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iOS suddenly deleted all my music while on the go

S

skeleb

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2011
30
1
While I was waiting for the train and listening to music on my iPhone 4 (iOS 6.1.3), the music suddenly stopped playing. I then checked the Music app and was surprised to see that it says I don't have any content (songs) on my phone anymore.

Did a boot and checked again, everything gone. Settings -> General -> About shows I have 0 songs on my device.

I did a bit of googling and didn't find any similar issues. Has this happened to any of you before?
 
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skeleb said:
While I was waiting for the train and listening to music on my iPhone 4 (iOS 6.1.3), the music suddenly stopped playing. I then checked the Music app and was surprised to see that it says I don't have any content (songs) on my phone anymore.

Did a boot and checked again, everything gone. Settings -> General -> About shows I have 0 songs on my device.

I did a bit of googling and didn't find any similar issues. Has this happened to any of you before?
Click to expand...

It happened to me long time ago when I was using 3GS. Same thing. Music stop in some sort of hang then when it came back I had no music at all. Like 29gb of music suddenly gone. I had to sync all back again and I could never explain what the heck happened that day.

Sorry not being able to clarify. If it helps it only happened once in my 5 years of iPhones.

Also I must tell you that what intrigues me the most is that appears to me that old libraries like when you have all your music there for months, some music start to jitter for no reason. I've checked original files and there is no jitter but inside iPhone it jitters. I've erased it and with another sync it was back to the phone and ok. No jitters. I had the same experience with iPods.

Sorry for the offtopic.

Cheers
 
I dont believe that iCloud backs up your music unless you have Match turned on. Are you doing Match - or did you turn it on - with Match you have to download your music to your device.

If you aren't running Match then, I believe, music is only on iTunes and then synced to your device - music isn't then in the cloud.
 
I already restored the music to my phone so the problem is gone, but I'm more interested in how on earth this happened. Google offered so little results on this so I had to ask here... Maybe someone with more knowledge will fill us in on this someday. :)
 
Same thing happened to me a few years ago on my iPhone 3G or iPod touch 3rd generation (can't remember which).

I had just left the house and pulled my iPod/iPhone out to listen to some music and it said I had none. :mad:

Then I just went back home and synced and it all came back.

It's one of the most bizarre iOS bugs, and clearly it hasn't been fixed lol.
 
skeleb said:
While I was waiting for the train <snip> it says I don't have any content (songs) on my phone anymore.
Click to expand...

Does it happen to be an electric train that you were waiting for? Were you close to one of the power poles or a transformer box? Did a train happen to pass by shortly before? Electrical surges can do strange things, well not really strange if you understand some rudimentary physics...
 
ijohn.8.80 said:
Does it happen to be an electric train that you were waiting for? Were you close to one of the power poles or a transformer box? Did a train happen to pass by shortly before? Electrical surges can do strange things, well not really strange if you understand some rudimentary physics...
Click to expand...

doubt random electrical interference would've wiped OP's music collection and nothing else.
 
sometimes the database just gets corrupted, it may have been trying to update play count, something went a bit off, and just borked the whole thing.

if you had looked at the available space on the phone, it probably would have appeared the music was still there, (i.e. the music was still taking up space in storage), it's just that the music app didn't know what was there.

i highly doubt that a stray electric charge (static or otherwise) made it through your phone, and selectively deleted the music.
 
Same thing happened again on Wednesday-Thursday night. Phone was sitting on my desk the whole night and they were all gone when I woke up.

All music and ringtones gone, Settings -> General -> About section shows 0 songs and free space up by around 4GB (amount of music on my device). I'm starting to think this is a damn rare software bug in iOS 6.1.3. Started a few days after I updated.

I am not sending any Diagnostics & Usage data to Apple so unfortunately they can't be of any help, so I'll just sit tight and enjoy my phone when it works! :D
 
Is there an Android device nearby? Is this another round in the Google vs. Apple battle where Google has found another way to distroy Apple stuff?;):D:rolleyes:
 
could be something went a bit off in the update, your best bet might be to do a clean install, and not restore from backup.
at least it lets you start fresh :) and clear out some of the extra stuff you don't use.

i recommend taking screen shots of you app placement, to kinda get everything back to where it was.

my phone did something odd during a sync last year, it would run out of battery in 4 hours, even just sitting in my pocket. a fresh install straightened everything out, i think at that time i had settings that had been restored from a 1st get -> 3g -> 4, so a fresh start was in order.
 
ijohn.8.80 said:
I was wondering if an EMF may have wreaked havoc on an integral part of the music files structure and then the device wiped it all as a safety measure.
Click to expand...

Could be possible, but I'd guess unlikely. A cell phone ought be pretty well shielded from EMF since it emits it. The field from some device at a distance should be very weak as well...I'd guess file corruption from a freak iOS hiccup.
 
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