iTunes won't copy songs

[Memento]

My iTunes will not copy two cds that I have, which is leading me to endless frustration.. I can upload anything else by this artist but not the two releases.. which bothers me as I have their entire discography on my computer and would like it on my iPod.

The releases are MP3 Sound Format, and they aren't copy protected.. yet they never load into iTunes. Does anyone know why?

[cjmnews]

Have you tried using the File->Add File to Library and navigating to your CD and selecting the songs?

Are you getting any error messages?

[moriond]

As a follow-on to cjmnews' suggestion about using File -> Add to Library for mp3 CDs instead of File -> Import as you do for Audio CDs, you might want to read this post (http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=819156#post819156) for more details about Import vs Add to Library. When you import audio CDs, in general, you need to supply information about Artist, Album, and track names (or verify that the entries supplied by CDDB match what you want) and also specify the output encoding format that your audio is ripped to (mp3, AAC, Apple Lossless, wav, AIFF, etc.) and the amount of compression (bit-rate and frequency). Mp3 files already have their tagging information and audio formats specified; they just need to have this information added to the iTunes Music Library.

So in general, if you are adding audio content from mp3 CDs, or are transferring files (audio, video, jpegs, pdfs, etc.) from one iTunes library to another using data CDs or DVDs, use Add to Library. Hope this helps

[Memento]

I usually try File - Add to libary for most of my songs on my computer. But for some reason these two singles will not upload into the libary at all. I've looked around and several other people have this problem with these specific singles. I'm really confused about why they won't upload into iTunes yet other releases by this band will without any problem.

I don't get any error message, It allows me to click add to libary and select the folder. It then goes to iTunes and the new songs do not show up on the list, and the number of songs do not increase.. it's like iTunes just ignores the songs.

[BubbaQ]

I too am having the same problem. I have a number of mp3 files that will play just fine in Windows Media Player, and the properties of the file say "MP3 File", but when I use Add File, Add Folder, or drag and drop the files, Itunes goes back to the Library list and shows nothing. It's exactly as Memento has described. Any further ideas?

[rockmyplimsoul]

Could it have something to do with your itunes settings, i.e. if you do not have both "Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checked? If these are not checked, and you select "add file to library" and point to a file on a CD, wouldn't itunes expect to leave the source file in place? (in this case, on your cd) Maybe try copying the mp3 from the cd to a folder on your hard drive first, then add to library.

[BubbaQ]

For me... Both of the boxes you mentioned are checked. Also, the files I am trying to add are on the hard drive. Itunes simply ignores them when I try to add them... in any way.
Any other ideas?

[moriond]

My only other thoughts are that this has to do with the mp3 tag header formats that are being used, since in order to create library entries in the iTunes Music Library.xml database file, iTunes extracts the information from the tags. If it can't create the entry because of a problem with one of the fundamental fields then it also won't be able to include the pointer to the file location (that is part of the database entry).

I think that if I were working with these files, I'd first try to find out about the source program that created them (if this is known). For example, if a number of files were released from the same source, but one or two of them failed to import, I'd use File-> Get Info (or its keyboard shortcut equivalent: ctrl+i on PCs; or cmd+i on Macs) and look at the Summary Panel page of the files that did import -- what mp3 format, id3 tag version, and type of encoding was used?

If you have access to a tag editor, try making a copy of the file, stripping out the tags, and seeing whether the resulting files will import into iTunes. If they do, that would be one key that the problem lies in the header format of the tags.