iTunes HELP!!! I lost all my music!!!!

[LionTigerBear]

I don't even know how this happened . . . I didn't DO anything! I am SO MAD!!!!!

I opened iTunes about an hour ago-- where I keep ALL my music-- it's how I store and listen to my music-- and I got some little pop up window that said something about how it was searching for my iTunes library or something . . . I don't think it's ever done that before, I remember thinking, huh, wonder what that's about-- then I guess it couldn't find or something-- I wasn't paying that much attention.

So when iTunes opens, I immediately notice that all of my playlists are gone! The "Purchased" section is gone.

I notice that hundreds of songs are missing, especially all of my most recent purchases.

I go to the iTunes store and check my purchase history and realize that all of my downloads-- both from the iTunes store and anywhere else-- from the last TWO YEARS-- are GONE! What the heck! How did this happen, and why only the last two years, what's going on! I am so mad and sad. All of the music was backed up on CDS that I have stored, except the latest 20-30 songs, which sucks. I'll be darned if I'm going to buy them from iTunes again! I am SO p!ssed off!

ALL of this stuff was here yesterday evening and the computer hasn't even been turned off since then! We just put it on sleep mode overnight, which is pretty normal for us. We have a darn PC with darn Vista, FWIW.

::: FUMING :::

I sent iTunes a message but I doubt they will be willing to do anything, even though it's obvious to me this is THEIR FAULT. ::

Please please please if you have ANY ADVICE please help me!!! I LOVE my music, this is CRUSHING me!

[LionTigerBear]

Oh, forgot to say I did "contact" them through my account with the iTunes store. I am supposed to hear back within 48 hours. In the meantime I miss my music.

I'm afraid they will say there's nothing they can do, that it must be something I did (I didn't do anything!) Then they will expect me to just repurchase the last 31 songs that weren't backed up. And spend hours burning the other 100s of backed-up songs back onto my library. What a pain. I hope I am wrong about this, though.

[Arduinna]

Basically you lost your library for some reason. Is your music still on your hard drive? If it is then you can just add the files back to your library. When this has happened to me it's because I had a hard drive issue though. Where is your music stored? On an external drive? or you main internal one? It's also possible that someone started a new library. You can have more than one library with itunes, in which case you just need to load the correct one. It's unlikely that this is Apples or iTunes fault.

oh and as for your 31 purchased songs that you haven't backed up, do you have them stored on an ipod? If you do all you have to do it connect it to your computer and transfer purchases.

[LionTigerBear]

Originally Posted by Arduinna

Basically you lost your library for some reason. Is your music still on your hard drive? If it is then you can just add the files back to your library. When this has happened to me it's because I had a hard drive issue though. Where is your music stored? On an external drive? or you main internal one? It's also possible that someone started a new library. You can have more than one library with itunes, in which case you just need to load the correct one. It's unlikely that this is Apples or iTunes fault.

oh and as for your 31 purchased songs that you haven't backed up, do you have them stored on an ipod? If you do all you have to do it connect it to your computer and transfer purchases.

Thank you, Arduinna! I am not good with technical stuff at all. I do okay with my normal computer routines but that's about it!

I will search my harddrive for the songs. I looked in a couple of places but I haven't done a thorough search. Thanks for the idea!

Of the 31 songs I lost, about half of them are on my iPod, which DH has right now. So I would only be out about $15 or so guess. Thank you, that makes me feel a little better!

Off to go search my computer!!

ETA:

It's unlikely that this is Apples or iTunes fault

. This is good to know! Thank you!

[LionTigerBear]

Wow, you rock! I just found all of my music and transferred it back to my iTunes library.

I feel realyl silly but I STILL don't know what happened there . . .

Thank you, Arduinna!

[Arduinna]

cool, I'm glad you found it!

[UptownZoo]

Originally Posted by LionTigerBear

Oh, forgot to say I did "contact" them through my account with the iTunes store. I am supposed to hear back within 48 hours. In the meantime I miss my music.

I'm afraid they will say there's nothing they can do, that it must be something I did (I didn't do anything!) Then they will expect me to just repurchase the last 31 songs that weren't backed up. And spend hours burning the other 100s of backed-up songs back onto my library. What a pain. I hope I am wrong about this, though.

I'm glad you found everything! In case it happens again, though, I wouldn't be so sure that Apple won't help. I recently had a major computer crash and I lost everything. It was all on CDs except a (very expensive!) audiobook that I hadn't put on CDs or my iPod yet. Apple let me re-download the whole thing and they were very nice about it.

[LionTigerBear]

Originally Posted by UptownZoo

I'm glad you found everything! In case it happens again, though, I wouldn't be so sure that Apple won't help. I recently had a major computer crash and I lost everything. It was all on CDs except a (very expensive!) audiobook that I hadn't put on CDs or my iPod yet. Apple let me re-download the whole thing and they were very nice about it.

Oh wow, that's so cool-- glad you didn't lose it! Good to know.

[TheBluebird]

My DP works for Apple iTunes, actually. Maybe he got your email. They actually are pretty good about making a "one time exception" to re-download stuff that you haven't backed up, if you ask nicely.