When songs disappear

Question

This should help explain why songs don't appear where you expect them to be when you import them into iTurnes. (It's a repeat of an earlier post with some exposition for the casual user).
iTunes appears to be looking for a combination of recording format (AAC, mp3, AppleLossless for example), bitrate (that's the kbps), and the words in the Genre tag for the file. If you aren't familiar with the Genre tag, select a song in iTunes, do a 'control I', when you see the information box come up, look under 'Info'. Under 'Info' is the Genre tag.
I've done experiments to determine some of the rules iTunes appears to be using to put songs into the various iTunes Folders (Music and Audiobooks).
Note that in the discussion below, I say I import 'files' to iTunes. I say 'files' rather than 'song's because I'm not just looking at music. Even though the casual user says they're importing songs or music into iTunes they're really importing files of certain types that iTunes recognizes.
Those of us that record streaming audio with tools such as Audio Hijack, have discovered that files don't go where we want them too in itunes. Music can end up in Audio books, or sometimes simply never show up. It appears that Apple has some built in metadata rules that it's not sharing with us. These rules appear (remember I'm reverse engineering here) to depend on the recording format and (sometimes) the genre tag. (Nota bene: I fill out the Name, artist, and album tags too, so there may be some dependency there I haven't uncovered).
I did some experimenting by recording some BBC streams with various Genre tags and recording formats using Audio Hijack then importing the files to iTunes and seeing which folder they went into. Here are the results.
AAC, 32kbps goes to Audiobooks, no matter what you put in Genre.
AAC, 128 kbps goes to Music if you have a Genre that is a Music genre (I just put in Dance)
AAC, 128 Kbps goes to Audiobooks if you have a Genre set to Audiobooks or Spoken word (or I suppose Books & Spoken)
Apple Lossless goes to the Music folder no matter what's in the tag.
MP3, 128 kbps, with a Genre tag that is a Music Genre goes to the Music folder
If you have a file that does not show up anywhere but in 'Recently Added', try using a tool that will allow you to add data to the tags then reimport it. (You can find the file buried in the podcasts folder in Finder).
Changing the tag after the file is in iTunes does not allow you to move the file after you've loaded it.
Your mileage may vary.
emac, ibook, ipod, newton    

Answer 1

Hello,
/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CharPaletteServer.plist
Drag the com.apple.CharPaletteServer.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash, reboot. See if that fixes the crazy characters issue.
Here are ways to make your songs appear in the library again:
In the Finder, drag your iTunes Music folder to the iTunes window. You will see the songs in your library again, but not playlists, song ratings, or other information you created.
If that doesn't work, your songs may be elsewhere on your hard disk. In the Finder, choose File > Find and search for a song by title or artist. Or search for "MP4" to find files downloaded from the iTunes Store or "MP3" to find songs encoded in MP3 format. Drag songs (or folders containing songs) to the iTunes window to add the songs to iTunes again.
If you still have issues with double clicking an audio track, go to System Preferences/Keyboard&Mouse/Keyboard and reset your Key repeat rate. It might be a too fast.
If that doesn't help, select the audio track you wish to listen to and then press Enter on your Keyboard. There are more iTunes keyboard shortcuts available in the iTunes Help Viewer.
Carolyn