Tonight out of the blue when attempting to open iTunes on my Mac, it said that it could not locate the media library and asked me to choose a folder. After doing some searching online as to what this meant, I found this meant the .itl file. I keep all of my iTunes data on an external hard dive, so I selected the .itl file that was on there. To my surprise, it opened to a library that had not been updated since 2024. When I checked the file details it also said it hadn’t been modified since 2024 as well which confused me. In the same general iTunes folder I have on my external hard drive is also the media folder, in which all of the additional music I’ve added since that time is present and completely up to date. So I don’t know why the .itl itself seemingly stopped updating? Since I at least had all of my music still in my media folder, I just decided to create a new library and import the folder of music. However, it did not retain my play counts. I’m a bit of a data nerd and it really upsets me to think my play counts that have been collecting over the past nearly 15+ years would be permanently erased. I also have all of the music transferred over to my iPhone, in which I can check the play counts there through a Song Stats app I use, but in order to sync with the new library it would have to remove all of the songs, so my play counts would be removed from there too. After this I tried just using the 2024 .itl file and readding in the new music, but I get the same notification that all the music from my phone would have to be removed and replaced if I wished to sync it. So it seems this is not the correct file it wanted either, even though it’s the only one I have.
Does anyone have any information or advice on what may have happened here and what to do in this situation?? I’m at a loss.