Tech+ Mailbag: Missing music on iTunes? Tips on finding those lost songs
Q: I recently went to play some music from my iTunes account. Surprised to find that the music that we had bought over the last five years was no longer in the account. Nothing at all was showing in my account under purchased items. Please help on how we can retrieve the music purchased. There were a lot of tunes in the account! — Holly
Tech+: When some users update iTunes, Apple realizes that sometimes a complete library doesn’t show up. The company offers 11 steps in how to restore your iTunes library, which includes finding the actual iTunes library file. See the company’s steps to restoring an iTunes library at support.apple.com/en-us/HT203225.
If you do see the name of your song but it won’t play and has an exclamation in front of it, that means the file got moved somewhere and iTunes can’t find it. Apple offers tips on linking the music file to the proper location on your computer. Those steps are listed at support.apple.com/enus/HT203167.
If these don’t work, there is some bad news. It may have been a software bug, so make sure your iTunes is up to date.
Or it could be worse. Last year, Apple acknowledged that some personal music files may have been “removed without their permission,” according to report by iMore.com. The snafu couldn’t be reproduced by Apple, but other Apple users felt it had to do with the company replacing older music files with copyright protection via digital rights management.
Apple encourages users to make sure their software is up to date and contact AppleCare. A plethora of ways to contact the company is listed at apple.com/contact, including phone numbers. But those are mostly for Apple devices. To contact the iTunes store support, you can start an online chat at support.apple.com/contact and ask to be called, if that’s the way you roll.
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