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This song is not currently available in your country or region

I have noticed several songs I purchased and downloaded can no longer be played on my iPhone 8, and the number of such songs is increasing. The songs still appear in my library, but the message: “this song is not currently available in your country or region” appears when the song is selected to play. iTunes still shows that I have previously purchased the songs, yet I cannot play them. I could understand if I just was paying monthly for the right to play songs available on the Apple Music service, but what did I pay for when I purchased and downloaded the song on iTunes if I can’t play it now? At first it was just a song or two, but now I’m running into the issue with many songs I bought and downloaded from iTunes. I wouldn’t have paid $1 for the song if I had known I didn’t really “own” it to replay forever.

iPhone 8, iOS 14

Posted on Jun 5, 2021 4:23 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 5, 2021 8:18 AM

Unfortunately that's where this comes into play:


http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html - "It is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage Content once downloaded. We encourage you to back up your Content regularly." ... "Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services." And: https://support.apple.com/ht204930 - "Apple Music isn't a back up service. Make sure to back up your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC, so that you have a copy of your music and other information if your device is ever replaced, lost, or damaged."


Re-downloading is a convenience feature but you really have to make sure you always have your purchases on a local drive should the item no longer be available in the store. If all you have is an iCloud marker in your library then it is relying upon a copy still being in the store for when you want to listen to it and as you are finding, that may not always be the case.

7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 5, 2021 8:18 AM in response to BABOF

Unfortunately that's where this comes into play:


http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html - "It is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage Content once downloaded. We encourage you to back up your Content regularly." ... "Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services." And: https://support.apple.com/ht204930 - "Apple Music isn't a back up service. Make sure to back up your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC, so that you have a copy of your music and other information if your device is ever replaced, lost, or damaged."


Re-downloading is a convenience feature but you really have to make sure you always have your purchases on a local drive should the item no longer be available in the store. If all you have is an iCloud marker in your library then it is relying upon a copy still being in the store for when you want to listen to it and as you are finding, that may not always be the case.

Jun 5, 2021 8:35 AM in response to BABOF

As an aside, a couple years ago I noticed the little cloud download sign beside many of the songs I had previously paid for and downloaded, so I downloaded all of them again. Never could figure out why I had to do that either. Now there are none of the cloud download symbols just many songs with grayed out titles that produce the “Not available in your country or region” message.

Jun 5, 2021 8:39 AM in response to BABOF

With Apple going to using iCloud to save people on-device storage space, many things aren't really "on" a device. You see a bookmark and when you need the item it is fetched from iCloud. "iCloud" itself is nebulous and has many parts. For most people music is using Apple Music services to provide the content and what is present on Apple Music is at the whim of the media owners. So if you have Apple Music and a large library, and particularly if you set your device to optimize storage, most of it isn't on your device, you're just seeing a bunch of bookmarks. If your favorite tune is one of those but in the meantime the media owners have withdrawn it (or maybe even just re-issued it so it is not the "same item?), you'll get that message when you try to play it.

Jun 5, 2021 8:49 AM in response to Limnos

Yeah, the funny thing about that is I paid extra for a lot of storage on my phone and chose to pay for and download the songs, so why are they not still playable on my phone? I have loads of available storage and do not have optimization turned on, so what I download should remain downloaded unless Apple is removing it for some reason, then I cannot play. Irritating to say the least. Like I said above, I could just pay the monthly fee if all I can do is stream musics from Apple Music anyway, but I did in fact pay at the iTunes Store and download all these songs. I never offloaded them, so why are they not playable? I’ll try syncing with the desktop to see if that solves the issue, but nothing to say the songs don’t disappear again even if I can download again from my own back up.

This song is not currently available in your country or region

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