Lost all of my iTunes music after El Capitan upgrade

Question

Lost all of my iTunes music after El Capitan upgrade

I have around 40,000 songs in my iTunes, almost all music ripped from CDs over the course of 15 years. Just went to listen to some on my computer and found that, although all the songs appear in my iTunes window, not one of the files can be found. I navigated to my iTunes folder where all my music files are stored, and THEY HAVE ALL DISAPPEARED. I have always synced all my music folders to Dropbox and don't use Apple's Cloud music service (because it mucked up music on my iPhone), but all the files have gone from Dropbox too. Then I realised this is the first time I have tried to listen to music on iTunes since upgrading to El Capitan. So, it seems THE UPGRADE TO EL CAPITAN HAS DELETED ALL OF MY MUSIC FILES, so Dropbox found nothing to sync.

So, what can I do? I tried the 'solution' listed here: If you don't see your content after you update iTunes - Apple Support

... but this didn't solve the problem at all - it retrieved only 40 purchased songs!

I AM DESPERATE. It seems I am not the only one to have had this problem with El Capitan. What a disgrace, Apple (and that's quite apart from Calendar now working very slowly since the update too).

Please can someone help?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 12, 2015 7:48 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Limnos

Level 10

411,265 points

Nov 12, 2015 8:11 AM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

Restore your iTunes library from your backup.

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Answer 2

Nov 12, 2015 8:16 AM in response to Limnos

I'm on the road at the moment, so hopefully I will be able to do this tomorrow afternoon from my Time Machine back-up as you suggest. But please: how can Apple launch El Capitan and have it break so many people's iTunes?

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,265 points

Nov 12, 2015 1:27 PM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

With every iTunes and/or system upgrade a handful of people have observed library issues. It is why it is essential to back up before doing any update or upgrade. It happens to some and one gets the impression it is a "lot" but realize this is where people with problems come. You don't see the millions with no problems post here. Also realize your particular manifestation (no iCloud usage) is actually something that has happened to a few people with every update since I can remember in 10 years on this forum. Most of the El Capitan problem issues are likely related to iCloud usage. Why it happened to you in particular is hard to say but you probably are not prepared to try to repeat the process 20 times with variations to try to trouble shoot the reason. 🙂

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Answer 4

Nov 12, 2015 1:29 PM in response to Limnos

Thank you for your very sober and rational response. It's exactly what I needed - really - given how angry and upset I am. You helped me feel calmer. Tomorrow I will go to Time Machine and hopefully retrieve the situation.

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Answer 5

Limnos

Level 10

411,265 points

Nov 12, 2015 2:41 PM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

06/2014 ChrisCA post: Restore iTunes library from Time Machine backup - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6374283?answerId=26104480022#26104480022

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Answer 6

Nov 14, 2015 8:37 AM in response to Limnos

So... back in my office, I connected my Mac to my back up disk and ran Time Machine to restore my iTunes folder from a back up that pre-dates my installation of El Capitan. Unbelievably, not a single one of the backups displays the iTunes folder in which all my music files were stored. When I click on the folder in my current finder in which the files had been kept before, it is not shown in a single previous Time Machine back up - the folder doesn't seem to exist. Only the current iTunes folder - which is empty - displays on the back-ups. How can this be?

Fortunately, I swap back up disks every week of two, so I went and fetched the other back up disk and connected it in place of the more recent disk. Exactly the same problem: not one of the back ups displays the iTunes folder in which my music was kept - just the empty iTunes folder (which is in a slightly different location) that is on my current machine.

I now really am upset. Can anyone suggest what the **** is going on?

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Answer 7

Limnos

Level 10

411,265 points

Nov 14, 2015 9:57 PM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

I have never used Time Machine so I can't really be of assistance with it.

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Answer 8

Jan 27, 2016 9:08 PM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

1.Go to Finder

2.Click on the search bar and type itunes and hit enter

3.Click the plus button that is to the left of the save button(its towards the top right)

4.Now click on the any bar and change it to folder

5. The majority of your songs should be here

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Answer 9

TAS86

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2016 12:38 PM in response to Limnos

Did you find a solution? This has just happened to me. I updated to El Capitan two weeks ago. So many issues that the Genius/Mac Store wiped my macbook pro. I have three backup hard drives and only a partial music shows up library on any of them. It appears music added in 2010 when I originally added music to my macbook is there. Nothing later. Even music purchased from iTunes store does not appear on the backups. Apple Support does not have an answer. Most of my music library is gone. No playlists.

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Answer 10

turingtest2

Level 10

272,905 points

Feb 11, 2016 1:38 PM in response to TAS86

If you have the content on any Apple devices see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

tt2

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Answer 11

BenSykee

Level 1

8 points

Jun 3, 2016 1:39 PM in response to Graham Matthew Booth

Hi Graham,

I may have a solution to your problem 🙂

As a fool I haven't got back ups of my laptop and have just realised that my iTunes too has decided to delete my music, and not show them in the "music" folder.

Basically:

Use the finder to search for a song that was previously in iTunes
Right click on the artist, rather than one of the songs
Open enclosing folder
It will bring you to some other music folder that I am yet to figure out where it is
Copy and paste all of your music back into itunes (it took about 5 seconds to do 600 songs which is pretty odd in itself)
Your iTunes will have probably also unselected sync music so reselect this
I'm guessing we will have to remake our playlists 😟

I hope this helps!!

Ben 🙂

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