I think iTunes has Alzheimer's!

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Level 1

5 points

I think iTunes has Alzheimer's!

I'm having trouble with iTunes 12.1.2.27 on my Windows 7, 64 bit machine. The problem is that, after entering info manually, some of the new data is forgotten. The weird thing is, this seems to happen at random. As an example, today I opened up iTunes and found that a song I updated yesterday had no track number. Now, I would normally think that I had simply forgotten to enter it, but this has been happening a LOT since upgrading to this latest version. I'm talking random bits of information simply vanishing from one day to the next.

Let me back up and explain that iTunes is my hobby. I have thousands of CD that I have entered in manually and have spent YEARS tweaking the info so that all of the information is perfect. A few weeks ago, I finally finished this project and within days, 12.1.2.27 came out. Since then, I have been very frustrated with things being missing. Usually, the main page stuff is intact, but I use the sort fields quite extensively, and these are what are being affected. One day I will enter in a "sort artist" entry or a "sort album" entry, the next I will look and it will be missing on, not all, but a few random songs, even though I changed it wholesale for the entire album. I don't get it. It's not uncommon to (now being paranoid about it) check a new album a couple of times and find everything intact, then, open iTunes up a third time to find things missing.

I am just hoping that this is a wide-reaching enough issue that it will be fixed in the next update! In the future, I will be sure to set a restore point before installing any updates to iTunes, which I usually only do for brand new issues of it (ie: iTunes 11 to iTunes 12).

Again, I'm thinking this is an issue with this version of iTunes, but if anyone else recognizes these symptoms and knows of a fix, I will be grateful for any feedback.

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 5:48 AM

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turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 24, 2015 9:53 AM in response to simujoe

If the files that have changed metadata are store purchases then this could be the store version of your metadata leaking back into your library. Assuming you don't use iTunes Match the following approach will help.

Go to iTunes > Preferences > Store and turn off

Show iTunes in the Cloud purchases
Share details about your library with Apple

On any iOS device go to Settings > Music and turn off

Show All Music

Close and reopen iTunes and/or reset the device and you should see your version of the metadata for each track rather than the original store data. Alternatively my script UpdateTagInfo will force iTunes to read the current data from the tags.

Sometimes security permissions won't allow you/iTunes to make changes, although iTunes may initially appear to accept and apply the change the original data may show again later. See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows for a fix.

Some mp3 files may have multiple tags (e.g. both ID3v1.0 and ID3v2.x, or tags in multiple languages. In such cases iTunes may update one, but subsequently read back unchanged data from another. In this case using Convert > ID3 Tags > None several times, followed by Convert ID3 Tags > v2.3 should create a tag that you can reliably update, however the process will erase any embedded artwork so this will need to be re-embedded.

tt2

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