HT4527 Music files aren't listed in iTunes

I have followed all the steps in transferring my music files to a new PC using an external hard drive, as detailed by Apple Support. However, the library on my new PC only consists of albums I have uploaded in the past 24 months and I cannot see any of the other 3,000 + songs that I have on my other PC. What has gone wrong?

It seems as though Itunes is doing something very similar to the reason why I left Windows Media Player, it seems to be allowing the info such as artist, album, etc to be erased for some reason and then dumps the music into the unknown artist folder while leaving a broken link to the original artist and album folders.
this is a complete pain in the butt because I have over 22000 songs, and about .05% are displaced so we're talking about 110 songs that i have to go in individually and double click the song then choose to find the find and go through this entire list to find the exact song. What if 2% of my collections goes the same way I'm screwed.

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My music files aren't missing, but iTunes has randomly lost many of them

Most of my albums can still be seen in iTunes, but many isolated songs, and occasional whole albums can't be found by iTunes. I get the exclamation mark. When I look for the song files, they are right where they are supposed to be, in many cases right next to other songs which iTunes lists as accessible.
Looking for patterns, it looks like most of these "lost" songs are purchased. I can't see any pattern to why some songs on an album are missing, and others aren't, or why certain albums appear lost.
1. Anyone else seen this oddness? Why did iTunes lose track of the (normal) location of these files?
2. Is there an easy way to have iTunes rescan these locations without creating thousands of duplicates, or do I have to do this one song file at a time. (Ugh)
3. I do have backups, with Time Machine. I tried bringing forward and older version of the iTunes Library file, thinking that stored these locations, but that didn't work.
4. I can easily do a column sort in the detail view on any column, but I can't do that on the exclamation point column, to manually identify missing songs by grouping them together. I can't search for these other than by scrolling.
Any help would be appreciated

It seems as though Itunes is doing something very similar to the reason why I left Windows Media Player, it seems to be allowing the info such as artist, album, etc to be erased for some reason and then dumps the music into the unknown artist folder while leaving a broken link to the original artist and album folders.
this is a complete pain in the butt because I have over 22000 songs, and about .05% are displaced so we're talking about 110 songs that i have to go in individually and double click the song then choose to find the find and go through this entire list to find the exact song. What if 2% of my collections goes the same way I'm screwed.

How exporting music or other media list from iTunes from computer works?

Hi, I want to know how exporting music or other media list from iTunes to computer works, because I have exported the songs list of Music from iTunes to computer in a text file, but I have no idea how it works.

Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device: Apple Support Communities

TS3297 What do I do if music files purchased/downloaded for the iTunes store don't work properly?

What do I do if music files purchased/downloaded for the iTunes store don't work properly?

Buddhabeat...clicking on the "Report a Problem" button next to the song(s) in question, should open a drop-down list menu, that allows you to select the specific issue/area of concern that you are experiecing (or you can select a generic "My problem is not on the list" (or something to that effect). Underneath this drop-down menu box, there should be another message box where you can describe the issue/problem your having. Below this message box will be a "Submit" button...clicking on that will send your message to the Apple iTunes Store Customer Support Centre (you will see a confirmation message that your message has been sent), as well as receive an email notification from the Support Centre confirming your message has been received, a case number, and that you will receive an email response pertaining to the issue/problem you're having, from the Support Centre asap (usually within 24 hours). That's how it worked for me, anyhow.

Music files are not opening in itunes.

Hi
My music files will not open in itunes and is not recognised in the library. I have the files in the 'My Music' file however when looking at the music file it say the file is locked? is there anyway I can get my itunes to recognise the music files?

I finally removed those audio and video files from iPhone, although it will be tough to add them back to iPhone, but at least I saved the phone spaces.
I used software something like iTools, delete everything under File System / User / iTunes Control, then restart phone, that simple, usage count, spaces used are all correct now.

I had to restore my computer. After reinstalling itunes and sincronizing with my ipod, the music files were not organized in itunes as in the ipod: some songs were missing, some albums has no cover? Why is the sincronization not working properly?

I had to restore my computer. After reinstalling itunes and sincronizing with my ipod, the music files were not organized in itunes as in the ipod: some songs were missing, some albums has no cover? Why is the sincronization not working properly?

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

My music files cant be added to itunes library

my music files were originally from a cd. had transferred it to my computer and works fine with windows music player (windows 8.1). The files are just listed as track nos 1 to 11. However I cant seem to be able to add the file nor the folder to my iTunes library. tried the add file, tried drag and drop nothing seems to work.

Check the files haven't been added somewhere other than where you are looking for them. See Missing Artist or Album not with others by same artist. Untagged tracks normally show up under Unknown Artist, Unknown Album.
Or see Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.
tt2

Music files getting renamed (why?), iTunes loses them

This has happened once every month or two since I started using iTunes on my laptop. I haven't been able to figure out what triggers it, but every now and then my music files get renamed. Not all of them, but, for example, this time every song on 24 albums out of about 100. It's always entire albums. When it has happened, I double-click on the song, I get the message saying the "original file could not be found", then I re-find it and it starts playing. When it starts playing, iTunes will usually rename it and/or move it to another folder. Sometimes the album ends up in the "unknown artists" folder, or in the "compilations" folder, but once I track it down (through iTunes "do you want to find it") it gets moved back where it belongs.
It was only this last time that I noticed that these lost files were not only getting moved, but they were getting renamed as well. When everything's working fine, my music has been moved and named like has been renamed by iTunes and looks like "C:\My Music\The Dresden Dolls\The Dresden Dolls\03 Missed Me.mp3". Some process in iTunes or in Windows is renaming only certain albums to look like "C:\My Music\Stephen Lynch\A Little Bit Special\10-Gerbil-Stephen Lynch-A Little Bit Special.mp3".
When the files get renamed like this, iTunes can't find them anymore until I go in and fix things, file by file. This takes forever. If not for the fact that I need to preserve my playlists and my play count numbers, I would just blast the whole library and reimport the folder, but I can't do that.
So, any one have any ideas why this happens, how to keep it from happening, and a way to fix things while preserving my metadata without having to double-click on a few hundred songs?
Windows XP Pro

Actually, I found a good solution based on another question. If I re-import the folder, it finds all of those misnamed files and adds them to the library. Then I tell iTunes to keep my music folder organized, and it fixes all the file names and folders. Then after I make sure the original entries work again, I can sort the list by date added, and delete the new entries.
But I still have no idea why those albums are getting renamed. It's not just the most recent ones or the oldest ones, it's not ones that haven't been played, it's just random-seeming.

Easier way to rename music files and locate them with iTunes? Help, please!

A while back, I used a 3rd party software (Yamipod) to move all my music off of my video ipod to a new computer. Yamipod converted all of my music file names to read "album name - artist - song name", instead of how iTunes imports music "01 song name". Yamipod also created a sub-folder "1" for each album the artist has in my iTunes music folder.
For example, when in my iTunes music folder, if I click on Justin Timberlake, it will show the two albums I have "FutureSex" and "Justified". If I click on "Justified" it shows a folder "1" which I have to click on to get to the song which is then named "Justified - Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body" instead of "06 Rock Your Body"
When in my iTunes folder, a lot of my music cannot be found (even though it is not technically lost), so I manually have to click through all my iTunes music folders to "re-attach" the file so iTunes can then play the music.
Here's what I am looking for:
1. I want to rename all of my music files back to iTunes format of "track # song name" (i.e. 06 Rock Your Body) without manually retyping every song title.
2. An easier way for iTunes to "find" all of my music instead of me manually pointing to each and every file. I have all the music, I just have to manually show iTunes where each of the 1600+ songs is located, which is a long and tedious process that I do not have the time or patience for.
I would greatly appreciate any advice on how to manage this without going bonkers.
Thank you!!

Well, the one problem you have is that for the "Move" function, the source file input should be wired to the output of the "Build Path" function, not to the duplicate path out of the "List" function. Also, you need to pass the error cluster around with a shift register. Otherwise you will not catch an error that may have occurred during one of the file rename operations.

Music files missing? Seems like iTunes bug...

I recently noticed that many of my music files are missing, and that the selection appears to be somewhat random. They are retained in iTunes, but have the ! next to them. So, doing the logical thing, I tried to locate them, and the files themselves are missing, but their iTunes link is preserved.
In an effort to continue to do the logical thing, I then systematically went through my CD library, re-loading all the missing material back into iTunes. This was extremely tedious, but appeared to fix most of the issues (obviously, the ones were the CD case was mysteriously empty were left unfixed). The files played fine at that time. Then I carried the computer upstairs to my home office, where I proceeded to plug it in to do a time machine backup on the newly transferred files.
Now here's where it gets really strange... The time machine backup went swimmingly without hitches, to a relatively new USB 3.0 drive. I then set about organizing the music, so that it would all be in the iTunes music folder (User(me)/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ directory, the one automatically made by iTunes on installation). Many of the songs linked perfectly, and I didn't have to re-link the songs to their new location, as one might expect. So, I then thought I would sit down to enjoy this new library that I had spent a day bringing up to speed and organizing again. And, low and behold, songs are missing--again. Not just the ones that I couldn't replace, but some of the newly replaced ones. For example, Track 12 of an album might be missing, but the files for Tracks 1-11 and 13+ are all present.
As other people who have experienced this problem previously have noted, there does seem to be a slight preference for songs whose artist and/or title include accented characters, although my detection ability is more limited now, as I have since lost many of these original CDs, and so the songs were not replaced within the library. But, while they account for about 5-10% of my overall library, they accounted for about 50% of the songs missing at the beginning of yesterday's overhaul.
And what makes matters really strange is that when I tried to look up the missing files--which I know myself to have imported yesterday--in the fresh time machine backup I made right after importing all that music, they are all missing.
So, it appears that iTunes is systematically deleting files at random. While I'm tempted to try to put the missing ones back on (fewer are "re-missing" than I was able to replace, so it's a little better), this doesn't exactly seem fruitful, given the fresh deletions.
The original music files were encoded a long time ago, and have been copied and re-copied (and recopied... ad infinitium). It appears that everything that I encoded on the really old system (before iTunes really became popular for this sort of thing) were preserved; however, the issue seems to temporally localize around the time I started using iTunes for most of my music encoding needs (except, of course, for the little issue about files that were imported less than 24 hours ago).
A few other notes:
- I did not delete these files accidentally. I'm more careful than that.
- The files are not there (they're not just hidden--I already checked for this).
- iTunes has retained the link to where it believes the file should be.
- The issue appears to have originally arisen quite some time ago, as these files are systemically missing from all backups made by time machine. However, it wasn't all that long ago that I deleted my entire library and started over (about 2 years, so the files should have been natively present on 2 of my macs) by re-importing all the files in my music folder. This newly created library has since become the "master" library that is propigated to all my other computers (although I don't trust iCloud for obvious reasons, given this fiasco--Thanks, Apple...)
- I have not elected to have iTunes manage my music folder, or automatically copy things to the iTunes music folder when importing (although this is the default destination, so they are imported there, but not duplicated there when imported from elsewhere on the hard drive).
- I am currently running OS X 10.6.8 on an Intel Mac (yeah, yeah, I'd upgrade the OS, but software that cost more than the computer isn't 10.8--or even 10.7--compatible).
If anyone has any thoughts on how to prevent this issue in the future, I'd really appreciate it. I think the music files themselves are just... gone. But, I would like to be able to have them stick around for a bit when I get around to dedicating another day to trying to import them from their CD.
Does anyone know a piece of third party software that allows you to sync and update iDevices? Hopefully one that doesn't take over my music library and decide to delete things of its own accord?

I was lucky to be able to use a PC, that after trying numerous times actually read the external hdd, I quickly copied all files over to a backup hdd and recovered all files. After that I ended up in contact with Western Digital about the incident and they recommended to completely erase (7-pass erase) of the hdd, which ended up taking over 5 days to do. They gave me no reason as to "Why" it would have happened but if I erase and reformatted of the hdd and the problem reoccurred they recommended to get the unit replaced.
I was lucky to recover all my files.....keep trying on different computers if you can, and copy what you can get hold of. The 7-pass erase will delete pretty much every trace of information on the hdd with no chance of recovery.
So far since the incident its been running ok but I not longer trust the hdd to be stable. Not a simple nor quick process / solution I'm afraid.
Good luck!
Once you have recovered your files (or as many as you can get hold of) and ready to erase the hdd:
(THIS WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP BEFORE PROCEEDING)
Connect the drive directly to the Mac, open Disk Utility.
Select the drive and click on the "Erase" tab Select the "7-times zeros" to completely erase the drive.
Once the erase have completed format the drive to your selection.

Music files in my PC's iTunes directory have been moved around, now iTunes' index is not recognizing them and returns error messages. The files have previously been sync'd to my iPod, but when I tried to sync back from the iPod, iTunes on the PC error'd.

I want iTunes to reconstruct its index of my music.
We accidentally moved files around in my <<C:\Documents and Settings\Jordan\My Documents\My Music\iTunes>> directory. We tried to move them back, but anyway, the iTunes program now no longer can find/play the titles that the opened iTunes page/Library displays.
I had previously copied/syncd all my iTunes music to my iPod. I tried syncing back to the PC from the iPod. No improovement.
At the moment, my dad is on my computer, logged in under his name (with administrative permissions). It seems that looking at my iTunes music under his login is still working OK.
I do not have my music backed up to the "cloud".
What are my options?

The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
If you have to resort to trying to pull back the library from your iPod see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

Itunes says my music files are 6gb, my user/itunes music folder says its 23gb. I am trying to move it from old/new mac with 8gb ipod

I am trying to move my sons library to his new mac using his 8 gb i pod as a hard drive.....
itunes 9.0.1 says his music files is only 6gb. But when I go to transfer his itunes folder it says his music folder is 23gb. I know I can home share transfer but his wireless is down. Either way I am wondering
1) why is Music folder so large compared to my music library?
2.) Can I simply move the 6gb of music and the playlist info etc....using his 8gb ipod?
3.) Can I delete his previous library files ?

No, I have the music I want to move from the laptop to the phone selected. Then I go under file, devices, and try to click sync but it is not available to click.

My music files won't transfer to itunes...

All of my music files from my hard drive are either mp3's or wma's that I have ripped from my own cd's. Why are some of them not transferring to my itunes library? what can I do to transfer them?

The computer has to be authorized for the account that purcchased the media.
What error message are you getting when you try to lauthorize the computer for that account?
Is there a way to find my Apple ID Name if I can't remember it?
Yes. Visit My Apple ID and click Find your Apple ID. See Finding your Apple ID if you'd like more information.
How do I change or recover a forgotten Apple ID Password?
If you've forgotten your Apple ID Password or want to change it, go to My Apple ID and follow the instructions. SeeChanging your Apple ID password if you'd like more information.

Missing itunes music files and exclamation point in iTunes 10

Hi
iTunes on my macbook is a copy of from my desktop. I have not added any music to it and only use it to play music when I am travelling.
Last night I opened itunes and it was updating album covers..i think this is the first time i opened it since updating to 9.1? Anyways every track had an exclamation point and could not locate the file.
I updated to itunes 10 and that did not fix the issue.
I checked where my music should be stored (users/shared/itunes/itunes music) and the only files there are 2 folders called "Automatically add to itunes" and another called "Incomplete". In "Incomplete" are 2 files "downloads.bak" and "downloads.dat"
I have done a spotlight search for .m4 etc and find nothing...
1. Is there anyway to find my music files or are they gone forever?
2. Can I sync my iTouch to my macbook and will everything be copied to my macbook?
3. Is there a easy way to copy or transfer itunes from my desktop to my macbook?
Help

Mac Steele wrote:
3. Is there a easy way to copy or transfer itunes from my desktop to my macbook?
if i were in your situation, i'd start over on the MB.
the simplest way would be to connect the two Macs with a firewire cable, boot the source Mac in _*Target Disk Mode*_, and copy the entire iTunes folder (not just the iTunes music folder) from <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music on the source (desktop) to <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music on the target (MB) (overwriting the iTunes folder in place there).
another option, which may be appealing if you travel a lot, is to get a suitably sized mobile HD such as [this|http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11030] and copy the iTunes folder there. then, on each Mac (one @ a time, mind you) launch iTunes while pressing option on the keyboard and, at the prompt, click on +choose library+. select the iTunes folder on the external.
that way, both computers will work with the same iTunes library. while @ home, the external is connected to the desktop. while on the road, it is connected to the MB. no matter on which machine you add content, it will be available to both.
if you opt for this setup, you must make sure the drive is mounted on your desktop before you launch iTunes.
JGG

Music files missing after sync with iTunes

All of my devices are updated to the last version.
I created playlists to manage syncing music from iTunes to iPhone.
Sometimes my music files would be missing on my iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1 after sync with iTunes 12.0.1.26.
When music missing, they look OK in iOS playlists, but will appear a "waiting for copy” symbol on the right side then jump to next song one by one when I try to play.
It's really weird because it happens randomly, I totally have no idea when it will happen again, more even far from why ...
Zen style APPLE !!

It sometimes takes awhile for the info to download from itunes.
try this:
Reboot the device by pressing and holding down the home and sleep/wake buttons (power) at the same time until the apple logo appears on the screen, then let go.
If that doesn't work then reset the device by going to settings/general/reset/reset all settings

HT4527 Music files aren't listed in iTunes

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