Some songs are skipped over/broken on my iPhone; how can I find these?

Question

Sometimes when I go to play a song on my iPhone, it skips over it entirely and goes onto a song after it in the list.

The same happens when I try and play it in iTunes directly from the device - it gets a exclamation-mark-circle icon to its left when I try and play.

The songs have all been copied on by drag/drop from MP3 folders, so I suspect the copy process didn't completely properly. Is there a way I can find all these songs so I can re-copy them? (Trying to copy the entire album over again creates duplicate entries.)

Answer 1

Finally found an answer to this, thanks to Galley from iLounge!

1. Create a standard playlist called "Not Missing".
2. Drag your entire library into that playlist. Missing tracks cannot be copied to a playlist.

3. Create a smart playlist called "Missing" where:

   • Playlist - is not - Not Missing
   • (additional to this post) Media type - is - Music

You now have a playlist which contains only your songs with the dreaded exclamation mark, and you can re-add them from your original source.

Answer 2

There's a script to create a list of broken links on Doug's Applescripts called List MIA's :

"This script checks your entire iTunes library for missing (and presumed "dead") tracks–those that iTunes is unable to associate with a file and which are listed in iTunes with a "!"– and creates a text file listing these tracks by Artist - Album - Song Name which you can view using TextEdit."

Once you have a list, you can remove the dead tracks with another script Super Remove Dead Tracks and then use the list to figure out which tracks to re-import.

Answer 3

On your iphone, tap on music. Swipe left or right on a song, album or artist and a delete button will appear. Delete whichever item you don't like.