2.000 Songs suddenly in Unknown Album Folder

I recently updated to 10.5.6 and Itunes 8.1 only to find over 2,000 legally imported tracks suddenly in the "Unknown Artist/Unknown Album" folder. They show up in the itunes window with a number and title but no artist or album...ie 02 Paranoid Android . However if you "Get Info" it has the correct album art. Get ID3 tags doesn't work, i've trashed them and reimported, doesn't work, if you select Get CD names it says that you can only do that for tracks that have been imported by Itunes, when in fact they were imported by Itunes. Any ideas on how to solve this one? I really don't want to manually enter the artist/album info for 2,000 tracks if i don't have to...all this was fine in itunes 7...HELP!!

+When I look at the metadata on the songs in the "Unknown Album" folder, everything appears to be intact. The songs still say "Combat Rock" in the Album Title field.+
What are you looking at the metadata with - Win Explorer? What does it say if you look at it using MP3tag?
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/
If the Album Title is truly Combat Rock, itunes should have put it in that folder. Are these MP3 files or some other format. like WAV?
Message was edited by: Katrina S.

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Song appears in unknown album

Hi,
I've ripped my very modest CD collection and for the most part it looks great in iTunes. All albums were ripped in Windows Media Player to My Music.
However, some albums' tracks wound up in Unknown Albums. I tried copying the Artist, Album Artist, & Artist fields from one of the songs in the right album into the rogue tracks. One track moved into its rightful Album; the other, just renamed the Album and resorted it.
FWIW, it's Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom (Bonus Disc) tracks 1 & 10; the CD came with two discs and all the tracks from the other CD has all its tracks in a separate album. And the tracks actually DO reside in the same folder as the other tracks for this album.
Thx!
Bardi
Baltimore, MD

Before ripping into iTunes select the tracks displayed and press ctrl-i to Get Info.
On the Info tab set the Album Artist. For compilations use Various Artists and then on the Options tab set Part of a compilation to Yes.
For a multi-disc album use the same Album title for each disc and set correct Disc X of Y values.
Rip the disc.
tt2

Songs Won't Play, Album Art Not Modifiable, ID3 Tags, Need Help

I have a 32 GB iPod Touch, Windows Vista, the latest version of iTunes and Quicktime as well as the latest iPod software.
I noticed the other day that a bunch of my songs were missing album art. I have a library with almost 7,000 songs and I have album art for everything. I went to the songs to attempt to fix the album art and noticed that it said, Album Art Not Modifiable, in the Album Art preview screen. I thought that was weird and it wouldn't let me add new album art to these albums.
I also noticed that none of these songs would play. They wouldn't play on my iPod or on iTunes. You can click play and it looks like it's going to play, but the counter never leaves "0".
I thought something was wrong with my files and that I would have to re rip or download the songs. However, by chance I opened one of the songs in Window Media Player and it worked, so I knew the files were fine.
I did a search online and found several people with the same problem and a few things to try. But nothing worked until I stumbled upon a solution of setting the ID3 tags to version "None", then setting them to version 2.4. I tried it and it worked.
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Thank You

Thanks for replying, Please read our Operating System details before taking a guess about what 'could' be the problem...
I think I figured it out anyway, Windows Media Player might be adding extra information that iTunes does not like, either Windows Media Player and/or iTunes 7.7.1 don't conform to ID3 v2.4 standards...
Please fix your software, Apple. I know how you love to be unique and mock PC users with your one-sided advertisements but at least conform to the ID3 standards.

When i import my music folder itunes puts alot of albums together in one large unknown album

so when i go to look for an album , they are in seperate folders in and they have titles,i have to go into the unknown album and find each track its ridiculious theres gotta be some way i can just re import my whole library and itunes should find each folder with seperte albums inside it and create albums no matter what the name is, for instance gd1972-6-11, i changed the name of the folder to live grateful dead, so i should have artist name in itunes that says live grateful dead, then each folder inside that one should be albums. idk about id3 tags they should b created during import. alot of these files ive had to convert addd album art and so on, and theres alot of them. im trying to setup the music for an iphone, this is my second one and the first one i suffered for years looking for certain music inside the ipod and essentially never listened to any of the unkown album jumbles cus the tracks arent in order. now i have trried get info and that has helped in some cases but the ones already inside the largest unknown album at the bottom about 431 albums mixed up, it doesnt work get info isnt helping on any one of these albums. im willing to delete itunes or the librarry since i have it set not to copy files and reimport but i need to know what to do for these albums to b reckognized thanks for reading and hope someone has a solution

iTunes doesn't pay attention to the file and folder names, only to the tags. If the files are untagged you can use a third party program like MediaMonkey (Google it, the forum software won't let me post a link today) before you add the tracks to iTunes, or if you can make sure that you add them in such a way that iTunes doesn't rename and move them (turn off the Keep... & Copy... and copy preferences and don't use the Automatically Add to iTunes folder) then I have a script called TagFromFilename at
samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp#TagFromFilename
that may be able to apply the information provided the tracks are in Artist and then Album folders.
tt2

How do I put all the songs from a compilation album into the same /album/folder in Itunes v12

How do I put all the songs from a compilation album into the same /album/folder in Itunes v12 i know in other versions it was via get info but as all of the tunes have the same album title , I am not sure what tio change to achieve this ?

I don't see your screenshot but I assume you're starting with something like this, i.e., the compilation split into multiple albums:
If you select all the items that you want to be in a single album, right-click > Get Info you'll see this:
As you say, in iTunes 12 you don't see a field to enter a distinct Album Artist value. You can, however, address this by clicking the Add Field button and selecting Album Artist:
That makes the field available in the metadata dialog so that you can enter the required value:
You can also show the pre-iTunes 12 version of the dialog by holding the SHIFT key when selecting Get Info - this allows you to enter the Album Artist directly:

I backed up my I-tunes library (by dragging my "music" folder to my new external hard drive. Now 6,000 songs won't play stating, "original file cannot be found." What can I do to get these songs back???!!!

I backed up my I-tunes library (by dragging my "music" folder to my new external hard drive. Now 6,000 songs won't play stating, "original file cannot be found." What can I do to get these songs back???!!!

Try putting the files back where they were before you moved them, then follow the steps in this Apple document -> iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

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All of a sudden I keep getting a pop up that says this song can't be played because I tunes cannot find the file...Over 11,000 songs can't be played ....I really don't want to transfer all the songs over again...Please help...Thanks

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Hi.Have organized all my songs in itunes ,deleted unwanted songs and anupdated the album artwork but it has not changed them in my itunes media folder location in the C drive.How do i change this and back them up now i have everything the way i want it ?

Hi
-I have organized all my songs in iTunes ,deleted unwanted songs and updated the album artwork but it has not changed them in my iTunes media folder location in my C Drive.
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I solved my problem. Here's how:
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2. Select the compatibility tab.
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4. Open iTunes, sign into iTunes store, Turn on iTunes Match, Add your computer.
5. Close Program
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Anyway to automatically relink random missing song files in iTunes library? Random songs have "!" while other songs in same album folder are fine.

I can manually relink a missing song by navigating to the album folder in my iTunes media folder where all of my music is stored, but there are hundreds of "missing" songs in my 100+ GB Library. Any way to get iTunes to reconcile the library in a more automated fashion? I am fearful of solutions that may introduce a ton of duplicates.
Would also like to know why this has happened so I can prevent it in future. Why are some songs in an album coming up missing and others in the same root folder playing fine?? It's not like my library is missing, 80% of my music is fine.
My MAC iTunes library is organized by iTunes and all new media is copied into the iTunes folder (which I have "living" on an external USB 500GB hard drive, which I sometimes use with my PC Laptop when I travel - I don't do this often and it has never caused a problem before.)

UPDATE: I contact the developer fo the iTunes Track CPR script just to give him some feedback. His reply, "
Thanks for letting me know. CPR needs a good looking at. But have you tried "Music Folder Files Not Added"?
http://dougscripts.com/466"
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Do I need to correct all these mistakes through iTunes rather than directly to the file on my hard drive?
How do I make it so that if I transfer my hard drive to another computer with iTunes I dont have to do it all again???

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If you deduped from iTunes, but didn't clear the underlying files from the folders then reimporting the media folder would have imported the dupes.
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Ideally you would backup the entire library routinely and especially before undertaking any radical change in case something goes wrong.
tt2

I bought a new computer (Windows 8) and plugged in my 2TB drive containing 100,000 songs and iTunes won't recognize 5,000 of them no matter what I do other than re-encode them. Any ideas?

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See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.
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PLEASE HELP I LOST 10 000+ SONGS!!!!

i just posted in another thread sorry i couldnt start a new one a second ago. anyway...
my computer froze up & went styupid about 1/2 hr ago & when i restarted my ipod has been wiped!!! ive lost 10 000 songs! please tell me i can get them back!
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Most of your sources are illegal; friends, LimeWire, etc... Anyhow, try first updating your iPod's firmware; iPod Updater - Version 1.1.1. If that doesn't work, restore your iPod with that same updater. Restoring your iPod will erase all the files on your iPod. You'll have to put all the files on your iPod back on your computer. Check out the following programs...
PodUtil
YamiPod
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Manually importing 10,000+ songs

Hello there,
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Try one of these programs and see if you can batch-edit and rename your MP3 files BEFORE bringing them over to iTunes.
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Hello wabbanova, thank you for your message. Welcome to SONY Community!
Information such as the album or artist name is not contained in the data. You can add an album or artist name to content such as music transferred using software and transfer the content to your Walkman again.
Information such as the song title, album or artist name cannot be added to WAV files due to the file specifications. To attach such information, convert the file to a format that supports data attachment such as FLAC, and then add the information to the file before transferring it to your Walkman again.
For further assistance regarding your concern, please contact the Sony offices/Sony representative offices nearest to your place of residence in Asia Pacific region http://www.sony-asia.com/countryselector.html?hpid=countryselector:AsiaPacific. Due to proximity, they are in a better position to respond to your questions or concerns.

2.000 Songs suddenly in Unknown Album Folder

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