Um iTunes has 'lost' all my music - Any advice?

I was messing about with iTunes preferences the weekend and although the songs still exist within the iTunes application the folders containing the original MP3 files are empty, all that remains is the album artwork in some of them.
Its iTunes V9 on Windows Vista. I have Googled for the answer without any success. I cant restore from the iPod as its only a 4GB Nano. What the heck have I done????

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451
Is the link with instruction on how to re create your libary. Good luck!

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HT201210 my itunes has lost all my music, they are still on my ipod, can I copy them back ?

my itunes has lost all my music, they are still on my ipod, can I copy them back ?

''''' "My bookmarks from firefox were all on IE. " '''''
That wouldn't happen automatically, Firefox doesn't synchronize bookmarks with IE favorites.
Any chance you were using Google Bookmarks in Firefox? And then with the Google Toolbar not working any longer you just can't access your Google Bookmarks from within Firefox ??
GBookmarks (Google Bookmarks for Firefox) add-on <br />
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gbookmarks-google-bookmarks-fo/

I had to wipe my PC, now itunes has lost all my music?

Hi everyone (HELP) iphone 3gs
I had to wipe my PC I had backed up all my files to external harddrive, re loaded them on new PC and discovered when I plugged my iphone in to sync all my music files had dissapeared from itunes. itunes recognised my phone no probs when I plugged it in on new PC.
I thought everytime you plugged the iphone in it says it is making a backup of your phone if so how do I get it back (what really annoys me is that itunes in the first place took all my music file over and put it on to itunes if it hadn't of done this all my music would still be in my music folder outside of itunes).
Cruella Deauville

Hi
If I go into "my music" on the pc there is no music as itunes took it over.
there is an itunes folder but I can't access anything in it.
when you say did I restore itunes after the wipe how was I supposed to do that? I just plugged my phone in and it recognised it, its just that if you click on the music folders they are all empty, I didnt have all the music on my phone just some.
I don't ask itunes to backup my data I just noticed it says that's what it is doing just before it syncs.

Somehow itunes has lost all my music

I havent logged in for a while and all my music is gone.

You can redownload them again without incurring additional charges. See this article:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
If you are having difficulty downloading them, the itunes Customer Support should be able to assist you in reposting them back for you.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/
Have a blessed New Year!

ITunes has lost all my music, playlists, ratings and preferences

My stuff is backed up on an external drive, but if I reload it and sync my iPod, I lose all playlists, ratings and so on. Any suggestions as to how (and if) I can get my old prefs, playlists, ratings, playcounts, etc. back? I turned off my computer in the evening, switched it on uneventfully in the morning, went to sync my iPod and was told that it was synced to another computer (not so). Checked iTunes and found that it was a clean slate.

You can redownload them again without incurring additional charges. See this article:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
If you are having difficulty downloading them, the itunes Customer Support should be able to assist you in reposting them back for you.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/
Have a blessed New Year!

ITunes has deleted all my music except for the genre I was listening to yesterday. It has also deleted my purchased movies and all my podcasts and playlists. Grrr

iTunes has deleted all my music except for the genre I was listening to yesterday. It has also deleted my purchased movies and all my podcasts and playlists. Grrr. Is there a way to find it all again???

Hey there MotherMarthaMayhem,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
This article provides information and troubleshooting tips that may help you find the media that recently went missing from iTunes on your MacBook Pro.
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads - Apple Support
Cheers,
-Jason

HT1414 'Restore iPhone in Recovery' iPhone 4 has lost all my music.

After following the 'Restore iPhone in Recovery mode' instructions and resettiong all setting my iPhone 4 has lost all my music. It is in ICloud on home Mac desktop but cannot find how to re import it to my phone. Please help.

Thanks but...umm.. Its on the home Mac all 203 songs, now it says I have just 50??? tries to download, then says that it can't download each song, moves on to next..unable to down load and so on and so forth.them .
Itunes Library just has a search bar... to buy music.... how do I sync? Thought that I had... thats why icloud/library had all the songs...

Itunes has lost all music file locations

Itunes has lost the location of ALL the music files in the library. I have not moved my files so I believe it may have happened when Itunes updated a few days ago. If this is the case, it is not very smart of the programmers! When I locate individual songs, Itunes only finds the other songs that are in the same subfolder, that leaves about 5000 files missing! I realise I can import my whole music folder but this will revert a lot of incorrect track information that I have manually edited over the months.
I would love some help as all the other posts seem to refer to slightly different problems and can never get around the problem of files being in various subfolders.
Thanks.

Hey Lhatcher1987,
That can definitely be stressful, but there's an article that can help you find the media you expected to appear in iTunes. I'd read through it and see if that helps you find the missing music:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408
All the best,
David

My iPod Classic 160GB has lost all its music and won't sync or restore

My iPOD Classic 160GB has spontaneously lost all its music - approx. 5000 songs. One minute they were all there, now they're all gone - display says "No Music" although memory still shows 23GB in use? I tried to re-sync on iTunes but the iPod won't sync (error 1415) or restore (error 1439). As things currently stand,my iPod is just a very expensive paperweight - please can anybody help with this?

hi lindsay
i understand you have all your music still in your itunes library?
Try the basic resetting of your ipod,also try another usb port.
Have you tried ,when ipod is connected,click on your ipods name,for example lindsays ipod,another window should open up and you can see summary,click on the sync box ,bottom right hand corner,see if this helps.
Or you could ,when you have itunes open,click for updates.
hope this may help you
thanks madforit

When i updated itunes I lost all my music, I was able to retrieve it from my previous version, but now a artists have all of their songs list under one unknown cd. How can I seperate these cds with the correct songs included?

When I updated itunes I lost all of my music, I was able to retrieve it from a previous itunes library, but now some artists have all of their songs listed under one "unknown album." Is there a way to separate these songs back into the correct albums? Also, is there a way to make songs that have a featured guest just show up with the rest of the album instead of making a whole new spot for it? Thanks!

" When I did this, my library showed all the music I have "purchased" from itunes but did not have the music that I downloaded a long time ago through itunes from my old CDs."
Correct.
" How can I get that music to show up in my library now on my new computer? "
Copy it from your old computer or your backup copy of your old computer.
The sync is one way - computer to ipod.

Itunes has lost all music and no files located on laptop apart from one.

Hi,
We have recently downloaded all our CDs into itunes to clear them out and have them successfully on our devices. I went to reorganise my music and change things and discovered that my music library looks like it is there but says cannot locate file. I have tried to search for the albums but they are nowhere. There is my most recent download and I can search for that and it plays but that is all. Please help...we no longer have the albums and have purchased a lot through itunes.
Thanks.

Hey Lhatcher1987,
That can definitely be stressful, but there's an article that can help you find the media you expected to appear in iTunes. I'd read through it and see if that helps you find the missing music:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408
All the best,
David

ITunes has lost all my APP purchases and reset my library and playlists.

Well as above. I dont have any other username accounts. iTunes has had a breakdown and misplaced my entire library which is on my external hard drive, I havent lost the somgs just the location and all the metadata pertaining to it. Its a pain to reinstate it all but the most worrying part is that all of my APP purchases which I kept stored on iTunes are missing, which is a n awful lot of cash as they are mostly quite expensive music production and photography and film apps. How can I recover my metadata for iTunes and how do I restore all my APP purchases?

Ok I have trouble shooted the problem myself and found the culprit. For whatever reason iTunes had created a n entire different library next to my usual libray and was referring to that!? I removed it and iTunes and the app purchases are back to normal. Phew!

My iTunes has lost all my apps

Hi,
I recently had my iTunes lost all my apps and podcasts. I don't know what happened, but as far as I know I plugged in my iPhone to sync and charge, and after an hour I came back and iTunes had no apps. Of course syncing my iPhone meant all the apps went from my phone. Any idea what could cause this?
Thanks
Boz

OK, I think I didn't make my original post clear. The files are on the PC, they're in my My Music folder (complete path as you describe).
So yes, I can drag and drop the apps into iTunes, and same with podcasts (although subscriptions are missing). And then do a restore to a backup prior to the mess up. I have done this now, however it means I've lost all app data between the backup and now. Including photos, messages, Apple app data.
Anyway, I've worked around the problem, what I want to know is, how did this happen? Why did iTunes suddenly lose all my apps and podcast subscriptions?
Could it happen again?
Boz

9.0.3 has lost all my music

I've just updated to 9.0.3 this week, and since then, all my music that wasn't bought on iTunes has disappeared. I also can't add any music that I've bought since I upgraded to my iPod (4G Nano). Can anybody please help?

Okay. we'd better start checking on other possibilities.
By any chance, is your PC a Sony Vaio (or any other type of Sony)?
What security software do you have installed on the PC? (Firewall, antivirus, antispyware?)

ITunes has lost all my playlists!

...and Party Shuffle is missing as well (I presume since it has no playlists from which to shuffle as the pre-loaded pl's are also missing) but all the actual music seems to be intact. I think this happened after the second-to-last update- 7.4.3 has given me no problems other than it did not help iTunes restore my lists nor did it help me figure out how to do so. My iPod (5thG Video) is working fine and I can go indefinitely w/out syncing it- don't want to lose all my work on that as well- but if I can't convince iTunes that I have playlists, can it pull all that stuff off my iPod if necessary? I never find what I'm really looking for when I try to use the manual or articles....
TIA anyone with an idea about this!

I don't know if you've tried using the old library file - every time itunes is upgraded it saves the old library file in a separate folder. Maybe the new file got corrupted somehow? Although if you upgraded after you lost your playlists this might not work. The itunes playlists are saved in the library file, unless you exported them or recently made a CD backup of your itunes library. You can try this if you haven't already:
1. Close itunes and go into the itunes folder (usually my music>itunes) and look for the 'itunes library.itl' file. Move this onto your desktop. Leave the 'itunes music library.xml' file where it is.
2. Also in the itunes folder you should see a 'previous itunes libraries' folder - open this. You might only see one file; if you see more than one use the file from the date you noticed the problem. Copy this file into the itunes folder to replace the one you just moved, then change the name to just 'itunes library' or 'itunes library.itl'.
3. Try opening itunes now - you should see everything the way it was at the time of upgrading, but if itunes only saves the most recent library you may have lost the playlists ....:(
If there is another way to restore playlists I haven't found it yet - I lost my playlists about a month ago because I didn't know how the library file worked, and I was going between 7.4.3 and 7.3.2 and I must have overwritten the old library file. After that I found on the apple website how to do it correctly.
If that didn't work and you have a disc backup of your itunes you can try opening the contents of the discs in windows so you can see what files are on there, and look for a copy of your old library file and copy that into the itunes folder in step #2 instead. But don't restore from the backup discs in itunes if your music is still showing up - when I tried that I got duplicates of whatever music files were on the discs.
There is also a program called copytrans that you can use to copy the music and supposedly your playlists off your ipod back onto your computer, but I didn't have any luck with that; again I just got duplicates of my song files and not the playlists themselves. And the free version only does 100 songs at a time.
If I've learned anything from this experience, it's to save a copy of the library file before doing any updates because it's a lot easier than all this copying stuff - you just go under File>Export Library and save the file somewhere. Then if you have any problems you can just import that file and all your playlists will be restored.

Um iTunes has 'lost' all my music - Any advice?

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