# How do I find these five missing songs? (iTunes/iPod) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2007, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727 "2007-05-19T16:02:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2007, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/1 "2007-05-19T16:02:21Z")
I have 2700 songs on iTunes but only 2695 songs on my iPod. Short of doing a ridiculously complicated line by line comparison, is there a way to figure out which five songs aren’t transferring? ---
**Author:** ![Subway\_Prophet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@Subway\_Prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subway_Prophet)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2007, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/2 "2007-05-19T16:41:22Z")
I have no idea. I just know that I’m pretty fed up with iTunes losing some of my tracks (7997 files, half of which aren’t really on the iPod), which I’m attempting to solve by **restoring the iPod to factory condition and re-synchronizing the library**. It’s a bit like nuking the site from orbit, but if you’re patient then it might take care of the problem. I really get the impression that iTunes wasn’t designed for large media libraries. You can’t really organize your files with it, and managing playlists involves long sessions of scrolling through a single monolithic set of titles. iTunes was really built to sell stuff via the iTunes Music Store; everything else was pretty much poorly tacked on. I’d be using something else (like MediaMonkey, which looks promising, and Winamp is “almost there”) if anything else handled video files satisfactorily. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/3 "2007-05-19T17:19:52Z")
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet] I just know that I’m pretty fed up with iTunes losing some of my tracks (7997 files, half of which aren’t really on the iPod), which I’m attempting to solve by **restoring the iPod to factory condition and re-synchronizing the library**. It’s a bit like nuking the site from orbit, but if you’re patient then it might take care of the problem. [/QUOTE] Aw hells no, I ain’t doing that. I had to do that last week for some intermittent issue that not even a Mac “genius” could figure out and it takes _forever_ to reload everything. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/4 "2007-05-19T17:54:22Z")
Oh good god, I give up. I just synched my iPod and I have 2701 songs on iTunes and **2726** songs on the iPod. I did add one song to iTunes since the last synch last night but suddenly 25 more songs have appeared. ---
**Author:** ![Subway\_Prophet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@Subway\_Prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subway_Prophet)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2007, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/5 "2007-05-19T18:36:15Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Oh good god, I give up. I just synched my iPod and I have 2701 songs on iTunes and **2726** songs on the iPod. I did add one song to iTunes since the last synch last night but suddenly 25 more songs have appeared. [/QUOTE] I would bet good money that the number of _files_ has remained the same, it’s just the number of _entries_ that has increased. More angsty asides: I had a bugger of a problem with all the playlists doubling every time I synchronized, after I imported my Winamp playlists. The problem went away only after I deleted all playlists and rebuilt them one at a time. I’m reminded of the saying about the Model-T. It comes in any color you like, as long as you want it in black. You can manage your tunes any way you want to, as long as you never deviate from our (Apple’s) way of doing it. Face it, Mac-heads. iTunes sucks rancid tofu gravy from the stale, time-worn teat of conformity. I can only see bitter irony in the famous 1984 commercial, now. ---
**Author:** ![11811](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/9d8465/32.png) [@11811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/11811)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/6 "2007-05-20T00:03:36Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Oh good god, I give up. I just synched my iPod and I have 2701 songs on iTunes and **2726** songs on the iPod. I did add one song to iTunes since the last synch last night but suddenly 25 more songs have appeared. [/QUOTE] I think I know where your problem originates. 1. do you have preferences set to synch manually? 2. did you amend the information in some of the files, ie, change the genre to something intelligent? that might be your problem. With the iPod connected, view the songs by name, scroll through, and look for duplicates. ---
**Author:** ![Key\_Lime\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/48db29/32.png) [@Key\_Lime\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Key_Lime_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-find-these-five-missing-songs-itunes-ipod/404727/7 "2007-05-20T00:30:34Z")
Probably unhelpful WAG: Can you cut & paste the two lists into Excel, and then have Excel compare the two lists & give the difference?