Take this tune, I want to lose it. Take this song, I'll never use it.

April 19, 2013 2:21 PM

I was changing my iTunes email address, which is my iTunes I. D. My old email address is going away, necessitating the change. I got to looking in my purchases, and all of them were there, under the new I. D. but there were a handful of songs (6 or 7?) listed as purchased by me that I DID NOT purchase. A bunch of show tunes (not that there is anything wrong with that).

I keep a close eye on my various financial accounts, and there are no unexplained purchases anywhere. How concerned should I be? My immediate inclination is that this is an Apple glitch, in that my new I. D., which is an email address I have had since the advent of Gmail, would be hard for someone to use, I think.

I do not plan on downloading any of this music that I have not purchased. What would you do?

posted by Danf to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Have you ever redeemed a free song or album code from Starbucks or something like that? A while back I realized a bunch of songs I didn't purchase were there because the code I'd gotten on a Starbucks free song card was actually for a sampler album not a single song.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 2:30 PM on April 19, 2013

Response by poster: No, not that I remember. I dug around for purchase dates, but cannot find those.
posted by Danf at 2:33 PM on April 19, 2013

It it at all possible that a family member or guest has an i-device that may have had your Apple ID in it and unknowingly bought things as you when they thought they were being logged in as themselves. Or that you may have borrowed a device and left yourself logged in. I wasn't sure what sort of timeframe you were looking at here. Were you charged for the items/ The Apple support isn't awesome with this sort of thing but they may have more data and be able to clear this up in a jiffy.
posted by jessamyn at 2:50 PM on April 19, 2013

Search your iTunes email receipts for the songs that you did not purchase. If you got charged, call Apple support to try to get refunds. I'm sure Apple can tell you if/when the items were downloaded/played.
posted by wongcorgi at 3:02 PM on April 19, 2013

To find purchase dates in iTunes, scroll to the bottom of the main window and choose Manage->Accounts, then Purchase History->See All.
posted by Georgina at 4:13 PM on April 19, 2013

Response by poster: Well this is embarrassing. . .Apparently on Dec. 21 of last year, I "bought" a random assortment of obscure show tunes, from iTunes, in one "purchase" that I paid $0.00 for. I have no memory of this but they are certainly in my library.

I still have no memory of it, but the only logical conclusion I can draw is that I am responsible for these songs being in there.

Thank you all, anyway, for trying to help.
posted by Danf at 7:14 AM on April 20, 2013