Why am I losing tunes in my iTunes library?

December 20, 2008 9:51 PM

I'm losing tunes and podcasts in my iTunes library on my laptop. Some tunes stay forever. I'm running XP and iTunes 8.02.20. Some files stay forever. Other podcasts or tunes stay for a day or a week before disappearing. Often many consecutive entries go at once, but sometimes a few files hang around when others around it go away. It has been going on for a couple months. Any ideas what is going on? Or how to fix it?
posted by 925 to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Just to be clear, the files are disappearing from their folders? Or are they just disappearing from iTunes but still present on the drive?
posted by sinfony at 9:53 PM on December 20, 2008

The error message I get when trying to play the title is The song (or podcast) "title" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?

When I try to locate it, I can not find it within the folders either. So the iTune library listing shows the title and all the information, but on clicking it, it is not found/played. In one grouping, I have 40 titles to pick from in iTunes, but only 11 files in that subdirectory.
posted by 925 at 10:50 PM on December 20, 2008

And NO, I am not losing any non-iTunes files.
posted by 925 at 11:34 PM on December 20, 2008

Try looking in your iTunes folder to see if there are folders with the artist name followed by an underscore (so if you had a Radiohead album, look for a folder called Radiohead_), and see if the missing files are in there with underscores after your names. This happened to me once, don't know why.

Do you have iTunes set to keep your music organized? If not, you might try using the Windows search to find the files.
posted by sinfony at 12:30 AM on December 21, 2008

How much music do you have? I've read that having over 15,000 songs in your iTunes can create instability.
posted by polyester.lumberjack at 1:50 AM on December 21, 2008

If you still have iTunes open as you reboot or shutdown your computer, it might not give iTunes time to save the library cleanly.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:14 AM on December 21, 2008

I had this problem for a few years with iTunes, and never found a way to fix it. I asked the 'Genius Bar' and the replied that I must have deleted things and forgotten. Recently switched to Songbird and it's been great, plays songs downloaded through iTunes and doesn't delete anything.
posted by chana meira at 10:22 AM on December 21, 2008 [1 favorite]

Sinfony: No, the files that are missing are not located in any other subdirectory with a fragment of the name. No where. I have tried with Windows Search and Desktop Search.

Polyester: No, Not over 15,000 tunes.

Pronoiac: Certainly a reboot or a shutdown could drive this more than once over the last 2 months. But I don't know how to prevent it but by being careful. And I am already careful whenever possible. But it sometimes loses tunes that have been there for years.

Chana: Yeah, I love this type of Genius Bar reply. No, like you I did not delete things and then forget.

You mentioned Songbird. There are any number of players I would rather use than iTunes. The only reason I use iTunes is to manage libraries on a host of differet iPods and iPhones. I really dislike iTunes, but recently recommitted to using it. Then this started happening. Feels like payback, really. Is there any iTunes-like software for managing a 250GB library (but under 15,000 tunes) including music, podcasts, audiobooks and movies on a group of iPods that simply works robustly?

[I love the iPods. I like iPhones. I hate iTunes. I disagree bitterly with Apple on implementation sometimes.]
posted by 925 at 3:32 PM on December 21, 2008

Is your Windows Explorer set to display hidden files? Tools -> Folder Options -> View to set that. Could be that they're hidden.

As for other media players, it depends on what you mean by "robustly." I've been using Foobar2000 with the foo_dop plugin to manage my music and iPods for a couple of years now. While foo_dop doesn't currently support iPhones/Touches running 2.x software, the plugin is very actively maintained and its author is very responsive on the message boards. In terms of library management and overall performance, I prefer it to any other media player by a long shot. That said, it's not quite as user friendly (for instance, there's no simple graphical tool for building smart playlists as there is in iTunes). The flip side of that is that it's incredibly customizable. At any rate, it's certainly worth a look.
posted by sinfony at 4:54 PM on December 21, 2008

For illustration purposes, here's my current layout.
posted by sinfony at 5:54 PM on December 21, 2008

Before a reboot or shutdown, close iTunes cleanly - wait for the "library saving" progress bars to finish their activity & go away.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:54 PM on December 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Good answer. Probably the issue. But Sleep/Suspend happens multiple/many times each day on my laptop, and surely I will miss it one time in a hundred even if I shut it down. And what happens on a BSOD? Or a battery running out?

Is iTunes REALLY this fragile? Is there nothing I can do but practice safe-computing and hope that I never ever never have a little tiny accident?
posted by 925 at 2:51 PM on December 29, 2008

Always practice safe computing.

I was really hoping that you'd had an "aha!" moment, because you were shutting it down improperly every night. I haven't had a problem with iTunes being fragile, but I'm using an older version anyway.

You might try Media Monkey as an alternate jukebox.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:25 AM on December 30, 2008