Apple Music Bug? All of my media (music & movies) have wrong release year

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Level 1

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Apple Music Bug? All of my media (music & movies) have wrong release year

The last few days (maybe more) I've noticed that all of my music and movies as well are labeled as having released the year "εεεε" which is a greek letter and obviously so very wrong. I was using Apple Music until 2 days ago when my free subscription ended (if this has anything to do with it). The same problem exists both in iTunes and on my iPad (iOS 9). My purchased media is also affected.

What happened and how can I fix it?

iPad Mini, Windows 8, null

Posted on Oct 2, 2015 10:53 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,363 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:08 PM in response to immortalwind

There are similar problems with the current versions of iTunes in Polish ('rrrrr' instead year of all songs) and Portuguese (Re: Album year bug after iTunes 12.3 update). The patch is slightly more complicated for Greek. First one has to discover that the folder for Greek localization is el.lproj rather than the expected gr.lproj. Then it turns out that a 'Normal' search for εεεε doesn't work in either the binary plist or xml state of the file. A little experimenting has found that a 'Regular expression' search works in the xml version of the file, but that still means you'd have to convert it, edit it, and convert it back again. I can explain how to do that if you are really interested, but in the meantime I've created a patched version of the Greek Localizable.strings for iTunes 12.3.0.44 as a zip file. Unpack it into the el.lproj folder and it should fix the problem.

Edited to correct the link to the patch file. If you downloaded from the original email you'll have the Portuguese version. Sorry. 😮😊

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,363 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:08 PM in response to immortalwind

'What el.lproj folder?' you may well be asking, since I forgot to explain.

The issue is caused by the contents of the file:

C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.Resources\el.lproj\localizable.strings

The Program Files folder may have a slightly different name or include (x86).

Replacing this file with the patched copy makes iTunes display the digits of the year instead of εεεε.

Internally all I have done is exchange εεεε for yyyy at one point in the file.

tt2

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Answer 3

immortalwind Author

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20 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:12 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you so much my friend, this fixed my problem! I rarely get a helpful response in these forums, so this was a pleasant surprise. You never know what bugs awaits in the corner of any new iTunes update 😝

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

278,363 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:18 PM in response to immortalwind

You're welcome. 🙂

Oh, and I just spotted this is also affecting your iPad. I assume that is also set to Greek in Settings > General > Language & Region. I've just fired up iTunes in all 35 supported languages to check if there are any more matching errors (there are just the three) but I'm not about to try that in iOS. 😮

tt2

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Answer 5

immortalwind Author

Level 1

20 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:18 PM in response to turingtest2

Actually, I was pretty sure I spotted the same problem in iPad, but yesterday I checked and everything looked fine. Maybe it was solved after disabling Apple Music, maybe it was never there in the first place. 😕

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Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

278,363 points

Oct 3, 2015 12:22 PM in response to immortalwind

OK. If it existed for the same reasons as in iTunes then it would have taken an iOS update to fix it, though with Apple Music copying data between libraries I suppose it is possible that iTunes uploaded corrupt data which Apple Music then downloaded.

tt2

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