iTunes: Music Migrating Onto Other Playlists

[Tenarrows]

Sometimes I will make a new playlist. Let's call it playlist "D". The next day I will open up iTunes and go to playlist "D", and "magically" tracks from a previously made playlist, (which we will call playlist "B") shows up in the "D" playlist. On top of that, playlist "B" is missing. But generally songs from one playlist will sometimes "magically" migrate onto another playlist regardless if the original playlist is missing. Anyone have this happen?

 

[Kaveman]

This does not sound good, could be your hard drive dying, ensure your files, especially your music is backed up.

 

[Tenarrows]

Wow, was not expecting that kind of response. But thanks for the warning. I do have an external HD hooked up to my Mac at all times, and Time Machine is running. So worse comes to worse, I will be able to recover the majority of my HD.

 

[Kaveman]

Its pointing to a corrupt iTunes database file.

Quit iTunes

Try moving the iTunes Library.itl file from your iTunes Music Folder to your desktop and see if it will use the xml file to rebuild your library.

You will probably loose your playlists.

 

[Tenarrows]

That would be bad news. I have hundreds of playlists and many are in a particular order. So losing my playlists is something I would like to avoid.

This issue happens from time to time but has not adversely affected my use of iTunes. Sadly I don't know when it started so I don't know how far back in Time Machine to go to replace the damaged file. I may have to wait it out, and see if the problem gets much worse before taking action.