ITunes has exclamation marks next to all my songs. Unable to listen to my songs. What do I do?

I have a had my iPhone 4s for almost two years and ive never really had any problmes with it til now. Just randomly the other day i was listening to my music and all of sudden after one song finished, it skipped like 50+ songs and went to the first song in my playlist. I llooked at it and the songs that were skipped all had a faded stop button next to them. What do I do? All the sings that I am unable to listen to was music i transferred from my HTC Evo onto iTunes when i first got my 4S. The songs i am still able to listen to on my phone were songs purchased from the itunes store. I had over 700 songs and now i am only limited to 70 songs. Please help.

You should sync it again and this time you'll get 0 song. Yes, that's what will happen. Its quite amazing a company that famous for making music device like IPOD could mess up this bad. Not sure if its cause by IOS 7 or ITunes 11. Probably both

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Music won't sync has exclamation marks next to titles

When I went into my ITunes account with IPod Touch connected, it said to update to latest version of ITunes so I agreed and it upgraded but then it said my IPod was in Recovery mode. I did the recovery and when I went to sync my Library 21 songs only out of 1000 + synced. All the others have an exclaimation mark next to them. Each time I close and reopen the exclaimationn marks are gone but it still doesn't work. The songs were all on the IPod previosly before I did the update and the recovery What to do?

You should sync it again and this time you'll get 0 song. Yes, that's what will happen. Its quite amazing a company that famous for making music device like IPOD could mess up this bad. Not sure if its cause by IOS 7 or ITunes 11. Probably both

Lots of music purchased from iTunes suddenly has exclamation marks

I turned on my Mac this morning and found that lots of my music - stuff that was purchased from iTunes - suddenly has exclamation marks next to it and I get a message saying that the file cannot be found.
Since I have Match, surely the system should find the music in the cloud and simply use that to replace the missing files?
I don't know why they have gone missing - no files have been changed and they were working just fine when I shut the machine down last night.

Hi
No it's on one of the internal HDDs in my Mac Pro and seems only to affect random tunes.
The only way I can find to work around it so far is to delete the tracks from the Mac and re-downoad them from the Cloud.
Seems very odd and is very irritating.Would be quite useful if I could simply do what do with my iPhone - access the music from the cloud rather than locally.
Mind you I still have two tracks from a Led Zeppelin CD of mine that were in the library when I turned Match on and are still listed as 'waiting' and greyed out 7 months later...!

I have just downloaded itunes 10.6 and in the process my "podcast" option under library has disappeared! The files are still on my laptop. I can also see some of my recorded music in my itunes library but can play them - there is an exclamation mark next

I have just downloaded itunes 10.6 and in the process my "podcast" option under library has disappeared! THe files are still on my laptop. I can also see some of my recorded music in the itunes library but can't play them - there is an exclamation mark next to each track. Basically I can't use itunes - is the only option remove and replace? Thanks in advance

Visibility of the Podcasts section is controlled from within the Edit > Preferences dialog.
Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
Missing tracks
Typically this can happen because a file or folder is accidentally shunted to the wrong location. iTunes can also get confused if it expects to be talking to an external drive which isn't there. If will often reset the default media folder location and may have trouble finding files in the old folders.
Select one of your tracks that is missing in action. Press CTRL-I to Get Info. Cancel when asked to try to locate the file, then look at the location given on the summary tab. This where iTunes thinks the file ought to be? Now find out where it actually is. Post back the two locations for comparison. I should be able to give you some steps to reconnect everything once I can determine which of the things that might have gone wrong is most likely in your case.
When you get it all working make a backup!
tt2

ITunes Library music has exclamation marks and cannot locate music

Hoping someone can offer some help?
My wife plugged our iPad into the macbook to sync it with iTunes. She isnt exactly sure what she did however now everything song in iTunes has an exclamation mark next to it.
I then went to sync the iPad without pluggin it into the mac and now my iTunes library seems to have just 5 songs in it and these do not have the exclamation mark next to them.
I do have an iPod with a recent update of all the music. Would this help to restore the library? and if so how would I do this.
Thanks in advance.

If you're sure the media are gone then you can try to recover from your iPod. Purchases you can likely download again from the iTunes Store.
Some of the information below has subsequently appeared in a document by turingtest2: Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991
Your i-device was not designed for unique storage of your media. It is not a backup device and media transfer was planned with you maintaining a master copy of your media on a computer which is itself properly backed up against loss. Syncing is one way, computer to device, updating the device content to the content on the computer, not updating or restoring content on a computer. The exception is iTunes Store purchases which can be transferred to a computer.
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iOS device or iPod to a computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1848 - only purchases from iTunes Store
For transferring other items from an i-device to a computer you will have to use third party commercial software. Examples (check the web for others; this is not an exhaustive listing, nor do I have any idea if they are any good):
- Expod (free) - http://www.headlightsoft.com/expod/ - Mac, universal for 104.+ (newer machines try de-Tune)
- deTune (free) - http://www.headlightsoft.com/detune/ - Mac, 10.5+
- Senuti - http://www.fadingred.com/senuti/
- Phoneview - http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/
- MusicRescue - http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/products/musicrescue/
- Sharepod (free) - http://download.cnet.com/SharePod/3000-2141_4-10794489.html?tag=mncol;2 - Windows
- Snowfox/iMedia - http://www.mac-videoconverter.com/imedia-transfer-mac.html - Mac & PC
- iexplorer (free) - http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/ - Mac&PC
- Yamipod (free) - http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/downloads/ - PC, Linux, Mac [Still updated for use on newer devices? No edits to site since 2010.]
- 2010 Post by Zevoneer: iPod media recovery options - https://discussions.apple.com/message/11624224 - this is an older post and many of the links are also for old posts, so bear this in mind when reading them.
Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3141 - dates from 2008 and some outdated information now.
Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide - http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-co mputer/ - Information about use in disk mode pertains only to older model iPods.
Get Your Music Off of Your iPod - http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_Your_Music_Off_of_Your_iPod - I am not sure but this may only work with some models and not newer Touch, iPhone, or iPad.
Additional information here https://discussions.apple.com/message/18324797

I can't get my music to play in my itunes. It comes with a exclamation mark next to the song numbers and says that the original songs can't be played cause cant find the file. How do I get the songs back? (I found the files)

I can't get my music to play in my itunes. It comes with a exclamation mark next to the song numbers and says that the original songs can't be played cause cant find the file. How do I get the songs back? (I found the files

You get exclamation marks or dead tracks because iTunes can’t find the file. This can happen for a number of reasons:
The song file or a folder in its path was renamed
The song file or the folder it is in has been moved
The song file has been deleted
The device containing the song files e.g. external drive is not accessible or the drive letter has changed.
If you use an external drive, a change in drive letter is a common cause and you need to change it back.
AS a way of working out what has happened, right click on a track and select the summary tab (you will have to go past an error message). The summary tab will tell you where iTunes thinks the track is located. How does that compare with where the track actually is?
The xml library file is not used by iTunes, it is created to allow other programs to access the library. You can recreate the iTl file from the xml file, but there is no point if the location of the files is wrong.
There is a simple way of getting you music back in iTunes, but it loses all playlists counts and rating. To do this drag iTunes library.itl and iTunes Library.xml to your desktop. Then open iTunes and an empty library is created. Add you iTunes Media folder to it.
If you can't work out what went wrong and how to fix it, you may have to do this.

When I view "On this iPod" on my iTunes, nearly half my songs have an exclamation mark next to them. Does this mean I have to go back, download these songs again and upload them to my iPod again?

I've never had this problem before but today, when I connected my iPod to my computer and uploaded some new music to it, I finished and ejected the iPod properly but about 6GB of music was missing. So I connected it again and when I went on to "On This iPod", the songs that were missing were named on there but had an exclamation mark next to them. Why is this and how do I fix it?

I posted this in the iPhone forum seeing someone had an issue there about this. I had the exact same issue but with my iPad. It was really annoying. I had to delete all the songs in iTunes that it thought were still on my iPad, but weren't. Then I was able to manually put the songs back onto the iPad. If I didn't delete the songs with the exclamation point, then the syncing was very slow and sometimes would freeze when "waiting for changes to be applied".
About a third of my music was deleted (about 6GB) and so were some of my videos. I updated to the most recent iTunes too. I've never had this issue before and did take a lot of time. I'm running Windows 8.1 (I know - has many issues) and I wondered if that maybe did something?
I don't think you have any option than to delete the songs with the exclamation points and put them back on the device. Hopefully Apple will figure out the issue - ios 7.0.3 or the new iTunes.

I get an error message when I sync my iPhone 5 with itunes on a Windows 7 laptop. When I go back to my music there are exclamation marks next to many songs. I have reinstalled iTunes

I get an error message when I sync my iPhone 5 with iTunes on my Windows 7 Samsung laptop. I recently backed up all of my data using Samsung Recovery Solution 5 to an external hard drive so that I could restore my laptop. I put all of my data back on the restored laptop and reinstalled iTunes. After the error message that says that certain items could not be found and the "sync" is finished I go back to my music in iTunes and there are exclamation marks next to many songs. I follow some instructions regarding the Edit - Preferences - Advanced settings and the exclamation marks go away until I try to sync my phone again. Then I get the same error message and the exclamation marks return. I have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes and the same thing happens again. I am about to schedule an appointment with the Genius Bar but would like to avoid that if possible. Thank you in advance for any help.

Hello Courtney,
Thank you for the details of the issue you are experiencing when syncing your music to your iPhone. It sounds like iTunes is not able to locate the original file for the song to transfer it to your device. I recommend reviewing the following articles to locate you music files on your computer:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1408
Where are my iTunes files located?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

My itunes library has exclamation marks on the whole of my music collection I have to upload my CD's again! does anyone know why and what can I do?

Help, my itunes library has exclamation marks and will not play. Do I have to reload my cd's?

What do you mean by what audio/video formats are involved? These are all files from several digital cameras.
As previously stated, AVI is a file container. It is somewhat old and its originator, Microsoft, dropped official support of it over a decade ago. However, it remains popular with PC users since almost any valid audio and/or video compression format can be stuffed to the file which synchronizes the content by interleaving the individual audio and video frames. The compression format is the specific manner in which the audio and video data are encoded as it is placed in the AVI container. You can find the compression format by inspecting the file in the Finder "Info" window, or in the "Inspector" window of the QT player (or other media player) if the file can be opened.
For instance, one popular compression combination would be to place DivX encoded video and MP3 audio in an AVI file container. However, neither DivX nor MP3 is natively supported by the QT player. (Although iTunes will natively support the MP3 audio.) Therefore, people who wish to play such files in the QT 7 Player would normally install either the DivX component or Perian but not both. Either installation will independently play such files in the QT Player, but if both are installed, the file will usually stop working since these two codecs can create a playback conflict.
However, the AVI container could just as easily contain DV along with DV audio. In this case, the file should play correctly in QT since this compression format is natively supported by the basic component configuration that comes in every current OS installation. Therefore, if such files suddenly stopped playing, this could be an indication that a component has been moved or deleted or that your system or QT embedded structure has become corrupted.

I'v downloaded a tv series,paid for it, its in my itunes but with exclamation marks next to it, every time it tries to download the series it says "part of the file seems to be corrupted" and tells me to redownload it.Tried that and it comes up the same.

I'v downloaded a tv series,paid for it, its in my itunes but with exclamation marks next to it, every time it tries to download the series it says "part of the file seems to be corrupted" and tells me to redownload it.Tried that 8 times and it comes up the same. What do I do?

Clear the contents of ...iTunes\iTunes Media\Download and try one more time.
If the problem recurs use the "report a problem" links in your account history and explain what has happened so far. There may be a problem with the source rather than your download of it.
tt2

Songs stored in the cloud have a exclamation mark next to them??

I want to cancel my subscription to iTunes Match and need to download all my songs (over 10,000).
The problem is, that there is an exclamation mark next to 90% of the songs stored on iTunes Match.
In order for me to download a song I have to double click the track with the exclamation mark, which gives me this error message:
'The song “SONG NAME” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?'
and then click cancel. Only then will the song show a cloud icon with an arrow and the song will begin to play and I can choose to download it.
This will take forever to double click every song one at a time and press cancel to the error message. Is there a way to have iTune recognize the songs on iTunes Match only, and not on my computer?
Im using the newest version of iTunes (12). Any help is appreciated.

PERFECT! This is exactly what I was trying to do. Now everything is available for download. Thanks Jimz!
One more thing to mention....I tried updating the tags with the files set in their location on my hard drive, in hopes that it would push those updated tags to the Match library. But in reality, it is the opposite. When you update the ID3 tags this way , it is only updating the locally stored file's information. Once the server syncs with iTunes Match, the local copy you just edited is overwritten with the the songs ID3 it had when originally uploaded to Match.
The only way I found to get around this is to move the local copy (not delete from within iTunes because it will just re-reference the local file once you select or play the song from the Match Library) , and then directly update the ID3 tag which was originally uploaded to iTunes Match.
The iTunes Match server seemingly has a file structuring system as with local iTunes (aka, the same problem I was having) because even if you delete the iTunes Match file/song, edit the local ID tag, then re-upload the same file again with the new tag information that you changed, it still remembers the old version of the file's information that you just deleted. Hence, iTunes Match's one of many Wonkinesses.
I tried every other possible way to update the ID3 tags and that was the only way that nothing was becoming overwritten in the syncing process.
For anyone reading this, your best bet is too 100% have your ID3 tags the way you want them before uploading anything to Match. If not, youre going to have a **** of a fun time changing anything afterwards. Unfortunately, I did not figure this out until after I uploaded 1000s of songs.
Thanks again for all your help!

My last computer died, but we've been able to transfer my files onto an external hard drive to put onto my new computer.I have now got exclamation marks next to 100 songs which I downloaded from Frostwire years ago. How can I fix this?

After my brother transferred all my files from my old computer to an external hard drive, he then put them onto my new computer. It appears that 100 songs which I downloaded from Frostwire years ago have the exclamation mark next to them. I cannot find the files on my new computer, and cannot remember where they were saved to on my old computer as it was over 3 years ago. I have also tried to consolidate the files as I've found people suggested, but that is not working. I have also read that you should tell itunes that you are moving the music, but my old laptop cannot be read when it is on. Is there any other way tofix this issue? I don't want to have to buy over 100 songs which I already have.

After my brother transferred all my files from my old computer to an external hard drive, he then put them onto my new computer. It appears that 100 songs which I downloaded from Frostwire years ago have the exclamation mark next to them. I cannot find the files on my new computer, and cannot remember where they were saved to on my old computer as it was over 3 years ago. I have also tried to consolidate the files as I've found people suggested, but that is not working. I have also read that you should tell itunes that you are moving the music, but my old laptop cannot be read when it is on. Is there any other way tofix this issue? I don't want to have to buy over 100 songs which I already have.

Syncing ipod to itunes with exclamation marks

Hi,
I was wondering if I sync my ipod with exclamation marks on some of my songs in itunes, will those songs disappear from my ipod if I sync it? There are quite a few songs in my playlist that have exclamation marks next to them saying that they can't be found, however they are already on my ipod. I have been afraid to hook up my ipod to add new songs I've added for fear the ones I already have on it that now can't be found will dissappear. I did move some of the songs to an external hard drive to make some room on my computer hard drive, but some I can't find. Can you help me?

You should understand how iTunes managed your music.
If you move, edit, delete or otherwise change a music file listed in the iTunes Library with a program or tool other than iTunes, you may end up with a "!" in front of the song name or a message like “the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" It is important to note that iTunes does not keep track of music file changes made outside of iTunes.
See these Threads for ways of finding &/or removing the Broken Links:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=818692#818692
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=607582
EASIER:
Download this to your Desktop: http://ottodestruct.com/itunes/FindDeadTracks.txt (right-click, save-link-as)
and this, as well: http://ottodestruct.com/itunes/RemoveDeadTracks.txt (right-click, save-link-as)
Rename each to FindDeadTracks.js & RemoveDeadTracks.js respectively.
Run iTunes.
1) While iTunes is running, double click FindDeadTracks.js to run the script.
It will give you a list of all the exclamation marked tracks.
2) While iTunes is running, double click RemoveDeadTracks.js to run the script.
It will remove all the exclamation marked tracks.
This well-written iLounge Article is a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of how iTunes manages your music.
Best of Luck

Exclamation marks next to songs

I have a 33,000 song iTunes library stored on an external 1Tb USB2 drive that is permanently connected to my 20" Intel Core Duo iMac running the latest version of Leopard and iTunes. I keep getting exclamation marks next to songs and when I choose to loacted them thye are in the correct place. Sometimes its whole albums or one or two individual songs. Can anyone reccomend anyway to remdy this situation?
Message was edited by: Scott Ronan

Hi You are not the only one with this problem it seems that there are quite a few similar posts on this subject and no answers rather than going through one by one (no Thanks) or deletimg all files in iTunes and reloading over night (No Thanks!). This also means I will loose all my playlists!
Please Apple answer this or remedy some kind of Playlist save!

I tunes: I have exclamation mark next to songs i can listen to...

Hi everyone.
Well, i read and read and read and got tired of looking.
Itunes shows me an exclamation mark next to song i JUST added to the library and tried to copy into my iphone. The exclamation mark appears next to the song name on my iphone display, but not on the itunes library. So, the result is i can listen to the songs on itunes, but itunes won't copy them into my phone.
Evidently, it's not a problem of "file not found", because if that were the case, itunes would not be able to reproduce the music.
I've been having problems trying to copy music into my iphone 5s.
Please, i do not want to reset my phone to factory settings or whatever, i feel this whole thing is a terrible waste of time. There has to be a solution.
I tried syncronizing music and accepting the reset of my phone's library, but the result was the only songs i have in my phone now are the ones i bought on itunes.
I'm preety upset, i feel like this should be easier, if not, i will eventually switch to android...
Can anyone help me?

Hi melisb3,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
I know issues with iTunes music can be frustrating. In this situation it does sound like there is an issue with the location of your music on your computer. Please use the attached article as a guide for troubleshooting.
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads - Apple Support
Have a great day,
Joe

ITunes has exclamation marks next to all my songs. Unable to listen to my songs. What do I do?

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