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Missing iTunes music files

K

kamalmaharaj

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 16, 2014
2
1
Hello all, really hoping someone here can help me out as this is a nightmare issue for me. Yesterday I started noticing that certain files on my albums were going missing from iTunes (with the exclamation mark), and I cannot locate them in the folders where they are supposed to be, or anywhere else on my computer, almost as if someone opened up random folders and deleted songs. It only seems to be affecting my Apple Lossless Files however.

I have not recently updated iTunes, but I am on the current version of both iTunes and Yosemite.
 
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First of all, do you have a Time Machine backup? Also, have you tried to Spotlight Search for them to see if they've just moved?
 
This has happened to me too. I guess it might have something to do with that atrocious crap that is iCloud Music/iTunes Match. Do you happen to use one of these services?
 
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There was a similar thread a little while ago, the OP had turned off "Copy files to iTunes Media folder", and was adding things to iTunes and then trashing the originals - not realizing that the originals were the only copy. You might want to check your settings.

In over a decade of using iTunes, I have never had it delete a file. This is not really surprising, since except when you are adding or editing metadata it never touches them.

A.
 
Alrescha said:
There was a similar thread a little while ago, the OP had turned off "Copy files to iTunes Media folder", and was adding things to iTunes and then trashing the originals - not realizing that the originals were the only copy. You might want to check your settings.

In over a decade of using iTunes, I have never had it delete a file. This is not really surprising, since except when you are adding or editing metadata it never touches them.

A.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response (traveling), but that happens to be true only if you are not using one of the services I mentioned before. Otherwise you and your files are under your own risk.
 
iRock1 said:
Sorry for the late response (traveling), but that happens to be true only if you are not using one of the services I mentioned before. Otherwise you and your files are under your own risk.
Click to expand...

I was an iTunes Match user for many years. Never had iTunes touch my local files.

A.
 
Alrescha said:
I was an iTunes Match user for many years. Never had iTunes touch my local files.

A.
Click to expand...

Lucky you then, because iTunes Match can mess with your local files—that's a well-known and documented fact.
 
iRock1 said:
Lucky you then, because iTunes Match can mess with your local files—that's a well-known and documented fact.
Click to expand...

I do not think so. You are welcome to provide links that prove your case.

I think rather that some people have come to the conclusion that iTunes, which has no known mechanism or reason to touch files - except with user intervention - has mysteriously woken up and modified things at random.

Given Occam's Razor, I think it is much more likely that something else has changed the files, and iTunes is merely reporting this event. I gave an earlier example of just such an event earlier in the thread.

A.
 
Alrescha said:
I do not think so. You are welcome to provide links that prove your case.

I think rather that some people have come to the conclusion that iTunes, which has no known mechanism or reason to touch files - except with user intervention - has mysteriously woken up and modified things at random.

Given Occam's Razor, I think it is much more likely that something else has changed the files, and iTunes is merely reporting this event. I gave an earlier example of just such an event earlier in the thread.

A.
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Search on Google—there are plenty of cases of iTunes Match messing with users' libraries... (So I'm sad to tell you that your theory is just not correct.)

I've never touched any of my local films. Still, iTunes is reporting some of them as missing. The only possible explanation is that iTunes' upload/download process sometimes get broken—and I've witnessed that by myself.
 
iRock1 said:
Apple does not agree with you
Click to expand...

You may wish to review the actual statement by Apple rather than depending on poor article titles, to whit:

Apple has confirmed only that it has received reports of music deletion. It has not been able to reproduce the problem. In spite of that, it will make changes to iTunes (presumably to help users not delete their files). No bug has been found, no cases of mass deletion have been verified.

A.
 
Alrescha said:
You may wish to review the actual statement by Apple rather than depending on poor article titles, to whit:

Apple has confirmed only that it has received reports of music deletion. It has not been able to reproduce the problem. In spite of that, it will make changes to iTunes (presumably to help users not delete their files). No bug has been found, no cases of mass deletion have been verified.

A.
Click to expand...

I guess we'll just have to way a few weeks (or, at Apple's current pace, a few months) in order to determine whether there is something wrong in the music ecosystem (meaning OS X, iTunes, Apple Music, iCloud Library or iTunes Match) or not. By now it's all assumptions, though I feel biased towards the Apple's-error theory naturally, since I've experienced similar cases by myself.
 
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