If you're concerned about your iTunes mp3 library crashing randomly, you are not alone. There are a few reports on Internet of iTunes mp3 libraries being corrupted after the update to iTunes 7.1. Why does it happen?
The guilty party seems to be the P2P application LimeWire, since it appears so far that the corrupted libraries happened when LimeWire was set to update an iTunes mp3 library with new songs.
It's probably either a conspiracy against file-sharers or a bit of buggy code in the iTunes 7.1 update, but it seems like the cause is a bit unclear. It's also blurred exactly what is getting destroyed; I'm guessing that only the library file is at risk, which isn't nearly as sinister as corrupted MP3s, or nearly as hard to fix.
More on the list of conspiracy theories is iTunes songs that can't be re-downloaded. While you should always back up your music (hint), it's not a perfect world and things happen. If you happen to lose your library, Apple is pretty sympathetic, and a quick email to iTunes Support will let you re-download all the music you paid for.
However, you can only do this once, but it's better than not at all. The issue seems to be that while you're allowed to re-download, you may not be able to get everything back. Obviously, you won't be able to download free songs, which makes sense. What makes less sense is that you may not even be able to re-download some music you did pay for. It seems that if files have been changed since the time you downloaded them, you won't be able to download them again.
Unfortunately, no-one outside of Apple knows what "changed" means. It could be as little as a different encoding or a different song length, but either way, it's gone. So if you've got a lot of purchased music, be sure to back it up along with the rest of your library.
It seems like a rough week to be an iTunes users, but the two issues above aren't too widespread, so don't despair and keep on rocking'.
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