Certain songs will not play from itunes

Question

Level 1

0 points

Certain songs will not play from itunes

I recently deleted a number of duplicate files from the Music folder in my iTunes library, but now the songs won't play, and won't sync to my phone.

The files play when I preview them in Viewer, and there's no exclamation mark icon in iTunes to indicate that there's a problem, they just refuse to play. Selecting 'View in Finder' navigates to a random location on my hard drive, completely unrelated to where iTunes data is stored.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), null

Posted on Jan 27, 2016 11:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Limnos

Level 10

411,121 points

Jan 28, 2016 7:39 AM in response to d291173

It sounds to me like your library catalog file (iTunes Library.itl) has become corrupt. If you are really curious about this you can open the .xml version in a text editor, search for one of the bad tracks and see where it points. if this is indeed what has happened then the only real recourse is to restore from an earlier version or backup, or rebuild you whole library file from scratch again.

Another, more daunting alternative is your whole drive directory is becoming corrupt.

ASC user turingtest2 help document: Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6561

If you don't see your content after updating iTunes - https://support.apple.com/kb/HT203225

By the way, how did you delete these music files?

Reply

Answer 2

d291173 Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 6, 2016 6:41 PM in response to Limnos

Hey Limnos,

I just did a direct command-delete on the files, from Finder. So I've still got copies of the files in all the right places, it's just that iTunes isn't recognising that the songs are there, or even that they're missing beyond the fact that they won't play. And when I say that 'Show in Finder' takes me to a random location, it's that the location is random, but static. So doing that twice for the same song takes me to the same random location both times.

I've got a LOT of duplicated files in my library, which is frustrating as they're taking up valuable space on the hard drive for no reason.

Daniel

Reply