Greetings-
After updating iTunes, some of my AAC files have now been converted to "internet audio stream" files. These songs are grayed and will no longer play in iTunes. Is this music lost? It appears to be completely random, some songs in a album and "converted" to this file type and the music will no longer play.
Thoughts? I have potentially lost hundreds of songs from my library
Many thanks!
iPhone 6, iOS 8.4.1
Realise your original post is from almost a year ago, but it's the most recent link when you do a google "iTunes internet audio stream". I just hit the same issue and figured others might too, so hopefully this will help other users.
What is internet audio stream?
Normally, exactly what it says on the tin: an internet audio stream e.g. for an internet radio station, which streams audio down from the internet to iTunes.
However, that's obviously not what is happening here.
Based on my recent experience, it's Apple Music getting confused with sync conflicts between devices.
In my case (OS X Yosemite 10.10.5, iTunes 12.3.3.17, iOS 8.4.1 on an iPhone 5):
- a year ago I replaced my laptop
- about six months ago I signed up for Apple Music
- when I switched on "iCloud Music Library" (Setiings > Music > iCloud Music Library) on my iPhone, I elected to merge, thus retaining all the music I already had stored locally on my iPhone
- this was music I had previously synced from iTunes on my computer
- last week, having run out of space on my iPhone, I temporarily switched back to iTunes syncing (by switching off iCloud Music Library on my iPhone) so I could easily remove the previously-synced music from from my iPhone
- I unchecked everything in iTunes and did a sync
- however, although according to iTunes there was no now music on my iPhone, on the iPhone itself I still had over 2GB of music
- I eventually (...) worked out that this 2GB was music I had synced over a year ago from my old laptop, the laptop which I have since replaced
- iTunes only allows you to sync from one computer at a time. Hence this 2GB was effectively orphaned on my iPhone
- so I went through everything on my iPhone and deleted all tracks
- bang, no orphaned music left on my iPhone
However:
- there were still a few playlists left on my iPhone
- these were playlists which also existed in my iTunes collection and hence in my iCloud music library
- these playlists were now, on the iPhone, empty
- but they still existed in iCloud and on my computer, where they were not empty
I unintentionally briefly switched "iCloud Music Library" back on on my iPhone, before switching off again.
After that, in iTunes, about 50 or so of the songs that had been in the playlists showed up as "internet audio stream", but could not be played.
Panic!
But then when I checked more closely - these "internet audio stream" tracks had not overwritten my original tracks. They were duplicates. The original tracks were still there.
Best guess is something along the lines of: iCloud saw that the playlists were empty on my phone and tried syncing the tracks back down to my iPhone, this was interrupted / clashed with me deleting tracks off the phone, and this caused these broken duplicates. Some bug in iTunes can't tell what they are, so is categorising them as internet audio streams in the absence of anything better.
Outcome: I was able to delete all the false "internet audio stream" tracks from iTunes on my laptop, and eventually have everything working smoothly again. In some (but not all) cases the false "internet audio stream" tracks had replaced the original tracks in my playlists, so I had to re-add the originals.
Just in case: I took a backup of all the tracks that appeared to have false duplicates (created a normal folder, dragged all the tracks from iTunes to it), so that if any of the tracks did vanish completely I could re-add them to iTunes. They haven't vanished and I haven't had to, but you never know.
NB. To check if a track is in a playlist before deleting it, choose "Show In Playlist" from the context menu (right-click on the track, or Ctrl-click if using a single button mouse or the trackpad).
Realise your original post is from almost a year ago, but it's the most recent link when you do a google "iTunes internet audio stream". I just hit the same issue and figured others might too, so hopefully this will help other users.
What is internet audio stream?
Normally, exactly what it says on the tin: an internet audio stream e.g. for an internet radio station, which streams audio down from the internet to iTunes.
However, that's obviously not what is happening here.
Based on my recent experience, it's Apple Music getting confused with sync conflicts between devices.
In my case (OS X Yosemite 10.10.5, iTunes 12.3.3.17, iOS 8.4.1 on an iPhone 5):
- a year ago I replaced my laptop
- about six months ago I signed up for Apple Music
- when I switched on "iCloud Music Library" (Setiings > Music > iCloud Music Library) on my iPhone, I elected to merge, thus retaining all the music I already had stored locally on my iPhone
- this was music I had previously synced from iTunes on my computer
- last week, having run out of space on my iPhone, I temporarily switched back to iTunes syncing (by switching off iCloud Music Library on my iPhone) so I could easily remove the previously-synced music from from my iPhone
- I unchecked everything in iTunes and did a sync
- however, although according to iTunes there was no now music on my iPhone, on the iPhone itself I still had over 2GB of music
- I eventually (...) worked out that this 2GB was music I had synced over a year ago from my old laptop, the laptop which I have since replaced
- iTunes only allows you to sync from one computer at a time. Hence this 2GB was effectively orphaned on my iPhone
- so I went through everything on my iPhone and deleted all tracks
- bang, no orphaned music left on my iPhone
However:
- there were still a few playlists left on my iPhone
- these were playlists which also existed in my iTunes collection and hence in my iCloud music library
- these playlists were now, on the iPhone, empty
- but they still existed in iCloud and on my computer, where they were not empty
I unintentionally briefly switched "iCloud Music Library" back on on my iPhone, before switching off again.
After that, in iTunes, about 50 or so of the songs that had been in the playlists showed up as "internet audio stream", but could not be played.
Panic!
But then when I checked more closely - these "internet audio stream" tracks had not overwritten my original tracks. They were duplicates. The original tracks were still there.
Best guess is something along the lines of: iCloud saw that the playlists were empty on my phone and tried syncing the tracks back down to my iPhone, this was interrupted / clashed with me deleting tracks off the phone, and this caused these broken duplicates. Some bug in iTunes can't tell what they are, so is categorising them as internet audio streams in the absence of anything better.
Outcome: I was able to delete all the false "internet audio stream" tracks from iTunes on my laptop, and eventually have everything working smoothly again. In some (but not all) cases the false "internet audio stream" tracks had replaced the original tracks in my playlists, so I had to re-add the originals.
Just in case: I took a backup of all the tracks that appeared to have false duplicates (created a normal folder, dragged all the tracks from iTunes to it), so that if any of the tracks did vanish completely I could re-add them to iTunes. They haven't vanished and I haven't had to, but you never know.
NB. To check if a track is in a playlist before deleting it, choose "Show In Playlist" from the context menu (right-click on the track, or Ctrl-click if using a single button mouse or the trackpad).
Was your media stored on a NAS? I think iTunes may sometimes decide to treat what should be local network stored media as streams but I've no idea what might trigger the switch.
tt2
For me, no, all on my hard drive.
There were actually a few more steps in causing the issue, and somewhere in the middle was (ahem) a little bit of a restore from backup, but I skipped all that as my post was already looking like an essay.
Worth pointing out though that the playlists that ended up with the false "internet audio streams" couldn't be synced back up to iCloud (had the little cloud-with-a-lighting-strike symbol) until the false stream files were removed.
What is internet audio stream?
