My songs keep disappearing

A large # of songs I used to enjoy regularly in Itunes show as not in my library anymore (with a big ! symbol). I go to locate the file and it is literally gone from the Itunes library, even though several subdirectories of folders dedicated to this one song (artist/album) are there.
I noticed that has happened after upgrades to newer versions of Itunes, and its often an old mp3 file (though not always). Here's the most curious thing:
When I go back to an external HD and find another copy of the file, I cannot seem to copy it (drag it) into my Itunes folder -- it says I do not have "permissions" to do this -- which is odd. I can add it directly to the library through Itunes, but this defeats the purposes of having on my laptop -- now it seems I have to keep the external HD attached at all times to play and retrieve the old songs. What has happened ?

When updating/upgrading iTunes it is best to repair permissions before and after the update. Use Disk Utility to repair permissions.
Have you searched you HD with Spotlight to see if the tunes are there?
MJ

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IPhone 5S - 1 song keeps disappearing...

So, I have two playlists synced, and on song keeps disappearing from these playlists!?
I keep having to go back to the Store, buy it,(of course it tells me I already bought it and it asks if I want to download it again, i do), and then by the next morning it's gone again! This happens with 1 song. Everything else is still there.
Thoughts?
Thank you.

Did you restore from backup, or as a new device? Restoring from backup just restores the same corrupt software back to the phone. Restore as a new device and don't use any backup at all.

AARGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Songs Keep Disappearing!!!

I just lost another 450 songs. I have everything backed up, but every time I open i-Tunes, these little "!" marks randomly appear on songs, and those songs have disappeared. I have had to re-load over 1,000 songs lately becaue of this. I have re-installed i-Tunes several times, but this keeps happening. What's up?

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.
A couple of things occur to me. Do you have any other software that might be reorganising your files? The other thing is you library somehow getting corrupted.
One thing you could do to investigate is to wait until it next happens. Then make a note of some of the tracks that can't be found.
Then open iTunes Music Library.xml with WordPad. Use "Find" to look for some missing tracks.
You should see lines that start <Location>. The contain the paths where iTunes thinks your files are located - the space character is represented by %20.
It could be a vaild path or even garbage - but it might help workout what is going on.
In case it is useful, here is a way to collect dead tracks in a playlist where they can be deleted.
Using a playlist to collect dead tracks.
Create new regular playlist – Playlist1
Select whole library and drag to Playlist1
Create new Smart Playlist with the rule: Playlist is not Playlist1
Live updating not checked –you may not be able to delete the dead tracks if it is checked
This playlist should contain all the dead tracks

ITunes song keep disappearing from iTunes

Hi,
A brief explanation. I decided to copy my 6000+ songs from iTunes to an external Smartdisk as a backup. I simply dragged the Itunes library folder from the iMac home icon and saw it copy to the smartdisk and entitled it Itunes Aug 07. Then I went to play my songs in iTunes and none were there at all. They were now all on the smartdisk.
I dragged the folder back to the iTunes library.
This took some time, but was unsuccessful as many songs were not imported back to the new iTunes library folder. I am continually confronted with the exclamation mark in the source window and the warning that the original file could not be found and would I like to locate it!
I tried consolidating all music from the Advanced menu, but this did not work. I still have to open the Aug 07 folder and manually drag songs to the new iTunes library folder. I can play the songs once i have dragged them over, but once the computer has been closed down, many of these recently dragged songs disappear again from itunes with the above explanation and I have to manually drag them back to iTunes.
The songs involve include those purchased from the Itunes store and songs imported from my Cd collection.
It is very infuriating as you can imagine and I just have run out of ideas.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance. George UK

George-
It sounds like what you need to do is to set up iTunes to store your Music Library on the external drive instead of the main drive (I'm not sure what a SmartDisk is).
I haven't ever done this myself, but here's an article on how to do it.
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-ha rd-drive/

Itunes songs keep disappearing

At the top of the menu bar I click add folder to library and find the folder filled with my music. It loads all my music onto Itunes and than I go through it and delete all the songs I do not wish to have and rename all my songs to the right one and than I sync my Ipod to it and my Ipod receives all the right things. Than I close Itunes and reopen it and everything is gone. It's just a black screen with no music. I have done this about 3 times and can't figure out why all my songs get erased and I have to re-import them. If anyone can help that would be awesome!

Katrina S. wrote:
I see you have a Sony Vaio. Your situation is probably due to a conflict between itunes & some pre-installed Sony software.
Read redkeefy's post in this older topic:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8537277
Thank you so much.

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I have an 16GB iPhone 5S running iOS 8.1.3. Seems that either since the last iOS update or iTunes update, music and videos keep disappearing off my iPhone. I'll copy stuff on and now, I'll double check that it's staying on the phone, but the next day, my music or video library will contain 'no content'. I'm not syncing any songs or videos and have 'Manually manage...' checked. I've restarted the iPhone and iTunes. It keeps happening. What I have found is that it seems to happen sometime after the songs or videos are copied onto the phone while the phone is still plugged into my MBP. It doesn't seem, and I may be wrong, to happen when the phone is not plugged in to the Mac. Another issue I've found since the upgrading is that the phone rarely syncs the 'last watched' time on any videos anymore. Any ideas about these issues?

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Hi Fishfever,
From an earlier post:
Start playing a song, any song.
Tap on the album artwork area for the song playing to bring up the scrubber for the song.
The shuffle icon/selection is located at the right of the scrubber, and the repeat icon/selection is located at the left of the scrubber. If repeat is on, the color of the icon will be blue. Select the icon until the color of the icon is white, which means repeat is off.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
GB

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I've been using iTunes with network home directories for years. My wife & I have network home directories on our Macs and we can log into any of our Macs with our network home directories. The actual iTunes Music folder is also on the network server and shared between our user accounts.
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HT204406 I did a sync in itunes and now almost all of my songs have disappeared from my itunes library. I'm sure they're in the cloud, but what if I want to play one on my computer? How do I find them?

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glass (Atleast in windows) is just for decor showing
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it would be in most Microsoft/Windows apps
Thanks. I thought the magnifying glass was a clickable icon.

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My songs keep disappearing

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