Traktor Songs Go Missing, No Changes to Song Locations?

skymakai

Traktor Pro 3 v3.11.1 (17) - MacOS 14.4 (M1)

Issue:

All songs are in library, consistency check and everything is good.  

Come back a few weeks later having not used Traktor or Music (iTunes) and made no changes to song library, Traktor shows several missing songs. The songs are still on disk and can be reconnected. But why is Traktor losing them?

Troubleshooting:

Checked Traktor has Full Disk Access

Checked that Traktor Library, Settings are not in iCloud locations (or Optimize Mac Storage is disabled)

wayfinder

then i think i'm out of ideas for now. have they been behaving since you re-added them?

edit: actually, you could take a look inside an older backup file of your collection.nml and compare the file name and path stored in the ENTRY tags with the actual file name and location on disk... and also to the now-current collection.nml's ENTRY. any differences?

lord-carlos

When you scrol to the right, the file location. Does that match with the file on the disk? And can you open it with a 3rd part app like VLC or what have you (not Music/iTunes)

I read a few rapports about Music app replacing some songs with lossless files that are copy protected.

skymakai

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/144392#Comment_144392

Yes, I should have clarified… the songs ARE still where they should be. Traktor just seems to lose them.

wayfinder

do these files have anything in common? did you add them in the same session? did you add any others during that session? did you do the consistency check that showed them correctly during that same session? or in a different, later session? do you save tags in your track files? if so, after you re-added them, do they now show the import date as the first time you added them or the second time?

it might be that you performed a successful consistency check after adding the tracks, in the same session, but then traktor crashed on exit, and did not manage to save the collection in time, thereby losing the tracks added during that session - then, weeks later, you do another consistency check, and traktor thinks it's never seen the tracks before.

skymakai

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/144641#Comment_144641

A lot of good questions.

The files do not have anything in common. They were added years ago. Consistency check showed no missing tracks... Traktor closed properly... And when re-opened, no tracks were missing.

Last time I opened Traktor was a few weeks ago when I had a gig. I had previously done the above and found no missing tracks. I added no new tracks when I played the gig.

It's only when opening Traktor a few weeks later, I see missing tracks, all seemingly random in their file type and when they were imported.

wayfinder

If you look at the import date in the traktor browser, what does it say?

skymakai

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/144851#Comment_144851

Okay, checked again to be sure...

5/6 are the same artist. 3/6 were imported the same day (in 2017). The rest were imported on various different days.

What would this indicate? Corrupted files?

wayfinder

i'm not sure that paints a clear picture :/ could be something like that, yeah. could also well be something else. could be that you renamed the tracks (perhaps even automatically, like through some autotagger or file name cleaner), or moved them from where you originally added them to their current location, and forgot about relocating them inside traktor.

skymakai

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/144856#Comment_144856

Most certainly did not rename or re-tag any files. Nor did I move any of them.

wayfinder

then i think i'm out of ideas for now. have they been behaving since you re-added them?

edit: actually, you could take a look inside an older backup file of your collection.nml and compare the file name and path stored in the ENTRY tags with the actual file name and location on disk... and also to the now-current collection.nml's ENTRY. any differences?

skymakai

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/144875#Comment_144875

This was a helpful suggestion.

I went through the collection backups. Though I hadn't opened Traktor, I found that it's creating backups every few days. Perhaps this has to do with the Native Access Helper, as I noticed it was requiring me to enter my password almost daily when starting my computer.

Upon comparing the collection backups, I see no change for about a week. Then, I start to see entries changed/removed. It's almost a month of backups before I see the particular missing tracks appear to show up int the changed/removed entries.

What made the entries show up as removed/changed? A simple tag: "Album is part of a Compilation".

As I use iTunes to organize and tag my tracks, this tag changes the folder location of the tracks, putting them in a folder called "Compilations".

Still not sure why this is happening, as I hadn't manually made that change to the compilation tag. But, the issue is likely not because of Traktor, instead is an issue with iTunes/Music. Next time this happens, the first thing I'll check is whether iTunes shows this tag has been changed.

wayfinder

glad you found out what happened!

lord-carlos

Interesting. There have been some similar threads to yours and now I wonder if it's all because of Music app.