Can't authorize songs under old Apple ID

see discussion of disappearing or corrupt apple ids

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3433650

Note the last post prior to yours is over one year ago.

yep. i am trying to get anyone who has info on this problem, which I am _currently_ experiencing to volunteer any info that might help solve it.

I have had the exact same experience as discussed below with the same circular process that is a catch-22 that yields no progress and no solution. There is apparently no solution to this problem if there is no ability to merge old ids. Listing old ids--not discussed here--has also not led to a solution.

Same problem for me. Over the years I have created several Apple IDs for various purposes: buying music, scheduling Genius Bar appointments, buying a .Mac account, an account for business purposes, etc. I ended up with 3 accounts, 2 of which were associated with emails I still had access to, but didn't use much anymore. For that reason - and because I didn't see any option to merge or delete accounts, I simply changed the email addresses to emails I was using much more frequently. Apparently with 1 of these 2 Apple IDs I purchased 3 songs from the iTunes Store.

Fast forward to now. I migrated my iTunes Library from my old MacBook Pro to my new MacBook Pro. No problem. Now when I tried to sync my iPod Touch... that's where I find out (and after reading all the threads from people with the same issue) that I shouldn't have changed the email addresses associated with those Apple IDs.

Ahh but then I thought: "Hey I still have access to that old email.. why not create a 4th Apple ID with that email address for the purpose of authorizing these 3 songs?" So I did just that. Then I tried to authorize and iTunes tells me that "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes Store." Fair enough.

So, out of curiosity I wanted to attempt to make a $1 song purchase on the iTunes Store with that 4th Apple ID I just created, in hopes it would unlock the 3 songs I no longer had access to. On first try I can't even log into the iTunes Store to make a purchase - it tells me the same thing: "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes Store."

So I then go login to "Manage my Apple ID" from a Web browser to see if something stands out regarding iTunes Store. Nothing.

So then I started thinking - "Maybe iTunes won't let me login to the iTunes Store from within iTunes because of the presence of those 3 songs in my iTunes Library." So I tried removing them from the library (backed up the 3 songs on my desktop, then deleted them from the iTunes Library, putting them in the trash). Then I tried logging back into iTunes Store. Same message: "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes Store." Then I tried quitting iTunes, re-opening, letting iPod Touch sync, ejecting iPod Touch, quitting iTunes again, re-opening, making another attempt to login to iTunes Store with the 4th Apple ID. Same message: "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes Store." Grrrr. Now I have 4 Apple IDs and the 4th one is useless.

My Theory Based on What I've Deduced:

That an Apple ID not only has the main, customer-facing, identifier of <your.email@address.com>, but a second (behind the scenes) unique ID - perhaps a number (let's call it a number for now). I also theorize that this "number" is embedded in the purchased song/movie/whatever, so iTunes sees it. It seems that iTunes won't play a song/movie/whatever unless BOTH the Apple ID AND the "number" match one of the accounts iTunes knows it is authorized to play songs/movies/whatever for.

And perhaps the reason I now can't login to the iTunes Store with this 4th Apple ID is because I once had an account associated with that same email address and now upon attempting to login, the new "number" is recognized to be different from the old "number".

If my theory is correct and I were an IT project manager for Apple, I'd enhance iTunes and Apple ID functionality in the following ways:

• Allow iTunes to sync with the Apple ID server, and where the email address identifier relating to a "number" ID has changed, to update the metadata of all of the purchased songs/movies/whatever with the new email address.

• Create a customer-facing page containing a module for owners of Apple IDs merge 2 or more Apple IDs together. Do not let them delete an email address from their list of email addresses associated with the account, but let them indicate which ones are no longer valid/no longer exist/etc.

• In the underlying Apple ID metadata, allow for more than 1 "number" ID to be present (so that when accounts merge, more than 1 "number" is present and any of them can be "other piece of the puzzle" for iTunes when it uses both Apple ID+"number" for verification.

But I'm not an Apple IT project manager, so if Apple can't provide customers with playback access to the music/movies/whatever that they purchased and that they are in possession of... this may be a job for the class action lawyers.

My theory is Apple is over their skis on this basic issue which shouldn't really be difficult to deal with under the covers. From my perspective, the bigger problem is the unprovoked total loss of an AppleID (or perhaps an intentional drop of legacy 'non-conforming' IDs) by what's likely a renegade ETL process. Secondarily, the design of the AppleID vs. how they are advising customers to use it seems to be confusing at best, encouraging people to take irreversible steps when fooling with their ids.

Bottom line is they are growing too fast and not paying attention to the hippocratic oath. First, do no harm. More important to them to race the technology 'ahead'. I guess they hear footsteps of Android.

I have seen others here who have disputed past credit card claims. Seems like the only response available to 'address' the problem.

As a few people have already said. Ignore the old login. Overtype this with your CURRENT login and current password.

It gave me the message "computer already authorized" - but the songs I had a problem with all started to play after doing this.

Hope this works for somebody! I was scratching my head for about 30mins before working this out.

this solution does not work.

i've been having this problem since my hd got replaced in my imac - loaded timemachine no probs - then it wanted me to upgrade to the new itunes and my iphone to the new software io5 - now it wont play songs bought in my old id which has the same email add - also it wont play songs bought with the new id ( same email) but bought from my macbook - i've been emailing ITUNES COSTUMER SUPPORT back & forth for over 3 weeks now. they are ****** stupid -- cant make a simple phone call oh no -- got 2 b done by email --- over 3 weeks coming up to 4.. i'm now dealing with senior management at itunes.

i wont be buying anymore from from itunes now - i will just get it elsewhere -- they wonder why people illegally download!!!

I agree. I too have had the same problem, so many purchases, still nothing works. It has been money down the drain. I have tried everything everyone here has suggested. Nothing works.
IT SHOULD NOT BE THAT DIFFICULT! I honestly feel like suing!!!

This is a download caused issue, delete the file and redownload it and it should work.

Been reading through all your suggestions and there are a lot of them however none work sorry to say.

Some (or one of you) are addament that signing in over the old account name will work. It didn't for me.

I also found my old password which did nothing when I entered it.

Have contacted Apple for assistance. Looking forward to solving this as I'm sure all of you are.

What a pain!

Found a solution to my problem. Could not authorize about 150 songs purchased with my old tunes id, which was an email address that didn't exist anymore, I switched providers from comcast to att. My password wouldn't work and my security question didn't work. I could not have my password sent to my email address, that email address was dropped over two years ago.

Well, I found a friend who has comcast, i logged onto her comast account and added my old email address, went to Itunes had them send me my password... and I finally got it and was able to authorize all my songs.

I hope this works for someone else, because Itunes support simply would do nothing for me. I called them 8 times.

good luck

marhagar I want to hug you! You had the key missing piece of information!

The Account ID that my missing 493 songs kept auto-populating and saying I needed to authorize on my computer (and then just telling me the computer was already authorized) was not the right one!

I had tried an earlier tip to just put in my current Account ID but that wasn't working.

You talking about having to log back into an old Comcast Account made me realize that what I needed to do was authorize my computer using the EMAIL ADDRESS associated with my old/original Account ID NOT the Account ID that was being auto-populated by my computer.

Thanks to you I can play all the songs and I am gleefully dancing to "Play that Funky Music"!

Hope this helps others - iTunes is NO help - maybe their account reps will read these posts and start helping people instead of making us spend hours and hours over the course of years trying to fix this!

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can help me. I had a bunch of music on an old PC laptop. I pulled the songs off and imported them into my iTunes on my current MacBook pro. Whenever I try to play the songs though, it asks me to authorize them with an old Apple ID I no longer have (it's an old aol address).

I did a Google search and kept getting sent back to this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1389

I followed those instructions and restarted. The SC Info folder is gone. But the same thing is still happening.

I've read through the thread, tried any other suggestions too. But nothing works. I'm not sure what else to do. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Dupe post. Sorry.

Message was edited by: RDT156