user error.

wai 2 brake hart :‘(

NSA involved.

won’t any another song do just as well in this fair, free and democratic internet?

ok, i’ve got one:

I just transfered 3626 songs from a macbook pro HD and an ipod HD to an external HD. After I selected “add to library” in iTunes I looked at the songs in the library and realized that 1277 have had much of the song info (album, artist, year, etc) completely wiped clean. The only tag that seems to have survived is ‘song’. This is a serious WTF. Any thoughts on what happened and how can I make sure this never happens again???

iTunes LOCKED!

THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT IS DISSOLVING

iTunes 5 doesn’t even run smoothly on my PC so... um. I have nothing positive to add.

Louis it’s probably still there just renamed to 9594837485738392.mp3 and with the ID3 info fux0red. You’ll have to go into your music folder(s) (1–500) and listen to all your mp3s again.

Or I could just buy the song again from the iTunes music store for 79 pence. :P

Apple :P @ us all!

I’m a bad man :‘(

YSI, anyone?

Louis it probably is still on disk somewhere but if you let iTunes “organise” (rename, retag and splinter into a million subfolders) your collection good fucking luck finding it again.

Search hidden files, files containing “elbow” etc but don’t get your hopes up. If you’re really desperate you could even try a system restore (unless it’s been turned off to save resources...)

and RUN CHECKDISK!

grr, I suppose I’ll have a look...

“probably” might be more optimism than good advice, but I’d hate you to buy it again and have the same thing keep happening :/

It’s OK! I reckon it’s an isolated incident, and were I to resort to buying the song again, it wouldn’t happen again (at least, not to that specific song, with odds of about 4000–1 against). The irritating thing is that it happened to a song I don’t otherwise own on CD (unlike most of my collection).

Ah well, I took your advice, searched for ‘elbow’ files, and hey presto, foundin an instant. Only lasting damage: the play-count. I am extremely anal about such things, but I’m willing to forgive my laptop JUST THIS ONCE... ;-)

I think Ian’s query is of a rather more serious nature, and we seem to have forgotten it, alas. Anyone got any ideas (because I certainly haven’t)?

I just transfered 3626 songs from a macbook pro HD and an ipod HD to an external HD. After I selected “add to library” in iTunes I looked at the songs in the library and realized that 1277 have had much of the song info (album, artist, year, etc) completely wiped clean. The only tag that seems to have survived is ‘song’. This is a serious WTF. Any thoughts on what happened and how can I make sure this never happens again???

Check your View Options—sounds like something got turned off.

Failing that, check your Previous iTunes Libraries folder. It may have backed itself up, in which case, replace the current one with the old one. (Use Copy-Paste and save a backup of the current one to your documents folder!!!)

looking for a re-ID’d track is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

best thing to do is drop all coded mp3s into a real player or something, and they’ll unscramble them fast.

Check your View Options—sounds like something got turned off.

definitely not this unfortunately. The columns are still there they are just...empty.

I just tried removing the “iTunes library” file and then reimporting one of the problem mp3 files and the problem persists — no artist, no album, only song title.

Fairly maddening, actually!

as long as it isn’t too maddening

ianinpdx, did you try my second suggestion?

Tantrum,

Yes, I did and still no go.. The only saving grace is that I got a big chunk of these files from my brother so I can just chuck my copies and recopy from him... Still a huge PITA though! Thanks for your suggestions...