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My iTunes Music Library is mixed up

I am running Yosemite 10.10.5 and iTunes 12.2.2.25


When I go into iTunes no my Mac, click on the Music Category and select My Music.


All my music is mixed up.


Example:

If I click on a artist the album cover, song name, album and actual song it plays bears no relation to that artist


Is anyone else having the same issue?


Thanks

Steve

iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Itunes 12.2.2

Posted on Aug 26, 2015 11:51 PM

Reply
4 replies

Aug 27, 2015 7:00 AM in response to G_M_D

Is anyone else having the same issue?


Is that your real question? The easiest way to answer that is to browse back through the forum. 😉


Oh, maybe you want to know what to do about it? Well it depends upon the degree of damage. Track information is stored in two places. When a file is added to iTunes the application reads the track information from tags stored inside most files. It then uses this to generate a line in its database file along with the file location information. When you play a file iTunes re-reads the tag data and makes sure it is still consistent with what it stored the first time (just in case you use a third party tag editor). When you edit a tag in get info iTunes edits its database file and also re-writes the tag information to the file. This is where "damage" comes in.


Right now I will pause and say the easiest solution will be if you have a recent backup of your drive before this happened and can restore your library from that.


Back to the complex solutions. Various things can happen to corrupt the database file, the question is, has this been re-written to the file or is it restricted to the database so far. Try to play one of the actual files with bad labels using a player outside of iTunes such as Quicktime. There is a window you can display which will show track information. Hopefully that has not been changed (keep fingers crossed). If it has then you have the equivalent of a 2 year old going into the kitchen and removing all the labels from cans except this clever 2 year old has also glued them back on different cans. 😟 If they are not changed in the files themselves we can work to restore the database (iTunes Library.itl) file from a good copy. Normally, as I said, if you play a file iTunes should re-read the data from the file itself so if you select track XYZ in iTunes and track ABC plays but it says it is ABC then the files are okay.

Aug 27, 2015 2:23 PM in response to Limnos

Thanks for your reply Limnos


When I play a track using Quicktime rather than iTunes it play an incorrect tune. Bad!


I saved the current iTunes Library.itl file and replaced it with the previous version (14th July 2015) and it fixed some of the issues but not all, so I tried going back to a previous version (1st July 2015) and it looked to have solved the issue buy when I double click on a song it plays it but the track then disappears from iTunes.


I thought it was an issue with Apple Music update in 12.x.x of iTunes as my TV Shows and Films are in there normal order. The following link replicates what my issue is:

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/07/02/itunes-12-2-has-a-huge-bug-read-this-bef ore-updating/


The iTunes Library.itl file that is the file is around 3.6Mb in size but if I look back to the 1st July one it is 2.2Mb and the 14th July one is 3.5Mb. My iTunes Library has not grown in any significant way since July. Has the iTunes software update in July changed the iTunes Library.itl size?


Is there anyway to view the iTunes Library.itl file in a readable format?


Backups: This is bad, my Time Capsule ran out space a month or so back and couldn't back up any new changes/additions so I formatted it and ran a brand new full backup as I thought the music library mix up was a software issue caused by the update and a fix would come soon.


Is my music catalogue technically know as knackered?

Aug 27, 2015 2:55 PM in response to G_M_D

Let's reiterate. Normal situation: If I go to my library and click on a music file I see that the file name has something in relation to the music I anticipate, say "Let it be" by The Beatles. The music I hear is Let It Be by the Beatles. In my Quicktime player info window it says Let It Be by The Beatles. Where is yours different? Are you saying the file says it should be Let It Be but you hear Rockaway Beach by The Ramones? Or does the file say Let It Be, you hear Let It Be, but you see Ramones, or...?


Your track probably isn't disappearing but if the metadata (a bad situation) were changed then when you click on it the track is being renamed by the internal metadata and disappearing to whatever the new name happens to be.


If it is a case where your metadata are really messed up there isn't a self-contained cure. You restore from backup (which you don't have). You re-download purchases from the iTunes Store. You can look into a service which tries to use an audio fingerprint to identify tracks. I have never used such but I can imagine they may be horribly slow... But! Do you subscribe to iTunes Match? Supposedly it does this kind of audio fingerprinting and may be able to identify them. http://www.mcelhearn.com/apple-music-matches-files-with-metadata-only-not-acoust ic-fingerprinting/ - Match uses acoustic fingerprinting to identify tracks even if mislabeled, Apple Music uses only metadata.

Aug 27, 2015 3:10 PM in response to Limnos

Example:

In my iTunes I play "Let It Be" and "Rockaway Beach" plays.

In Finder I navigate to iTunes Media>Music>The Beatles>Album>Let It Be and Rockaway Beach plays


When I restore the 1st July iTunesLibrary.itl file the track plays but it just disappears from view in iTunes so like you say the track hasn't been deleted just like link to the file.


I'm not a member of iTunes Match.


Is the iTunes Library.itl saved into Previous iTunes Library folder with iTunes Media when a new version of iTunes is installed?


Not sure why Movies and TV Shows are all OK and Music is in a bad way.


Did you have a look at that link where people are claiming the issue is caused by iTunes 12.2?


Thanks

Steve

My iTunes Music Library is mixed up

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