Can't authorize songs under old Apple ID

This is how I solved the issue. I had my old comcast email as my login name. I switched interet service to at&t, which made my comcast email inactive, so i couldn't retrieve my password. So i called a friend who had comcast. I added my old email address to their account so my old email account was active clicked on forgot password and they sent it to my old email account. i was able to authorize my songs. hope this helps

This is how i solved my similar situation( old aol id). To get all my old music authorized I went here https://appleid.apple.com .I clicked on reset your password, followed the steps( entered in my current account info and the old email account name). Next I opened itunes ,clicked on a non authorized song and entered the COMPLETE OLD EMAIL and then the new password when prompted. Good Luck

had music in library purchased under two apple ids due to making id = email address and ISP changed. library worked fine until music was migrated by apple from old HP to new MAC. did as suggested when the message appeared. Music loaded just fine and all plays. Thanks for the suggestion!

I was scared to delete my books and redownload under new apple id email but it worked for me. Try deleting the items and going to the store to redownload.

Didn't work for me! Still wanted me to use the old email address that I had made my Apple ID when I had comcast.

OK, I had this problem which suddenly appeared after many years of using music purchased through a now defunct Apple ID.

When the email address associated with my original Apple ID got spoofed and I had to shut it down I had to stop using that Apple ID but I had bought a lot of music with it which I continued to play.

For years I had been playing music purchased on both the old and new IDs with no trouble but then suddenly all the old ID music wanted authorisation which I couldn't do.

Anyway if this sort of thing happens to you contact iTunes Store support and they will get you through to the Account people who will unravel it for you.

It's amazing the number of lost email accounts you can accumulate in a decade.

My stuff is all now back up and running.

I have been plagued by this circumstance for a few years now. I have even called apple for help, to no avail. TILL TODAY.

My situation was that I had purchased songs under an original old email address/ID (A). Apparently, I changed that email to a new one(B) - and forgot. At some point I started a new account ID with yet a third email address (C).

The first problem was, Itunes was asking to authorize under the the original email (A) (So I had no clue the email had been changed - I must have changed it on a previous support call - because there was no way to recall a password on the old email (A))

The second problem was that the original account, with the email (B) had no extra spots left to authorize another computer.

So, during a help chat with apple today she figured out to deauthorize all devices under the original account. Then use the email (B) to authorize the account on my current computer. Viola! Did the trick. Now playing music I purchased years ago and nearly wrote off forever. I have now well logged my account info and passwords for both accounts!

THE BOTTOM LINE

Save yourself hours and hours of frustration and just contact apple support, (I recommend Chat) They have the ability to do some detective work you may not even think to do, nor can you fix any other way.

I'll keep my overall opinions about this system in general to myself - it's far from positive... ➖➖➖

Excited to close this nightmare chapter I've been fighting for several years... 🙂 Good luck with yours!

I have the EXACT same issue.

Please DO share the solution!

Thank you!

Xo

What if you can't remember the password (which I can't) and the email no longer exists (so if they send to the old email it'll bounce)

I'd LOVE help solving this, please. THANK YOU

Well if you read the last couple of posts you'll find that the best way is to phone Apple iTunes support and get them to sort it out.

They are great and will fix all your account issues.

Mine were very convoluted but they sussed it eventually.

Phone them.

I couldn't play some songs purchased on an old Apple account - computer not authorised for those purchases apparently. I searched through this thread and found the solution :

Voila - i thinnk i just sorted the problem, for myself at least. I had the exact same problem, Apple ID no longer exists. Scarily simple. When you click on one of the affected tunes to play it, that nasty little "you need to be authorized" box pops up with your old Apple ID already in the field. Of course when you enter the password it says it doesn't exist. What i did was simply did was delete the autofilled old email address/Apple ID and type in my current one and current password and it all started working!! Gave me some message like you're already authourised (yeah, that's why you said 2 seconds ago that i wasn't!) and then they all started playing. Woohoo! I had well over 100 songs affected and they're all back and playing! Hope this helps/works for you too.

Hope this helps anyone encountering this problem.

I know the original poster had this question years ago but since I see other people still replying to this saying they are having the same problem I thought I'd add my 2 cents. I have used the same laptop for years with windows 7 and had no problems ever with this. I even had songs that I bought under my old user name that played just fine. As soon as I received my free Windows 10 upgrade though, hundreds of my songs kept giving me the message that my computer was not authorized to play them. It would ask me to sign in to authorize the computer, which I did, but would give me the message that my computer was already authorized. I tested one song with the delete and redownload idea but it didn't work as I had to pay for the song again.

Then I found the link to the article posted by several others in this thread that tells you to delete the SC file. I closed itunes, deleted the file, rebooted my laptop, opened itunes again, clicked on one of the offending songs, signed in to authorize the computer again, and received the same message that it was already authorized. This time though it worked, everything started playing like normal again! I wish I knew about this fix months ago, it would have saved me so much frustration!

I had this problem as well: Had some old songs that I purchased using an apple ID/old email account that was based on a school-issued email address. When I graduated, my email account was killed. When I tried to auth the songs - it told me the apple ID was not valid. I clicked a support link and got an apple support chat going and she asked me if there was another email address I was using at the time I set the old apple ID up that I would have used as a "rescue email". I recalled that I had a yahoo email account that I hadn't used in years. I was able to get back into this account (total luck) and used it to access my old apple account. I then went back to iTunes and signed into this account and authorized the computer. I was then able to play all my old music. The weird thing is that I've been moving that music around from device to device for years and never had a problem until my latest OS update.

If this sounds like I got lucky - you're right - I did. If I hadn't been able to guess my old yahoo password, that would have been another problem. I have to say, though, that the apple support person I chatted with online was really helpful and I wouldn't have even thought of a rescue email address. I would echo the posts above - just call or chat with tech support. I'm still not entirely sure how I was able to use a rescue email account to get back into my old apple account - I thought that email was just for communication purposes (e.g., password recovery, etc.) but it worked. Again - couldn't have done this without the support.

Don't know if this will help, but it worked for me. I downloaded MusicBee, and shared my itunes library with it. It would not play the song, but if you right click on the track it allows you to edit. When the edit screen opens, at the top there is a Tag Inspector button. Once you click on that a list pops up, and about the 4th or 5th item on the list should say APID and then your old ID as a value. On the right of the window there is a + ... - arranged vertically. I clicked on the - and it deleted the ID. When I opened iTunes again and tried to play the track, it still asked for authorization, but defaulted to my current Apple ID. Password, authorized and good to go. It appeared to authorize all the tracks that were under the old ID as well.

Hopefully this helps you out. I know how frustrating the situation can be!

I have a movie file from 2009 (Star Trek reboot). When I tried to play it, iTunes asked me to authorize iTunes with an Apple ID based on a long-dead email address. When I clicked on this file in iTunes and went to Get_Info and then the File tab, it shows this old email address as the Apple ID with which this file was purchased. I tried to recover the password for the old Apple ID and got a message saying "this Apple ID does not exist". This sounds similar to many problems described above.

HERE IS WHAT WORKED: On a hunch, I tried to play the file again, and when the dialogue box came up asking me to authorize iTunes with the Apple ID based on the old email address, instead I changed the email address to my current Apple ID that I use with iTunes, I entered the corresponding password, and the file began to play. When you look at Get_Info/File for this movie, it still shows the old Apple ID, but now it plays on a computer that is authorized to the new ID. I hypothesize that Apple has merged the accounts, but imperfectly.