Music that was purchased in 2003 disappearing and your purchase history only goes to 2009

Hi,

When you purchase music from iTunes Store, Apple recommends that you make a backup of your purchases. Apple provides a facility re-downloaded the music as long as they have rights to do so. The owners of the copyright sometimes removes their music from Apple servers and is no longer available to re-download.

See Download previous iTunes Store purchases in Music on Mac – Apple Support (UK). You may need to unhide previous purchases Hide and unhide music, films, TV programmes, audiobooks and books – Apple Support (UK)

Jim

Could it be that your earlier purchases were made using a different Apple ID account? It may not have been obvious to everyone in the early years to keep the same Apple ID for the rest of your life.

Could it be that your earlier purchases were made in a different country, i.e. with an Apple ID set to a different country or country-like region?

Music tracks from the iTunes Music Store from 2003–2009 were DRM protected (as downloads). Music tracks from the iTunes Music Store since 2009 were DRM-free. That is a remarkable coincidence of years.

Music tracks from the iTunes Music Store were never in .mp3 format. Any .mp3 tracks must have been from a different source.

My personal oldest music ‘purchase’ from iTMS was from March 2005, although probably a free promo giveaway, still listed in my purchase history, as well as my Library in the Music app.

… a lot of music …

… some of my music is disappearing …

Do you have (email) invoices to ‘prove’ what you purchased earlier? How do you know for sure which tracks or albums you are missing from this content provider? Going only by someone’s memory of events from long ago is probably not sufficient to take any action on it.