How to re-download iTunes purchased music?

[Malsi]

Hi everyone,
Sorry for necroing this thread, but I did a search on the subject and I found this at the top. I just wanted to verify that apple customer service does indeed give you a onetime re-download of all of your data! I just did what was suggested on this thread and now I have all of my downloads (those that iTunes still has) waiting for me when I get home! So I guess what I'm getting at is I wanted to say a big THANK YOU! This made me so happy on an otherwise gloomy Friday!
Also, sorry if I wasn't supposed to resurrect this thread, but I always see people say to use the search function before making a new thread.
**Edit**
On another note, when I back up the data, would it be best to burn it to DVDs or should I buy an external hard-drive?

 

[derekamoss]

Hi everyone,
Sorry for necroing this thread, but I did a search on the subject and I found this at the top. I just wanted to verify that apple customer service does indeed give you a onetime re-download of all of your data! I just did what was suggested on this thread and now I have all of my downloads (those that iTunes still has) waiting for me when I get home! So I guess what I'm getting at is I wanted to say a big THANK YOU! This made me so happy on an otherwise gloomy Friday!
Also, sorry if I wasn't supposed to resurrect this thread, but I always see people say to use the search function before making a new thread.
**Edit**
On another note, when I back up the data, would it be best to burn it to DVDs or should I buy an external hard-drive?

There is nothing wrong with resurrecting a thread lol. Glad it worked for you. When I did I had been using iTunes since it first came out and have gone through many reinstalls for getting to backup. I had one major one when I was out to sea in the navy. About 10 gigs of music. I moved it all from my external to my computer and was going to reformat my external but sure enough my computer, which was windows btw, had to have both at the time to connect to a network, crashed and I lost all my music. In the middle of the ocean there is not much you can do to try to retrieve it. ITs in the navy are not very smart so didn't even attempt them. Talk about wanting to toss a laptop overboard lol. Well when I talked to apple I got all my music I had lost since 2004. Needless to say I was ecstatic about that one! Glad it worked for you mate

 

[cre8factory]

For anyone else having this problem, in case you missed the directions earlier in the thread: this is how you redownload your stuff:

Open iTunes.
Click Store, scroll down the menu to Check for Available Downloads.
>Voila<

However, I'm almost positive iTunes Support has to grant you access to do this; pretty sure I tried this before contacting them and I got a window saying I had nothing available to download.

Here's the full email from customer support:

~~
iTunes Store Customer Support will let you download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available. This does not include any item that has been modified or removed from the store since you purchased it. Please note that you may download your purchases only once, so this is an exception. Also note that Apple does not offer protection for the loss of data from your hard disk, so I recommend that you back up your iTunes library as soon as possible and thereafter on a regular basis. I'll include backup instructions in this email.

Ringtones you purchased on your iPhone will be made available for you to download again as long as they are still available for sale on the iTunes Store and have not been modified.

Any movies you may have rented will not be made available for you to download again. If you rented a movie and were unable to finish watching it, please reply to let me know.

Follow these steps to download the available items:

1) Make sure you're using the latest version of iTunes. It can be downloaded free of charge from the iTunes website:

http://www.itunes.com/download

2) Open iTunes.

3) From the Store menu at the top, choose "Check for Available Downloads".

4) Enter your account name and password, then click Check. Your purchases should begin downloading. If you receive an error message while downloading, try again after turning off any firewall or web-accelerator software that you may have installed.

If you want to pause your downloads and resume later, click Downloads on the left side of iTunes, then click the Pause All button in the lower right corner. When you're ready to resume downloading, just choose "Check for Available Downloads" from the pull-down Store menu at the top, enter your account name and password, then click the Check button.

These articles explain how to create and maintain an up-to-date backup of your iTunes library:

How to back up your media in iTunes
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1382

Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

Thank you for using iTunes.

Sincerely,

Voltaire
iTunes Store Customer Support

 

[Nermal]

I remember when the iTunes Store just started and had sold about 10 million songs, Steve Jobs said that someone had purchased over 36,000 songs. Was that you?

Hahaha, no

 

[Dr Kevorkian94]

My iMacs hard drive wore out (broke). So I took it to apple and now they are replacing it and are trying to salvage as much as possible. The irritating thing is not that I lost everything but that the night before it was completely fried I ran a diagnostics on my hardware and it said everything was fine so I didn't back anything up. ******* my life I hade the program up to back it up and didn't. So how do I re download my iTunes purchases do I manually search/remember evertything i downloaded after I get the ok from apple?

Edit: read above thanks

 

[gadget123]

I see you can redonwload apps now.

In the UK store I redownloaded a music video I bought on the me iTunes card two days ago and it charged me again.

 

[toronado455]

Individually download past purchases. Beta

http://www.apple.com/itunes/whats-new/

Been trying to use this feature to restore a iTunes library on a new MacBook Pro. Sometimes it works and the song is downloaded, and sometimes it gives a "This item has not been purchased" error. I guess that is why it is called "beta".

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15720132

 

[Hermes Monster]

Individually download past purchases. Beta

http://www.apple.com/itunes/whats-new/

Been trying to use this feature to restore a iTunes library on a new MacBook Pro. Sometimes it works and the song is downloaded, and sometimes it gives a "This item has not been purchased" error. I guess that is why it is called "beta".

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15720132

One of the main things I've been looking forward to in iCloud. I had an iPhone that just died one day, the apple store swapped it but I lost all of the songs I'd purchased directly on the device. I'll finally get these back...no idea what they are now though