HT1349 I have multiple albums that I've purchased that iTunes will not allow me to play stating they cannot locate the source. I then tried going into available downloads in iTunes to see if I needed to download it again, and iTunes tells me it is already

Question

I have multiple albums that I've purchased through iTunes, and iTunes will not allow me to play them stating they cannot locate content.I tried going into iTunes Store and look for available downloads, but the store shows it's already downloaded. It's a lot of music i've bought and can't play. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

Forget the pad for a moment and just think about I tunes on your computer.  Every now and then( 3 times over 6 years) when doing an I tunes upgrade, I tunes seems to lose track of some of my music files.  They show up in the I tunes listing, but when you try to play, it cannot find the source.   The cause is always that I have somehow moved some or all of the music to a library that is outside of the set of libraries I have dragged into I tunes.
On your computer, search for one of the songs.  All the missing ones are probably together, and when you find one, you will find the rest.  When you find it, note the directory  and file path to where it lives, then add that path to your I tunes
Ibarra.
Note, the original listing will still be in I tunes, so you will get double listings for theses songs, and no easy way to tell which is the valid ane and which is not, other than the ! Symbol when it cannot find the file.  I know of no good way to get rid of the duplicate listing except manually going through and deleting them.
One you get them back into your I tunes library, they will sync and play fine.
Second side effect,  if you are streaming to atv, and it comes accross one of those entries that leads nowhere, it simply stops streaming, and you have to restart the play.