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I'm using iTunes Match on my computer, but I have some titles in my library that are missing the actual media.

Here is my process:

  • convert a cd to mp3
  • put an album in my iTunes
  • iTunes Match makes the match
  • after that match, I delete the source because it is in the cloud

But when i do that, iTunes puts an exclamation point at the beginning of the line of titles from this album because it cannot find the file anymore. I just have to delete these titles and next time they will be downloaded from the cloud.

Is there a way to select all these "not found" files and delete them at once ? because if i don't do that, next time iTunes will go to such a song, it will skip it instead of downloading from iTunes Match.

It would be ideal to sort the list of songs with this special column so I can clean things up.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You can add the columns iCloud Status and iCloud Download and sort song lists by those criteria.

All songs that didn't upload will include the missing tracks so you can clean them appropriately.

You could also attack the inverse problem. Make sure everything you care about is in the iCloud and matched. Once that process is complete, you could turn off iTunes Match on that computer, quit iTunes and archive the entire music folder. Then you could delete the library folder and start with a fresh library and turn on match to restore all playlists, metadata, play counts, etc...

At that point, you could decide to re-import some or all of the songs so you don't need to download all the music again, but most with broadband are happy to just re-download what they need rather than have everything in one place.

I have done this exact process, and when I go to iTunes and select a track I want to delete, the following dialog pops up:

delete dialog for iTunes Match

If you are not getting that dialog, then I can only presume some other corruption is present in your Library.

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    Thanks for the explanation ... In fact the best thing i have found, maybe better to do frequently than the disable iTunes Match solution, is to use this Apple Script from dougscripts.com : dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=removedeadsuper Super Remove Dead Tracks
    – Fredv
    Commented Jan 2, 2013 at 22:03
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Over in the post "Can I easily view all songs that iTunes can't locate in Finder?" is a great workaround to this issue. You will end up with a playlist of active song files and dead song files.

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  • the workaround of this post seems not to work with iTunes Match but there is a link to dougscripts.com who has a very good apple script for that
    – Fredv
    Commented Jan 2, 2013 at 22:00
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Now with iCloud status too I didn't want to create a static playlist with any iCloud songs since that would apparently copy them locally. The following steps worked to display the songs that couldn't be found and weren't iCloud:

  1. Display Songs.
  2. Sort by iCloud.
  3. Use mouse click on first non-iCloud song, scroll to end, shift-click to select all non-iCloud songs.
  4. File->New->Playlist from Selection to create Found playlist.
  5. File->New->Smart Playlist called Not Found: Match Music for all, Playlist is Music, Playlist is not Found
  6. Display Not Found as songs (View->View As->Songs, Sort by iCloud)
  7. Again select all but iCloud.
  8. File->New->Playlist from selection to create NotFoundNorICloud.
  9. Display NotFoundNorICloud as Songs.
  10. Select all and shift-delete if you want to remove the disconnected library entries.
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