iTunes nuked. Help

[iSumed]

This is the state of my iTunes:

 

1. Most songs point to:

(a) .itc and .itc2 files with zero bytes, or

(b) a folder (and inside that folder there maybe hundreds of subfolders to several levels, eventually leading to .itc files with zero bytes), or

© a valid music file that may:

(i) be the correct file in the correct file hierarchy (rare, but this is what I want), or

(ii) be the correct file in the wrong place (often in a #recycle folder), or

(ii) have the correct filename for the song, but upon playing the file it is a different song to the filename (it seems iTunes/iTunes Match has renamed the file?). The actual contents of the file maybe another song or even a TV show or movie.

 

2. I have lots of new songs with names like 6850DDC9761252B1-F12077CA217F75D2 that point to .itc files and size is shown as Stream.

 

3. Music may now be in other categories like TV shows and visa versa.

 

4. Each playlist appears about 10 times.

 

5. Many songs are duplicated. One may point to an actual music file in some cases.

 

6. My folder hierarchy is as follows:

 

Music > #recycle > iTunes > Artist Name

Music > #recycle > iTunes > iTunes Media > etc

Music > #recycle > iTunes > iTunes Music > etc

 

Music > iTunes > Artist Name

Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Artist Name

Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > iTunes Media > Automatically Add to iTunes

Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > iTunes Media > Downloads

 

7. Under some Artist Name folders there may be around ten subfolders leading to a .itc file.

 

8. Album art is scrambled. For example a song by the Adana Twins shows Boardwalk Empire artwork and one track 49 minutes long when played reveals itself to actually be a Boardwalk Empire episode.

 

This occurred many months ago. I have spent hours trying to fix problems but estimate it will take a couple of years working for several hours a week to manually go through, find the right files, rename them and correct all the metadata. I am too depressed to play music. And of course, am going nowhere near Apple Music or iTunes Match.

 

The good news is that with searching I can find the correct files (and sometimes incorrect ones like different versions that appear to have been provided by iTunes Match), but it is time consuming.

 

I had subscribed to iTunes Match for several years. Although paid up, I have turned it off as I suspect it may be the culprit (?)

 

My database sits on a Synology NAS.

 

I'd be so appreciative of any advice on how to expedite a clean up of these problems, and what I can do to prevent it happening again (could I have done something wrong).

 

Thank you

[kirkmc]

This seems very complicated. I suspect that your problems are caused by your NAS; while they can work just fine at times, the sometimes lead to very complex problem. I don't understand why they point to .itc files; those are iTunes artwork files.

 

I think what you need to do is totally start over. If you get a view in iTunes where you can see all your music, select all the tracks and drag them to a folder somewhere. This may take a while, but iTunes will copy the files to that folder. You should then delete everything else you can find related to your iTunes library, then quit iTunes, relaunch it, and start with a new, empty library. Drag all the music into iTunes.

 

Make sure you back everything up before you do this.

[iSumed]

This seems very complicated. I suspect that your problems are caused by your NAS; while they can work just fine at times, the sometimes lead to very complex problem. I don't understand why they point to .itc files; those are iTunes artwork files.

 

I think what you need to do is totally start over. If you get a view in iTunes where you can see all your music, select all the tracks and drag them to a folder somewhere. This may take a while, but iTunes will copy the files to that folder. You should then delete everything else you can find related to your iTunes library, then quit iTunes, relaunch it, and start with a new, empty library. Drag all the music into iTunes.

 

Make sure you back everything up before you do this.

 

Thanks Kirk. That's great advice.

 

One question: I use my NAS as I can't fit all my iTunes on my Mac HDD. If I use a hard disk connected by USB to my Mac is that safer than using the NAS?

 

In earlier versions of iTunes I did find it continually unhooked from the NAS and find an old iTunes library on my HDD. This problem does not seem to occur any more so I assumed iTunes made some improvements.

[kirkmc]

I find it much safer to use a connected drive. When you use a NAS, iTunes loses track of it from time to time. You say it doesn't seem to occur any more, but given the state of your library, I'd think that's exactly what happened.

[iSumed]

Thanks Kirk.

 

I've backed up every file related to iTunes on external drives, and deleted all files in the old iTunes Media location and set up a different external drive (A) for my new library.

 

I haven't yet deleted all the songs in the application. I setup a new iTunes Media location on drive A and imported a song. It created the artist name folder at the root (didn't set up Music/iTunes/iTunes Media) so I deleted the song on iTunes and didn't keep the file and manually set up Music/iTunes/iTunes Media on drive A. I then added the song again and an artist folder was correctly set up under iTunes Media.

 

However in both cases when I added the song, I got an error message: The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (13010).

 

I'm thinking that despite me pointing iTunes to where I want my new library to be, iTunes won't establish a new database file. (I cannot find one anywhere). It does seem that I need to create a new database file as I want to have a new library. In which case, how do I get iTunes to create one?

 

Appreciate any help on this.

[iSumed]

Ok. I've closed and opened iTunes and it prompted me to create a new library which I've done. So above issue solved.

 

Thanks

[iSumed]

Now having created a new database, it automatically populated with my iTunes purchases. Good.

 

I then opened iTunes Match to attach it to this computer and it downloaded a list of a lot of music from the cloud (e.g. previous CD rips). However it has downloaded all the inaccurate information as well:

- multiple copies of each playlist

- hundreds of files such as "iTunes Library Genius (or Extras)_237" all with iCloud status of Waiting (and clicking File | Library | Update iCloud Music Library does nothing). Q: As these seem to be rubbish files, should I just delete them? The Kind is Internet Audio Stream and they all have different times against them.

- multiple copies of a song where one of them is Purchased and the other one has a different time and Kind is WAV - the latter file looks like some other song. I tested one and it is a completely different song. Should I rename it as iTunes has changed the filename to the wrong song. Will that fix it on iTunes Match?

 

Any suggestions on how to fix Match or should I just give up?

 

Thanks

[kirkmc]

Hmm... The multiple playlists are, alas, one of the side-effects of iTunes Match. Just delete them; it should eventually settle.

 

I saw tons of phantom files once in my iCloud Music Library, similar to yours, but without that sort of name. I'd just delete them.

 

If there are multiple copies, and some are WAV files, they can't be coming from iTunes, because it doesn't serve that format. That's very strange. I've never heard of that. But if you say it's a different song, that's even stranger. If they're different songs, do they correspond to songs that also show up as normal songs in the library?

[iSumed]

Yes. iTunes or Match has renamed a WAV file song in iTunes with another purchased songs name. So I have two entries for a song - one is the correct file and it's a purchase. The other's file. is another song but it has been renamed with the same name as the purchased song file.

 

e.g. One Fine Day (file: One Fine Day.m4a) (the purchased song)

One Fine Day (file: One Fine Day.wav) (the song is actually Keep Your Eye on the Prize, a song file I added to the library).

 

There is no question in my mind (as it's happened on a large number of songs (including TV shows renamed with song names) that iTunes Match has done this. I just don't know how to fix it. I can manually go through and correct file names (the two year project I referred to above) and iTunes entries but how can I force Match to correct itself and stop overriding changes I make?

[iSumed]

Maybe the solution is this?

 

Rename the incorrect file and put it somewhere else in my file system. Then delete the song entry from the iCloud Music library as per Apple help:

 

"If you want to remove the item from your iCloud Music Library on all of your devices, tap "Delete from My Music.". But will this delete it in the Cloud? - this is my challenge.

 

Then take the .wav file (some of them are MPEGs) and keep outside of iTunes (or copy to an acceptable format for iTunes and reimport).

 

My main aim is to get incorrect info and files out of iCloud so they don't keep downloading to my iTunes rendering the list unusable.

[kirkmc]

When I had those weird files, I wasn't able to download them, so I couldn't put them anywhere. Can you download these files? If so, and the naming is that messed up, I'd recommend contacting Apple support; this sounds like a serious library corruption, and only they will be able to fix it.

[iSumed]

Since the last post, I've spent a lot of time reinstating my library on an external hard drive (removing it from my NAS as per Kirk's suggestion) and re-downloading songs from Match.

 

For those that will no longer download:

(1. where I get an error message: "This item cannot be downloaded. The item you have requested is not available for download."; or

2. "Waiting" permanently appears against the track),

I have tried to find another copy to upload.

 

I haven't got around to deleting the pdf files (such as the scanned boarding pass) which got added as album art by iTunes (seemingly selected randomly by iTunes from elsewhere on my hard drive) to many albums.

 

I thought I'd got everything in order just about. But now...

 

A number of songs are showing the download icon - why would a song I downloaded previously now not be on my external hard disk? Does iTunes actually decide to delete certain songs?

 

Some of the songs needing download do download, but again some don't.  So back to the drawing board on those.

 

Some songs that have disappeared in the album view show a price to buy them - these are tracks I've ripped and previously uploaded!

 

I'm using the new version of iTunes 12.7.0 and I looked in iTunes Match in the Store and it's asking me to add this computer - what?! If I'm downloading surely my computer is attached to Match?  I've always been had this computer 'added' to Match, why would I need to do it again?

 

Should I re-add the computer? Is there any risk associated with this?

 

Would I be better off terminating my Match subscription and managing my music on iTunes without iCloud upload (I'd rely on my own backups)? Can I still transfer tracks to my iPhone? Apple Watch?

 

I've also noticed that iTunes is replacing a lot of album art with incorrect art. On all compilation albums it has selected one track (may be any numbered track) found on another album that contains that track and added that single artist album as the art. How can I stop this extremely annoying outcome?

 

(I have not joined Apple Music due to a lack of trust and fear of transferring from Match to AM). Would AM be any safer? My trust of the iTunes ecosphere is currently at zero.

 

Many thanks for your help.