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How to recover purchased itunes songs after computer crashed?

M

McPaul

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 24, 2006
98
7
Vancouver
I've been reading this site for a couple of years, this is my first time typing.

Computer crashed, nothing is accessable, at the advice of my nearest mac dealer, I did an erase and restore with my system disks, but now itunes says "all the music for my account has already been downloaded."

How can I recover this?

Thank you.
 
You can't.. they're good for a one-time download, except if you didn't complete it for some reason but that's obviously not the case.

Back up your music from now on!
 
Contact Apple...they have been known to allow you to redownload your music. They'll give you a lecture on backing up your purchased music first though. Listen to them...it makes life much easier to know that everything is backed up.
 
McPaul said:
I've been reading this site for a couple of years, this is my first time typing.

Computer crashed, nothing is accessable, at the advice of my nearest mac dealer, I did an erase and restore with my system disks, but now itunes says "all the music for my account has already been downloaded."

How can I recover this?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
yea, when my iBook was getting fixed it got wiped and i couldnt get any of the songs back off apple but i could get them off a PC which i had authorized to play them so its bad luck that you lost them, i just hope it wasnt too many
 
I've read several reports of people being able to re-download music after a hard drive crash or other catastrophe. Just use the iTunes Store support page to contact Apple and explain the situation. I can't guarantee that they'll let you download everything again, but it's worth a try.
 
You can't re-download. Just pull them off your iPod with one of the many apps that does that.

And next time, back everything up.
 
Last year, apple let me re-download 120 songs that I had lost due to a hard drive failure. I explained what happend and they took care of the issue within a few days. The only problem I had was that a couple of songs I had purchased were no longer available on ITMS and I was out of luck with those.

Now I keep most of my music backed up, but since iTunes 7 I created a smart playlist for all of my purchased content and I sync that to my iPod so worst case I will have them stored on the iPod and I can always transfer them back to my iMac.
 
Well, the only way left is to wait till you hear back from Apple. Only they can help you in this matter. I hope they will consider your request and let you download again.

Levin
 
it happened to me and i just plugged my iPod into my new computer and turned on manage music manually and enabled disk use and it prompted me a some point if i wanted to move my purchases to this computer
 
apple will probably convince u to buy a time capsule to use with time machine to backup everything and tell you that you are very irresponsible and will reauthorize your downloads, having made a few hundred pounds out of you...
 
How to recover purchased songs that have been lost

Follow the steps at this site. I just did this and worked like a charm. Good luck!

http://www.ehow.com/how_2266004_recover-songs-from-ipod.html
 
I'm so glad that you did post that link...even if it is years later; it really helped me today. Thanks!
 
Thanks

I would submit that this info just helped me help someone out, so thanks for bumping. :) (Yeah, I know, another necro. :eek: Poor old thread...)
 
If you download the latest version of itunes, there is a new feature which allows you to recover lost items, including music, apps etc that were originally purchased from itunes. This link on the apple support site explains how to do it. I've just recovered mine and it's really easy.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519
 
montyb69 said:
If you download the latest version of itunes, there is a new feature which allows you to recover lost items, including music, apps etc that were originally purchased from itunes. This link on the apple support site explains how to do it. I've just recovered mine and it's really easy.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519
Click to expand...

Your link: 404.

Can't you just go Purchased under the new iTunes and re-download everything you own?
 
saberahul said:
Your link: 404.

Can't you just go Purchased under the new iTunes and re-download everything you own?
Click to expand...

Yep, that's what the link describes. Works for me, dunno why it isn't for you, but there's not a lot of detail anyways, so no big loss.

jW
 
Mal said:
Yep, that's what the link describes. Works for me, dunno why it isn't for you, but there's not a lot of detail anyways, so no big loss.

jW
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up. The link seems to be working now... was probably down then for something.
 
Sooziky said:
Here are the instructions that I just followed to retrieve well over 1500 purchased songs from iTunes!

http://www.apple.com/itunes/inside-itunes/2011/07/download-previously-purchased-songs-apps-and-books.html

I was close to tears when my external drive died, after having previously 'moved' all my music onto there - off my old laptop because it ran out of memory.

Thanks for your posts which focused my attention on finding a solution, instead of crying :)

S
Click to expand...


I used this as well when I finally switched from PC to Mac. I noticed that the majority of my purchased songs weren't in the "Purchased" playlist on my Mac. I downloaded all of my purchased songs and now have them again.

The only down side is that the "Purchase Date" for all of the songs is now set to when I downloaded all of my previously purchased songs.... not when I actually purchased them. It's a bummer because I liked keeping this playlist sorted by my most recently purchased songs first. Oh well... I don't think there's a way to "restore" the actual purchase date.
 
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