I've imported several CDs that are "collections", with songs by various artists. Only a PORTION of the song info appears in iTunes, and, when a song is "clicked-on" to play it, a message appears that the "song could not be found". Any ideas ?

Question

The CDs are imported into the "iTunes Media" folder, under "Compilations".   Each CD has a folder, with the name of the CD.  However, EACH SONG in the folder is assigned a sequential number as a prefix before the song's name.  For example "2-1 Sunshine of Your Love."  This prefix, I believe, prevents the song from being imported into the iTunes library.  The song's name appears in the iTunes library (with the number prefix), BUT no other song info (artist, CD name, time, etc.) shows in the iTunes library.   I am NOT designating these CD's as "complilations", but somehow, iTunes is arbitrarily assigning them to this "Compilations" folder, and then assigning sequential numbers to each song.    I am confused.  (My only remedy is to MANUALLY remove the prefix number from each song in the CD folder, within the COMPILATIONS folder, then "re-import" it into iTunes.  Cumbersome.)    Thanks in advance for any opinion, tips or guidance.

Answer 1

The numeric prefixes in filenames are probably the optional disc number, followed by the track number. iTunes will pick up the Compilation flag from the Gracenote CDDB database if you ripped the tracks with iTunes, or the flag may have been set earlier if these are existing tracks you have imported into a new library.  The iTunes naming convention is <Artist>\<Album>\[<D#>-]<T##> <Name>.<Ext> where Album Artist is used instead of Artist if not blank, and Compliations is used instead of Artist when Part of a compilation is true. Empty Artist or Album values are replaced with Unknown Artist or Unknown Album respectively. With Windows, file and folder names are limited to 40 characters. If more than one file is added with the same details subsequent tracks get suffixes to separate them.
If iTunes can't find a file that usually means that it has been moved after it was added to the library. Select a single broken track and press CTRL+I to Get Info. Look on the summary tab at the location that iTunes expects to find the file. Where is it really? Post back both paths and I might be able to figure out what has happened, and suggest a fix.
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