Does the Apple iTunes mother ship remember what songs I have already purchased?
May 29, 2006 9:57 AM   Subscribe

Does the Apple iTunes mother ship remember what songs I have already purchased?

I had iTunes installed on a Windows computer, with a library of songs all purchased from the iTunes store. That computer is now completely dead, and a new one will be purchased this week. My question is, when I install iTunes on the new computer, will I be able to download the songs I already bought without paying for them again?
posted by iconjack to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)
 


Nope. Right or wrong (probably wrong), it's your responsibility to make backups of your purchased music.
posted by dmd at 10:15 AM on May 29, 2006


It looks like Apple's policy in practice is a bit more forgiving. A success story has been circulating recently abobut redownloading lost music:

http://thecontent.wordpress.com/2006/05/24/itunes-lets-people-re-download-all-your-music-once/

Looks like you just have to ask really nicely.
posted by jweed at 10:17 AM on May 29, 2006


From personal experience, they let me re-download my music when my hard drive crashed. It was about 300 songs.Two caveats: I was not only using a Mac, I owned 3 iPods & 3 Macs & had Apple Care, and my hard drive crashed in the middle of a back- up they were directing.

However, all of my music is now backed up to CDs.
posted by clarkstonian at 10:46 AM on May 29, 2006


They give you one chance to redownload everything, but only once. You have to contact support.
posted by bonaldi at 10:51 AM on May 29, 2006


Beaten by bonalidi, but they will let you download everything again once in instances where Bad Things Happened.
posted by lowlife at 11:12 AM on May 29, 2006


Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for their answers. I will ask them nicely and hope for the best.

I realize that this is personal anectdote, but my iPod+iTunes experience has been horrible. Stop reading right now if you don't want to hear my bitching!

1. 99 cents is too much per song.
2. iTunes is the only way to get songs into the iPod.
3. iTunes gave me install problems from the get-go.
4. The iTunes user interface is lousy in my opinion.
5. Proprietary format so I can't play my purchased music on a regular mp3 player.
6. Even though I had a gift card, I still had to give them a credit card number.
7. There is much flakyness when syncing to the iPod.
8. At one point, iTunes would not copy songs to the iPod, saying the computer was not authorized to play the songs. Huh? Had to re-install iTunes to solve that one.
posted by iconjack at 11:32 AM on May 29, 2006


iTunes is the only way to get songs into the iPod.

My wife uses Media Center to load songs onto her iPod, her Rio, and her Archos. I use it on my iRiver. The same software works on all devices.

Perhaps the other download services such as Rhapsody or Napster have a replacement strategy that is not at Apple's discretion?
posted by meehawl at 11:37 AM on May 29, 2006


2 things: how badly did your old computer crash? if the hard drive is still good you may be able to transplant it somewhere (either into the new machine or into an external case) and get your stuff off that way.

also, wrt your 5 and 6: burn it to CD and then you can rip and play it anywhere (with additional loss of quality depending on how you rerip it). on 6, if you use the Redeem link on the iTMS homepage you won't have to put in a credit card number (but if you try to do it any other way you will). it's weird like that. (personally I went back to buying real CDs - I like iTunes but 128kbit sucks.)
posted by mrg at 11:58 AM on May 29, 2006


6. Um you don't have to give them a credit card when using an iTunes gift card. There is a special space on iTunes to load up your account with just the card number.

Aside from that the songs I purchased from them should be re-downloadable regardless. Apple touts their DRM as the cat's meow, so they shouldn't care if you need to download them again.
posted by Gungho at 2:10 PM on May 29, 2006


As an aside, some services - notably Virgin Digital - have a one-click-download-everything guarantee should anything nasty happen.

(Disclaimer: I work for a Virgin-branded company, but not Virgin Digital.)
posted by jamescridland at 2:21 PM on May 29, 2006


You can convert iTunes music to standard mp3 using an analog recording of it -- though you'll have to mess with recording levels and equalizers or whatnot, plus having to be done real-time and not automatically, but it can be done.
posted by vanoakenfold at 9:01 AM on June 23, 2006


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