause these problems.

So - i bit the bullet and restored as new, downloading IOS 8.2 to do so and added all my apps and music again, and same problem. After a half day all music gone and acting as described above by PM4444. Now I'll place a call to Apple tomorrow or Tuesday to formally open a file - but at least I've done all the troubleshooting they will ask for.

In the interim, I have isub which is a great music app and I will just store a bunch of music locally - no big loss for the near term anyways, PITA to do the trouble shooting - took 3-4 hours that I would have really rather have spent elsewhere.

This issue is not exclusive to the touch, but the issue is getting buried in the iphone threads as alot of people post alot more questions there.

vanhalen26 - seriously, what I have found on this board is that the "experts" here are working with rose colored Apple glasses. They are not Apple representatives at all, and they will pounce you if you say anything contrary to Apple products. (see the incoming link at the bottom of this post).

I decided to give up another morning to give this whole project a final chance.

I finally cleared mine to factory reset, and started it as new as well. In addition, I started a completely new library for the new iTouch as in this guide:

How to use multiple iPhone, iPad, or iPod devices with one computer - Apple Support

I now have to open iTunes by holding the shift key while opening to select whether I want to update my old iTouch vs. the new. Working so far, but I have to reinstall my apps on the new Touch as well. Kind of a pain in the *** if you ask me.

So far so good. Tomorrow I will add new music to the new library and update the new Touch. We'll see if it still keeps what I have added to it from previous.

Hey all, The solution i outlined above does work (so far). I have added songs and apps, backed up, synced, and nothing has been lost.

The big pain is that I had to do all of this from scratch. I could not use my previous backup of my old iTouch.

If anything changes, I will post the outcome/results.

I've had disappearing songs/playlists issues since forever. I cannot tell you how many times I've restored my iPod / deleted all music from iPod to start from scratch. I've contacted Apple Support and have looked everywhere online to find a more viable solution to no avail. I feel like there are so many scenarios that could cause all my music to disappear, but I still don't know how to keep it from happening after all these years. Sometimes it's as stupid as forgetting to click the eject button before unmounting, and sometimes iTunes would just be stuck at "Preparing to Update" when I try to add a song to my iPod. It is getting so bad to the point that I'm prepared to lose all my songs every time I connect my iPod to my laptop, and it definitely gives me anxiety when I try to add anything to my iPod.

I'm writing this because it happened to me again last night. I swear I didn't do anything wrong and didn't see anything weird. I ejected my iPod correctly and everything seen normal. When I opened the Music App, it said I have no songs in my iPod, I was seriously crying at that point because it takes me at least 3 hours to rebuild my playlists. The weird thing was when I connect my iPod again to my laptop, all the music data had been converted to "Other", and the songs were still showing up in iTunes. When I clicked to play a song, it played! Not even grayed out or had an exclamation point next to it! But when I go back to the Music App on my iPod, it still has ZERO songs. I'm not even looking for a solution at this point because I know there's none except to restore your iPod, which is NOT A SOLUTION APPLE!!!