meara, check the trash. And the actual music folder itself. When I transitioned from old mac to new + ipod, weirdness happened (despite the music being on an external drive) and most of the stuff it thought it lost was IN the music folder, just not in the xml library. I did such a halfassed, uhmaybethisworks job, I can't say for certain. But worth a look.

Call iTunes tech support. From what I've heard tell the first time someone loses their library like this they will let you redownload.

Thanks ND--I emailed them, yesterday, and am awaiting the reply. Fingers crossed it is a good one. I don't THINK I have requested this before--I believe the last time I had crazy crashing harddrive, I was able to use backup and iPod to get it all back.

Urk. I had a scare earlier this summer when my dad poured coffee on the laptop so I finally backed up iTunes for the first time ever. Took 30-some discs - how on earth did I get so much music?

Not that it's much use to me since I think I left my iPod in a bar last night.

meara, do you know what you're missing?

I left my iPod in a bar last night.

Nooooooooooo!!!!!!

Oooooh, in a bar?!?! That's awful!! Any chance you'll get it back???

I do know what I'm missing--at least, the purchased music (you can look at your "download history" in iTunes). There's a couple of CD's I've put on there that I have, that I can put on a again. There's some mashups that I don't remember where I got, and I'm sure there's some songs I put on and don't remember. But mostly these days I get stuff from buying it on iTunes.

So, iTunes wrote me back and said "you can redownload MOST of it".

But they claim SOME of the songs have changed or are no longer available anymore. So I can't have those ones. It's about 20 out of the 160, but I'm HIGHLY suspicious because a few of them are songs that I downloaded not two weeks ago. WTF??

So, still asking the Hivemind--what's a good way to get music via non-iTunes ways? Because I still do not intend to pay for that music twice.

but I'm HIGHLY suspicious because a few of them are songs that I downloaded not two weeks ago. WTF??

It happens quite a bit. Contracts with record labels expire and lots of stuff can come and go from iTunes. It has also happened quite a bit with the TV and movie catalog.

Can't help you on the other downloads, sorry.

If you put a song name into isohunt, it will come up with albums with the song on it. At least, it did a while ago. This is why I now have a stupid number of "Greatest Hits of 19XX" albums -- I figure the artist gets screwed on that kind of compilation anyway.

Yeah, but on songs that I downloaded two weeks ago that are new songs? And still available in the iTunes store? The ones that I downloaded two years ago, sure, I believe that. (They are probably still there too, and available under a different way, and they can't give them to me that way)

And I actually just checked, and they apparently didn't really read what I wrote anyway, and just made my WHOLE download history available. Rather that just the part I needed. So most of what they said they couldn't give me, I didn't need anyway, I still had copies of.

It's just a few songs that I downloaded within the past month.

Given that you have a list handy, you might try posting in music and/or LJ in case anyone can help you out?