[Orange]

I have not seen this listed anywhere. My play count numbers are in the :smokey: "billions". This has shown up on about a third of the library. Some of the numbers are negative, or have a dash in front of the number. Seems like many of my ratings have disappeared too. I can reset each songs play count, but what's causing this? Help!

Some vitals:
Dual 1.8 PM, 3 ipods (3g and one 4g), all OS and itunes updates installed, permissions repaired, mac janitor run, and all of us sync on the same user account.

Thanks in advance,
nubee with a year under my belt

[Franz Josef]

Very strange - assuming you've not actually played the tracks 52 bn times.

[Orange]

Some of the songs were definitly not my favorites, as for the others, maybe a million times.
Seriously though, maybe its a code? My mac's at home, Im at work, so the actual number I posted was for reference. They all seem to be different and some have dashes preceeding them. Fingers crossed I am not heading for a melt-down. guess it's time to back up the purchased music

[thuh Freak]

here's my guess. somehow the itunes music library got corrupted, and unnaturally inflated the numbers really high. in compy sci, when numbers get really high, unless the programmer takes some steps to avoid it, incrementing the number will cause it to loop around. the bottom of the number barrel isn't zero a lot of the time though. sometimes its negative <really hugeness>.

as for how it got corrupted, i have no clue. i suggest you seek out the library file (i think its in ~/Music or ~/Library, and its called somethign like "iTunes Music Library.???"). Make some backups of it. If memory serves me well, there are two versions of the file, one with an XML name extension, and the other with something else (can't remember). It's the non-XML one that you'd want to get rid of (and backup). I suggest you completely close out (ie, Quit) iTunes before you backup and remove the library file. Once you have done this, re-opening iTunes should re-create the binary library, from the XML library (if you have a lot of music, this may take a noticeable amount of time). Hopefully the corruption was limited to that file, and it should be fixed now.

[Orange]

Thanks, I will try that tonight (PST), and update with my results.
Gota say, I am always amazed by the collective knowledge out there.

[DMBand0026]

<sarcasm>Turn off repeat</sarcasm>


Sorry. I have nothing of value to add to this thread.

[Orange]

I actually had three itunes music library files, one was labeled "old". Its kind was listed as a unix executable file. One of the other library files was identified as a final cut express file. I copied my whole library, including music, to another user and messed around with the library files. It looks like the offending corrupt file is the one with all the ratings and play counts. Im screwed! Oh well, I'm sure my * ratings have changed anyway. 5000 songs times 5 sec to rate each one, ARRRRRRG