4 million iTunes songs disappear, speculations abound

"MacNN did the math..."

Is it that hard to do the math? I guess bloggers aren't too hot on that...

I think it's because Apple engineered a music quality assessment algorithm that analyzed the library and deemed that 4 million tracks are not in fact "music".

Did anyone check to see if there was still any Spice Girls in the library?

And then there are of course the whole singles v. albums thing... lots and lots of tracks are on iTunes several times on that account alone.

One possible explanation could be that different content for different countries might have made an accurate calculation a bit difficult.

With the same band signed to different labels in different territories, songs might have simply ended up being counted twice or more.

"Typo"? I don't think I've ever reached for the 6 key and accidentally hit the 10 key instead.

I like how the comments are fulfilling the "Speculations Abound" part of the headline so we don't have to go looking very far.

They probably accidentally included the songs they downloaded back in those heady days when Napster was the anti-corporate bad boy, and LimeWire was trying to pretend they were legit, and the folks at Apple were like, "dude, we totally need to invent something to put all this free music in so we don't have to keep burning CDs. Or at least improve and re-market some existing technology."

it does sound like someone (from competition?) challenged them to prove those 10 m songs and they had to show the number of actual songs minus remixes or compilation doubles or songs deleted since last recount. Could it be that the 10 m number was out of thin air just to impress and was rectified just now?

Damn it! To think I had just filled up my paypal account with $10MM to buy all the songs . . . at least I'll be making some good money off the 2.61% savings rate!

Other then the comment section, where is the "speculation abound"?

The other several million, still kicking baby....