iTunes will not import some .mp3 files.

[blue gekko]

I am running Mac OS X 10.5.8
My friend gave me a USB with some songs on it. These songs work fine on his Windows OS.
This is a step-by-step of what I did to try open the .mp3 files.
-I double click the .mp3 files.
-iTunes opens but songs are not imported.
-I drag and drop files into library but nothing happens. No error message.
-I plug in iPod, drag files straight to iPod to bypass iTunes library.
-ERROR "cannot be played on this iPod".
-I'm beginning to suspect viruses or corrupt files.
-I open up .mp3 files in Quicktime. They play fine.
-I try VLC player, RealPlayer and Finder's Quick Look. They all play fine.

Apparently iTunes is the only player (that I have) that will not open these .mp3 files. Please help me fix this! It's not that I'm desperate to listen to these tunes, but I'm desperate to see if anything is wrong with my iTunes or computer.

NOTE: Only this selection of songs will not play on iTunes, I have no issues with other .mp3 files.

Thank you very much.

 

[Curiosity]

In order to get iTunes to add a tune to its library, I choose "Music" in the sidebar area, hit cmd-o to open the directory where the tune is, and click on that tune. The file is imported (or rather the information is - I prefer to have only the info in there) into the list of tunes, then I drag that item to the playlist where I want it to be accessed.

 

[VirtualTracy]

I know this isn't the most graceful method but it works.

If you have a few songs that iTunes just won't recognise, despite their prefix being .mp3, but QuickTime will happily recognise them.

Open them up in QuickTime then choose "Save As" and select movie and save them to wherever you like. I usually choose the Desktop as it's easy to find them. I think by default QuickTime will save them to the same directory as the originals.

Once they have been saved as .mov files then Ctrl-click each file and choose "Open With" .... iTunes.

Do this as many times as you need to or you could try to bulk drag them onto an iTunes Library window.

Once imported into iTunes, convert them as you desire ... mp3, AAC etc etc.

Why this is happening to these songs is anyones guess. It's happened to me on more than one occasion and I don't ask why, I just get on with the above method as the files only usually count under the dozen and it doesn't really take me much time to do this sort of roundabout converting.