Mysterious Song Disappearance in iTunes

This is bizarre. So tonight I had a particular song on my mind from an album I purchased from the iTunes store back in February of 2010. Long story short, the song has completely disappeared from my computer and iTunes account! When I go to the Purchased section in the iTunes store, the album is there with every song except this particular one. If I look the album up in the iTunes store, it shows as available to purchase including the track that I am missing (not sure why it shows as available to purchase since I bought the album already). Anyway, when I go to Account > Purchase History, it definitely shows I bought the "Album" (not individual songs) for $7.99 (same price it is currently in the iTunes store).

What in the actual heck is going on here? Any ideas? I guess I'll have to contact support, but wanted to make sure I'm not missing another stone to turn over before I do. Now I'm wondering what other random songs may have disappeared from my library.

EDIT: I already checked "Hidden Purchases" - it's not there.

When you go into your “Account”, did you look at “Hidden Items”? I found a lot of my purchases there, mostly apps, but some songs as well.


Bob -

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ferrarr said:

When you go into your “Account”, did you look at “Hidden Items”? I found a lot of my purchases there, mostly apps, but some songs as well.


Bob -

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Yep, forgot to mention I tried that. There were some songs there, but not this one. I "unhid" them all anyway.

Could it possibly be that the 2010 release is no longer available and that a remastered version was released more recently which now includes the missing song?

I accept that it doesn’t necessarily explain everything, but it is well known that older albums are sometimes not, or no longer, available. Then some time later, a new version of the album is released; sometimes with additional songs, sometimes with deletions.

Ian

IWT said:

Could it possibly be that the 2010 release is no longer available and that a remastered version was released more recently which now includes the missing song?

I accept that it doesn’t necessarily explain everything, but it is well known that older albums are sometimes not, or no longer, available. Then some time later, a new version of the album is released; sometimes with additional songs, sometimes with deletions.

Ian

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No, this is definitely a song that was always on this album (since 1997) and in my library, as I had played it many times in the past - not super recently, but for a fact it was there before.

I guess I'll contact support tonight with all the details including the original receipt number. Will post an update on what happens.

Well, crazy , or not, I won't venture to guess ;D

But... As you can see, from the pic... The album starts with song #2, and at the bottom, "No additional songs found"
I noticed this a few years ago.

Have you looked in your Song list, to see if the song name was still there, and just some of the metadata was changed, so it was miscategorized?


Bob -

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RobNJ said:

But... As you can see, from the pic... The album starts with song #2, and at the bottom, "No additional songs found"
I noticed this a few years ago.

Click to expand...

That's odd too. Ever solve that mystery?

ferrarr said:

Have you looked in your Song list, to see if the song name was still there, and just some of the metadata was changed, so it was miscategorized?

Click to expand...

Song list AND hard drive have been searched. I've been doing a long-overdue clean-up of my iTunes library, so I thought maybe I accidentally deleted the track somehow, but even searching my Time Machine backups from weeks before I started the clean-up yields no hits. And the clincher is that it doesn't show up under the album in my purchased music in my iTunes account (and it hasn't been "hidden" either - already checked). It's like it's been surgically removed from my history! It's the most bizarre thing I've run into computing-wise in a long time.

usagora said:

That's odd too. Ever solve that mystery?

Click to expand...

No, and the album isn't even in the iTunes store, anymore.

Part of the mystery has been solved. iTunes support replied back to my report saying that the publisher had reissued the song with an abbreviated title. They issued me a song credit so I could re-purchase that one track. Seems odd that that such changes would not auto-populate to purchased content. This still doesn't explain how the track initially disappeared from my library and Mac, but I guess all's well that ends well.

Thanks for posting back with that info. I have a purchased album or two with missing tracks so this may explain why they did not appear in the purchased history when the other tracks did. A couple of them I've already re-purchased -- not a major issue since I only had a few to do.