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Apple Says It Doesn't Know Why iTunes Users Are Losing Their Music Files (theverge.com)

Earlier this month, an Apple Music user James Pinkstone claimed that the online music streaming service deleted 122GB of music from his library for no apparent reason. Several Slashdot readers noted they had also faced a similar issue or knew someone who had. The iPhone maker has now acknowledged a bug in iTunes that is apparently causing the glitch, however, it adds that it doesn't really know why "some" users are facing this issue. The Verge reports: The company confirmed that "in an extremely small number of cases, users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission." However, Apple was unable to reproduce the bug, indicating it doesn't really know what's going on here. The company adds: We're taking these reports seriously as we know how important music is to our customers and our teams are focused on identifying the cause. We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we're releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards. If a user experiences this issue they should contact AppleCare.

10 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Digital hoarders by tysonedwards · · Score: 4, Informative

    The person in question is a composer. Further a large amounts of their music is in wav versus compressed audio formats to serve as a master of their work.

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    Thirty four characters live here.
  2. Re:Digital hoarders by rakslice · · Score: 4, Informative

    Based on the contents of my 24/96 FLAC folder it averages about 1.2GB/hour. Getting into the hundreds of GB is very doable.

  3. Re:Digital hoarders by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1, Informative

    There's really no point in 96khz ever. You can fully reproduce an analog signal with a digital one by simply making the sample rate double the spectrum that you need to capture. Since human hearing tops out at 20khz, there's no point in sampling more than the 44khz found in CD's, which means that extra information is effectively just wasted space. 24 bits per sample is also a waste unless you work in a studio type environment and are working with a master copy that you intend on mixing, however a human listener can't distinguish 16-bit from 24-bit.

  4. Re: iTunes Deletes Unverified Music. by topham · · Score: 1, Informative

    iTunes has never done what you've said, it is a blatant lie.

    You can have it scan directories and it will move files, but it has never identified files as "illegitimate" and deleted them.

  5. Re: iTunes Deletes Unverified Music. by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.cnet.com/forums/dis...

    http://9to5mac.com/2014/12/03/...

    http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/0...

    It appears they have in several iterations over the years. The GP is likely conflating several instances but i cannot find fault with it. I am somewhat concerned about your strict denial without even a simple Google search that brought up the links i posted and more.

  6. Re: Digital hoarders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    He probably didn't. iTunes scans your computer for music files and automatically "adds" them to your iTunes library. And then deletes them for you when it "makes them available from Apple Music."

  7. Re:Digital hoarders by Kjella · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually 96 kHz makes sense in a mixing setting too if you're altering the pitch of a recording like autotune, then you're effectively stretching/compressing the samples causing interpolation errors in the time domain not just the amplitude. But yes for a final mix 48kHz/44.1kHz is enough, though since both systems are in use another advantage is that you can get perfect sound both for a 44.1 kHz CD and a 48 kHz soundtrack for a movie while a conversion between them would be slightly lossy. But to audiophiles "studio grade" has become a thing like "military grade" is to crypto.

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    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  8. Re:Digital hoarders by NotAPK · · Score: 4, Informative

    These two videos are an excellent introduction to audio signal theory.

    Highly recommended to all readers enjoying this thread.

  9. i've been there.... by resfilter · · Score: 4, Informative

    i've never really used apple products, but my wife does the macbook iphone thing. we've had two experiences with it randomly deleting her shit.

    first time (this was about a year ago, not sure what itunes version):

    she got a new iphone, all was well. we wiped the old iphone. one day she dug up her old iphone, and decided to start using it to play music in her car. plugged it into the macbook.

    itunes asked if she'd like to sync with the new device. she said yes. it deleted all of the music on her computer, including physical files.

    plugged her new phone in, it acted as if it had never seen it before, and asked if she'd like to sync. it then deleted all of the music on her new phone as well.

    second time:

    she'd been using iphoto to organize all of her pictures (many thousands of them)

    fired up iphoto one morning, and all of her shit was gone, it was like she'd never used iphoto in the first place.

    no sign of the monolithic 'iphoto store' file, or anything. no original pictures. gone.

    there are two things my wife loves, pictures and music, and it systematically fucked her entire collection without warning. unfortunately many of these items had not been backed up. these are just my observations, i don't know why it would do these things, and i don't care. i no longer trust that peice of shit operating system or any of its devices, and i use incremental backups of her entire laptop using rsync now (not time machine, i don't trust it either)

    1. Re: i've been there.... by Rosyna · · Score: 3, Informative

      itunes asked if she'd like to sync with the new device. she said yes. it deleted all of the music on her computer, including physical files

      This did not occur. iTunes does not permit an iOS device to become the "master device" for songs. It will only copy songs to the iOS device (except for purchased songs, which it copies to the existing iTunes library). It's actually a very common complaint that iTunes won't copy all songs off an iOS device.