Old iTunes protected music - how to listen in apple music

Question

Old iTunes protected music - how to listen in apple music

Hello,

I have not been listening to my personal music for quite a while (vs. streaming). But now that I have been cleaning out my old hard drives I have come across a bunch of my old music and want to listen to it again.

Some of the music is in m4p and m4b formats. As far as I can tell, this is an older protected iTunes format.

But when I log into apple music it shows some of my purchases, but not all. Perhaps I used a different account? I would be surprised but it isn't impossible. (or see #3 below for an alternate explanation).

So I have three questions:

1) The first issue I have is I don't know how to get Apple Music to play these files. I use the "import" function to navigate to the song and try to import it, but nothing happens. It does not import nor are any errors reported. It is as though I never did anything. They do not show up in my library, and the library folder on disk is completely empty.

2) How can I determine what account these songs are associated with? I would like to figure that out and then perhaps I can log into Apple Music with that account and re-download the music.

3) (And maybe this explains why I am having trouble finding this music in my library...) When I search the Apple Music store for these songs they simply don't show up. It is as though Apple dropped the song from their library (In case anyone is interested one of these files is an audiobook: The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman). If that is the case, then how will I be able to listen to these files?

Thanks! Any help truly appreciated.

Posted on Dec 28, 2020 11:16 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

ed2345

Level 9

62,492 points

Dec 29, 2020 4:40 PM in response to Bernhard VonZastrow1

Bernhard,

If the track is in your library, you can right-click, Get Info, and look at the File tab to see a "purchased by" field.

The most reliable way to open a file is right-click it in Finder, Open With > Music. if it is a valid file it will start playing.

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Answer 2

ed2345

Level 9

62,492 points

Dec 29, 2020 7:31 AM in response to Bernhard VonZastrow1

Bernhard,

If you still have the audio file, it should be playable if your computer is authorized to the same account used for the purchase.

Per #3, if you don't have the file, a re-download of the file is only available if the song is still for sale in the Store. Many songs do get removed from sale for various reasons, especially if so many years have passed.

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Answer 3

Dec 29, 2020 9:50 AM in response to ed2345

Ed2345

thanks for answering. I would have thought that I had purchased the song under the same account that I am currently using (I don’t remember ever having a different account and my email hasn’t changed in nearly 20 years). I do have purchased music in my library that plays (though these are apparently located in the cloud and are not actual files on my local machine). Do you know of any way of checking which account a song is connected to?

Also, any thoughts on how to actually play a song that lives on disk? I tried using the import function in Apple Music but nothing happens (it doesn’t tell me the song is unplayable or anything, it literally acts as though I had never tried importing. I chose the song using a file open dialog and then nothing happens).

thanks again.

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Old iTunes protected music - how to listen in apple music

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