iTunes Library is Scrambled

[CThosB]

Apologies in advance if this is covered in a thread elsewhere, but I haven't been able to come up with anything that addresses this particular issue I am having.



Running High Sierra on an iMac Retina 5K, 27in 3.8 Ghz Intel Core i5 with 8GB memory

iTunes version 12.7.2.58

iTunes Library is stored on external drive through USB



I went to go play some Christmas tunes for the holiday and when I played a song, a completely different song, from a different artist/album/genre, played than what was labeled. I checked numerous other songs throughout my library and found the same issue throughout. Everything is scrambled and it seems to be isolated to music only (movies, TV shows, etc. seem fine).



If I select by artist, the album titles and songs that come up match the artist, but the album artwork is that of different artists albums. If I play a song, it's not a song from that album/artist/genre.



If I select by album, the opposite happens; the album artwork is correct but the album title and songs are that of a different artist/album/genre. Likewise, if I play a song, it's not a song from that album/artist/genre.



If I select by song, the song played is not the song listed.



Any help to correct this would be GREATLY appreciated

 

[MightyGem]

You could try rebuilding your iTunes Library:
https://www.kirkville.com/how-to-rebuild-your-itunes-library/

 

[Allen Davis]

High Sierra might be partially to blame. Storing your library on an external USB drive might be partially to blame. Myself, I'm still using plain jane Sierra 10.12.4 and I keep my music library on my main internal SSD. Often I can launch iTunes, select a playlist or an album, and certain songs won't play (iTunes reports it can't find it, so I manually track it down, select it, blah, blah, blah) and the song(s) then play. Next week the same thing can happen, with music files I've had to track down. I'm thinking I should trash my entire library, throw away some cache files and simply reload my entire library from scratch.