iTunes - can't locate my songs`

[soonadog]

I have had iTunes for a long time, and used it with no problems, syncing with two iPods and an iPhone.

The other day, however, after syncing with an iPod, my entire library had exclamation marks next to each song and when I click them, or try to play a song, I get the message "The song "______" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"

I cannot locate the songs or understand what happened. My iPod plays the songs but the iMac doesn't play them from iTunes. Any help is appreciated.

I have an iMac and the latest version of iTunes.

 

[dukebound85]

have you messed with the song folders by chance? renaming them outside of itunes?

What you could do is reimport your entire library rather than going one by one to find them. Downside is you will lose playlists and playback stats but it should restore all songs....if you didnt throw them away by chance

 

[soonadog]

Not intentionally. I did delete a bunch of my daughter's songs but I didn't do anything weird. And I didn't re-name anything.

Where would I find the library if I did want to reimport?

Can I retrieve the library from an iPod?

 

[dukebound85]

Not intentionally. I did delete a bunch of my daughter's songs but I didn't do anything weird. And I didn't re-name anything.

Where would I find the library if I did want to reimport?

Can I retrieve the library from an iPod?

The library is located in ~/Music

There are programs, such as Senuti, that allow for transferring songs from ipod to computer. Senuti was free but I no longer think it is but there are probably some free alternatives

 

[soonadog]

Nobody has any more specific experience with this, or ideas about what happened?

 

[eleven7]

Nobody has any more specific experience with this, or ideas about what happened?

Can you explain exactly how you deleted your daughter's songs?

 

[soonadog]

I highlighted them, then hit the delete button, then clicked "remove" when it asked me if I was sure I wanted to remove the selected songs from the library.

Those songs are now gone, but all my other songs are still listed in the library - they just have the exclamation point and they don't play - just shows the message I mentioned in my first post. So it's hard to think it's related to my deleting a few songs.

Also, when I look in the trash, I see my daughter's deleted songs, but not the other 1,000 songs that now won't play. So I didn't delete them. I must have relocated them?

 

[i.shaun]

Do you keep your music in the default iTunes folder? go to Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.

Are there files in there?

 

[soonadog]

That folder is empty.

There are "Previous iTunes Libraries," but I'm not sure what to do with them - and when I clicked one it says it's only 516 KB on disc.

 

[eleven7]

Strange. Have you tried doing a spotlight search to find one of YOUR songs that are still listed? If you can find one, you should be able to locate all the others, then re-import everything back into iTunes. It sounds like the file path has been changed somehow, so they should be sitting on your harddrive somewhere.

If all else fails - download a freeware application like 'CopyTrans' http://www.copytrans.net/ which will allow you to transfer all the music from your iPod/iPhone back onto your computer.

There's a few out there that do it but I've found CopyTrans to be the easiest to use, most-up-to-date and it's completely free. The only downside is that it's not available on OS X, so you'll have to do it on Windows via bootcamp or VMWare etc, or just on another computer, then copy the mp3 files across.