iTunes ate my songs, what gives

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Hi

Something weird has happened to my mac. iTunes is suddenly not playing some songs and asking me to locate original source. Have I been attacked by some virus. What's the remedy?

Thx in advance
Param
 
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When you double click the song on itunes, it should say would u like to find this file. click yes and go threw all the files till you get to the certain song, double click on that song and then you found the file ?? Maybe ..
I cant come up with a better solution. Worth a try and NO dont know what causes it.

Have you all iTunes up to date and the OS you are running. If not might be the chance you need to update.
Post back if stiil troubles

Cheers
 
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The only time I've had that happen is when I've changed the name of the song (revised the tag outside of itunes), moved different location or deleted part of the itunes structure. Itunes does have a different structure and it organizes your songs in many different ways. You may have found it redundant or different than what you are used to on PC but for itunes and how it works (according to the default settings) it is necessary.

There are ways that you can change this I think but you need to (and this is good practice with any program - PC and Mac) look thru preferences and there you can set how itunes saves things.

Until you do that, you either need to, as TattooedMac said or have itunes find your music again or drag it into itunes again.

Good luck
 
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This is how those baseless rumors get started... "I have a friend who knows someone who got a virus on their Mac and their iTunes music was suddenly missing, so I know for a fact that viruses do exist for Macs."

No, you don't have a virus. The songs you see in iTunes are not the actual music files themselves, they just connect back to the music files that are stored on your hard drive. If the file is moved or deleted or the name is changed, the connection between it and iTunes is broken and needs to be re-established.
 
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Yea, um, Oneironaut is right. Unfortunately, the average consumer has no clue as to what is going on as far as the real differences between OS X and Windows. Then there are the avid PC users that claim there are viruses for OS X and/or the "small market share" argument, which is also baseless. Also, 3rd party PC stores... I was spoken to at Best Buy for telling somebody that there are no viruses for OS X. I ended up winning the argument (heart proven sources), but these guys want to push sales, so they'll still try to get you to buy antivirus for Macs and all that good stuff. This just leads consumers more and more to not know or not believe.

Anyway to the OP's actual problem. I've had this happen a couple of times, and it can happen for various reasons. Several I've encountered:

-You have changed the location of your iTunes library and for whatever reason, iTunes is looking in the old place (maybe you forgot to do it in iTunes itself, or it just glitched and is still looking in the old spot for some particular songs, which has also happened to me)

-You may have moved/renamed a file or 2 in the finder without remembering. Use spotlight to try and find the song when it searches your HDD. If you have automatic sorting and organizing turned on in the prefs, it will reposition the song in relation to its ID3 tag.

-You have an external hard drive that you keep your iTunes library stored on, and you opened iTunes before mounting the drive.
 
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iTunes is not as intuitive as the rest of Apple products. I know since I got my mac, that I have spent 100.00 on software to manage my plethora of Music. I mean Children of Bodom and all the other stuff I have along with Beethoven, Iron Maiden, rockabilly pshychobilly and ALL of my music over the ages is tough with iTunes.
 
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You could always try and see if the files still exist? Go to Finder and click your Name and then click "Music" and "iTunes" and the "iTunes Music" and see if all your music still exists.
 
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Thx for all the suggestions, will try them and be back with results and yes I do know that viruses are not a problem for mac but when you are not finding your fav songs...you panic

Thx again
Param
 
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I hear ya. :) I'm sure theyre still there. :)
 
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Grrrrr

Songs seems to be intact but I am kinda very angry at Apple, here is what happened - I updated iTunes last night to version 9.sth (thinking it will fix the problem) and I can not run it because apparently it can not be run without the next version of Quicktime which will cost me close to $30, not a big amount but I should have been informed by some pop-up window. Seems like Apple is going the Microsoft way......

Q - Is there a way I can get my older Itunes version back?

Q - Is there any other media player good enough for mac?

Thx
Param
 
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QuickTime costs $30? Or are you referring to Snow Leopard?
 
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