How To Remove Broken Songs From iTunes Library

Tony Williams | Sep 08, 2009 | Comments

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I’ve just found an amazing free way to remove broken songs from iTunes.  I have over 30k tracks in my music collection, so finding all broken songs i.e. those that have a ‘!’ mark next to them is nigh on impossible.  With this clever little trick you can create a new playlist showing all the broken links that you can then either delete, re-import or find on another source….

  1. Create a New Smart playlist called ‘All Songs’: Create a rule like ‘Artist is NOT ‘123456789‘ – whatever you choose make sure there is no artist with that namesmart-playlist-1-thumb
  2. Now make a regular playlist called (create playlist shortcut: CTRL+N) ‘All Live Songs’
  3. Now create a second smart playlist called ‘Missing Songs‘ with the following rules: ‘Playlist is All Songs’ and ‘Playlist is not All Live Songs’smart-playlist-2-thumb
  4. Then select all your tracks in the All Songs playlist and drag them to the empty ‘All Live Songs’ playlist.
  5. When you copied all the songs to the empty All Live Songs playlist, only the live songs were copied.

So, if you go back to the Missing Songs playlist that is showing songs that are in All Songs which includes the missing songs, but are not in the All Live Songs playlist which doesn’t include the missing songs, then all that’s left in the Missing Songs playlist are the broken songs!

Update (thanks Paulsuk): To delete the matched files, hold down Shift (or, on a Mac, Option) while deleting.

Thanks to Thilak for an excellent tip.  Definitely my favourite one for a long time.



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  • Thanks for the linkback. Actual credits must definitely go to some user on Apple forum. Simply clever! I forgot where I read it though...
  • sds2
    Thanks - works BUT how do you then remove the tracks from iTunes ?

    Cannot remove from Smart Playslist so I created a new playlist called 'remove missing files' and dragged Smart Playlist 'Missing files' to new playlist.

    But when I tried to delete all tracks from my new playlist 'remove missing files' they only deleted from my the playlist and original files stayed in iTunes ???

    Thanks
  • paulsuk
    Hold down Shift (or, on a Mac, Option) while deleting.
    HTH
  • Ralph
    i have a german itunes so i am not sure how the english naming is but this worked for me since i did not use the "star rating" :
    go to the missing files playlist and mark all songs with 5 stars. after that you can go back to "music", show the star rating in a column, sort this colum. then you have all your missing "5 star" songs at the beginning and you can select them and delete them.
  • guest
    #1 - the screenshot doesn't match your text.
    Text: Artist is not 123456789
    Screenshot: Artist is 123456789
  • r u for real??!!! the point is you can use any string as long as it doesn't match any track!!
  • Uh, no the point they are making is that the auto playlist will find NOTHING if its's looking for an artist named 123456789. The point is to get it to list EVERYTHING. Screenshot's are what people follow, so they are likely to not change "is" to "is not".
  • Bodhi
    I believe you corrected the wrong one (of the text and screenshot that did not match). The text version was correct (before you changed it). If you intend for the All Songs playlist to hold all the songs, then the artist name should NOT match the 123456789. This way, all the songs show up in the playlist.

    You have:
    "1. Create a New Smart playlist called ‘All Songs’: Create a rule like ‘Artist is ‘123456789‘ – whatever you choose make sure there is no artist with that name"
    but it should be

    "1. Create a New Smart playlist called ‘All Songs’: Create a rule like ‘Artist is NOT ‘123456789‘ – whatever you choose make sure there is no artist with that name"

    Great tip, thanks!
  • Tom Krotchko
    This simply does not work in my version of iTunes v9, 64 bit for PC.

    I've defined all songs as a smart playlist and it indeed finds all the songs.
    I've defined all live songs as a static playlist and it has all the songs

    But missing songs is always empty.
  • Name
    THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY A LOT OF TIME! I am now jamming out to most hardcore music I have because I'm a good mood.....Thanks!!!!!
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