Why do I lose music?

LadyLoriMac1 wrote:

You've totalled lost me. I'm over 60 years old and I don't get it.

Let's start again.

Where did you buy the now missing music? Was it from the iTunes Store, or another online store (such as Amazon), or did you copy it from a CD?

• • if you bought the albums from the iTunes Store, you should be able to download them again from your account with the iTunes Store. Note that you need to look at your account (the same one that you used to buy the music originally) and look for past purchases. (turingtest2 makes reference to this in his post, those purchases sometimes need to be unhidden)
  • if you bought the albums from a different online store, you should be able to download them again from your account with that a store
  • if you purchased a CD and copied that into your iTunes library, but it is now missing, then re-copy from that CD

That covers re-downloading the music (and my use of the word "should" is purely to acknowledge that sometimes things don't work the way they should. You know, a bit like the Titanic, it was unsinkable. Except that it did sink.)

More important though, is to stop these albums (or any others) from going missing in the first place. iTunes is not in the habit of losing music.

Perhaps when transferring music from one computer to another, it is possible that the now missing music was in a different location (on the old laptop) to the rest of your music. For example, Amazon used to automatically download your purchases to a different location to the iTunes Store, but the Amazon download process would then add the purchases to your iTunes library. But if you did not copy that other location to the new laptop, those albums would then become "lost".

So to move forward and to prevent this from happening again, let us know where the missing albums were originally purchased from. Then we can help you re-download them instead of re-purchasing them. It might also provide a clue about why they went missing.

Just so you know, I'm well-over 60 years of age, I remember the seven inch single (but not the 78rpm shellac discs).

Instead of dealing with a rep on the phone I re-purchased the 2 albums.

If you are still using the same Apple ID, are in the same country, and the content is still available, you should be able to redownload fresh copies at no charge. Follow the steps in here:

Redownload music - Apple Support

For iTunes Store purchases see Hide and unhide music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and books - Apple Support and Redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books from the App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Books - Apple Support.

How are you transferring your library? See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for a process that should retain all of your content and metadata, ratings, plays, playlist, date added, etc.

tt2

Do you have any music in .wav format? This doesn't reimport to iTunes correctly. If you have iCloud Music Library, as part of Apple Music or iTunes Match, then there may be some content that hasn't correctly matched or uploaded to your iCloud library, and therefore won't show correctly on the new machine unless it is imported from local files. If you migrate the working library that should be able to sync to a device as if nothing has changed, otherwise you may need to rebuild your sync selections.

tt2