i tunes ate my music

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  • richardfinegold
    Full Member
    • Sep 2012
    • 7544

    i tunes ate my music

    I had started to burn CDs to Hard Drives a couple of years ago. The main goal has been to prune my Physical Media to save space. Like many forumites I've got thousands of CDs that perhaps have been listened to only a few times and some not for years. I can't bring myself to completely disown Physical Media but I have run out of space and am tired of feeling like my home is a CD warehouse.
    The goal therefore is to digitalize (to a hard drive) the infrequently played CDs and discard, while keeping a few hundred favorites and other Physical Media such as SACDs, Blu Rays, DVD-Audios, SHM-CDs, etc along with opening space for lps.
    My efforts have been stalled when I noted a problem with itunes namely that when I have tried to find some files, they have gone missing. I first noticed this with the Leonard Bernstein/Chicago SO Shostakovich Leningrad. Every attempt to bring it up failed; whether by Composer, Symphony Number, "Lenningrad", Conductor, or Orchestra. It doesn't help that itunes lists the Composer about 12 different ways. I finally gave up but since I had donated the CD to my local library, and they had it in their collection, I borrowed it and rescanned it into itunes (yes, this is probably illegal) and the same problem occurred. What is interesting is that I know I listened to the files a couple of times after I had originally scanned it, which means that it used to be retreivable; it must have been some additional itunes update that is the problem. I keep hoping that each successive update will fix it but no such luck.
    I have had trouble finding other scanned discs as well (Barenboim Schumann Symphonies, Pollini Beethoven Sonatas among others).
    Lately I notice that if I scan a new CD, i tunes almost never recognizes the disc or the meta data. I could understand an obscure CD from 20 years ago, but Alissa Weilerstein's recordings of Dvorak and Elgar were amongst them, and those are recent and were fairly decent sellers by Classical standards.
    I don't download much, but have discovered at least 1 non itunes downloaded that I had converted from flac and saved in itunes is also gone. Fortunately I still have the flac files.
    I will be abandoning itunes in favor of another solution that I have found (more later in a future post) but I was wondering if the many forumites who are more IT sophisticated than myself could explain this.
  • Frances_iom
    Full Member
    • Mar 2007
    • 2411

    #2
    tl;dr
    don't trust large corporations esp Americanthey are only in it for the money

    Comment

    • richardfinegold
      Full Member
      • Sep 2012
      • 7544

      #3
      Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
      tl;dr
      don't trust large corporations esp Americanthey are only in it for the money
      Yeah, like that paragon of Americanism, Volkswagon

      Comment

      • Eine Alpensinfonie
        Host
        • Nov 2010
        • 20565

        #4
        Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
        The goal therefore is to digitalize (to a hard drive) the infrequently played CDs and discard, while keeping a few hundred favorites and other Physical Media such as SACDs, Blu Rays, DVD-Audios, SHM-CDs, etc along with opening space for lps.

        If you were to do this, you would probably be breaking the law, particularly if you passed them on to someone else.

        Comment

        • MrGongGong
          Full Member
          • Nov 2010
          • 18357

          #5
          Have you done a "show hidden files" thing and then searched for them?
          iTunes is spawn of the devil IMV

          If you know the date you encoded them you should be able to see if the files exist....

          Mac computers are wonderful things but their software is pants

          Comment

          • richardfinegold
            Full Member
            • Sep 2012
            • 7544

            #6
            Originally posted by MrGongGong View Post
            Have you done a "show hidden files" thing and then searched for them?
            iTunes is spawn of the devil IMV

            If you know the date you encoded them you should be able to see if the files exist....

            Mac computers are wonderful things but their software is pants
            No; didn't I that could ask for "hidden files". Thanks for the suggestion!

            Comment

            • richardfinegold
              Full Member
              • Sep 2012
              • 7544

              #7
              Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
              If you were to do this, you would probably be breaking the law, particularly if you passed them on to someone else.
              Seeing as how these discs are my own personal property, not sure how I would be breaking the law...

              Comment

              • Serial_Apologist
                Full Member
                • Dec 2010
                • 37361

                #8
                Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
                No; didn't I that could ask for "hidden files". Thanks for the suggestion!
                They're often concealed in cakes delivered to prison inmates.

                Comment

                • johnb
                  Full Member
                  • Mar 2007
                  • 2903

                  #9
                  I'm totally ignorant of Macs and don't use iTunes but it seems to me that there are three possible issues:

                  - Whether the ripped files are still on your hard drive. Most ripping software includes, by default, a summary of the piece/composer in the track filenames so you should be able to search the hard drive to locate the files and the folder which contains them.

                  - Whether the folder containing the files is within the folders used by iTunes.

                  - The tags used in the files. (The standard recommendation for Windows tagging software is mp3tag, but that is no help for a Mac user.)

                  Comment

                  • Frances_iom
                    Full Member
                    • Mar 2007
                    • 2411

                    #10
                    Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
                    Seeing as how these discs are my own personal property, not sure how I would be breaking the law...
                    but the music is only licenced to you - if you dispose of the physical cd then the licence passes to another away from you (this applies I think both under UK and USA law) thus in UK at present you are subject to civil penalties re breach of copyright (making an illicit copy) - suspect in USA it may well be a criminal act

                    Comment

                    • Stunsworth
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 1553

                      #11
                      I doubt that iTunes would just remove music - I've been using it for years and everything is where I would expect it to be.

                      One thing comes to mind, when you ripped the CDs did you save them to an external drive that's no longer attached to your computer?

                      Also, have you at any time told iTunes to create a new iTunes music library?

                      Regarding SACDs, you will find it _very_ difficult to rip the SACD layer of any SACDs you have. If the SACD is dual layer (most are) you'll be able to rip the standard CD layer, but to get at the SACD layer you'll need a Playstation 3 with modified firmware.
                      Steve

                      Comment

                      • richardfinegold
                        Full Member
                        • Sep 2012
                        • 7544

                        #12
                        Originally posted by Frances_iom View Post
                        but the music is only licenced to you - if you dispose of the physical cd then the licence passes to another away from you (this applies I think both under UK and USA law) thus in UK at present you are subject to civil penalties re breach of copyright (making an illicit copy) - suspect in USA it may well be a criminal act
                        If you read Alpie's post, he says that I would be subject to penalties merely for disposing of my CDs. I acknowledged in my OP that when I borrowed my donated CD and made (or attempted to make) a copy of it, that this was probably a copyright violation (morally, I find myself blameless since I donated the CD in the first place, but of course morality and the law are two different things).

                        Comment

                        • richardfinegold
                          Full Member
                          • Sep 2012
                          • 7544

                          #13
                          Originally posted by Stunsworth View Post
                          I doubt that iTunes would just remove music - I've been using it for years and everything is where I would expect it to be.

                          One thing comes to mind, when you ripped the CDs did you save them to an external drive that's no longer attached to your computer?

                          Also, have you at any time told iTunes to create a new iTunes music library?

                          Regarding SACDs, you will find it _very_ difficult to rip the SACD layer of any SACDs you have. If the SACD is dual layer (most are) you'll be able to rip the standard CD layer, but to get at the SACD layer you'll need a Playstation 3 with modified firmware.
                          I rip using a Mac Air using a peripheral optical drive and store on an external HD. Itunes is directed to the external HD in the setting and all the CDs that I have ripped are on the same HD. Only certain files seem to go missing. I do disconnect the external HD when I back up to another HD. fwiw, the files are also missing on the backup HD
                          I am also not trying to backup the SACDs, for the reasons that you cite, Steve. Instead, I am trying to create shelf space for the sACDs that I own by offloading the CDs.

                          Comment

                          • Stunsworth
                            Full Member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 1553

                            #14
                            When you remove the hard drive with the music on it, do you eject it first in Finder or the desktop? It's possible that if you just pulled out the lead, or powered it off, that new files that were being held in memory wouldn't be written to the hard drive.

                            After saying that, it's not a problem I've ever come across in practice.
                            Steve

                            Comment

                            • Eine Alpensinfonie
                              Host
                              • Nov 2010
                              • 20565

                              #15
                              Originally posted by richardfinegold View Post
                              Seeing as how these discs are my own personal property, not sure how I would be breaking the law...
                              You are not breaking the law while the CDs remain with you. Once you part with them, the right to hanging on to a copy goes with them.

                              Comment

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