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Missing tracks in Music app--fix more than one at a time?

Years of using iTunes left me with a music folder with thousands of duplicate tracks, which I recently went through and deleted. For the most part this worked OK, but a few thousand tracks in Music are associated with the deleted duplicate files. I was prepared for this because Music is supposed to ask, when locating a missing song, if we want to find other missing songs from the same album.


You see where this is going--Music is refusing to ask this, leaving me with the prospect of searching for 10-15 times more tracks than I anticipated. Was this feature removed for some reason (probably because Apple hates Mac users these days, honestly), or is there something I need to do to get it to trigger?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 7, 2021 10:55 AM

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Posted on Aug 7, 2021 1:40 PM

Music and iTunes aren't able to automatically relink when they are expecting a trailing digit that isn't there, or isn't expecting one when there is. These digits are added when duplicate files are added and the existing path is in use. The FixLinks script should be able to repair the broken entries.


tt2

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6 replies

Aug 7, 2021 12:13 PM in response to epenthesis2

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.


In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2



See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.



tt2

Aug 7, 2021 1:07 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for all the information--I don't know that I was clear enough here. I know that the problem arose because I deleted (with a third-party program) a lot of duplicates, which I had picked up because I've moved the library between drives a few times over the years. I didn't delete many, if any, tracks that had no duplicates. The problem is just that in a minority of cases, the file deleted was the one associated with the Music library, and Music is not behaving as expected--it should be giving me the option of searching for additional tracks (which would at least fix an entire album at once), but it's forcing me to correct the entries one at a time. Search for one song on an album, then search for the next. There are nearly 8,000 songs in this category (yes, I have too much music).


Since Movies still does what it's supposed to do (it found almost all "missing" files at once), I assume this is just a glitch in Music. Is there a way to force the "look for more songs in this location?" dialogue to trigger? Moving the files as you suggest is not a realistic option because in many cases the duplicates had different names rather than different locations, so Music is looking in the correct directory already. (I have no idea how this happened.)


As you requested:

  1. /Media/iTunes
  2. file:///Volumes/Media/iTunes/Van Halen/1984/02 Jump 1.mp3
  3. /Volumes/Media/iTunes/Van Halen/1984/02 Jump.mp3

Missing tracks in Music app--fix more than one at a time?

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