iTunes not letting me play my paid-for, downloaded music.

william98 wrote:

I've been dl music from iTunes for decades. Today, from iTunes on my computer, I was playing an album of Christmas music, an album I've played every Christmas for 19 years.

Where did you purchase the music?

If you had it 19 years ago, that would imply that you purchased it in or before December of 2006. When Apple first came out with the iTunes Store, the songs sold there were in 128 Kbps AAC format and had DRM. They showed up in iTunes as "Protected AAC" files or something like that.

In 2009, Apple started selling songs in 256 Kbps AAC without DRM. (They also dropped the 99 cent flat price for all songs" pricing, and let record companies choose between three price levels, a concession that the companies demanded as the price for letting Apple drop DRM.)

For a while, you could purchase upgrades from 128 Kbps DRMed AACs to 256 Kbps non-DRMed AACs – but that window closed long, long ago.

An hour and a half with Apple tech support didn't help at all, though they tried everything. Because I bought the music under a different account name, I could no longer play it under my current account, despite the fact I'd been playing it for 19 years under different account names but always my accounts. And again, I can't play it through the old account because that account doesn't exist anymore, but that's the only option I'm given.

I'm confused. Did you change Apple Accounts? Or did you keep the same Apple Account but just change which e-mail address was associated with it?

If this album is in 128 Kbps DRMed AAC format, you would need to be using the original account to play it, whether or not you had changed the e-mail address associated with the account.

And so they told me I'd have to buy the album again. Well, I bought a lot of music under that old account, and I'm wondering when this prohibition is going to show up in all that music.

Search your library for songs that have a bit rate of 128 Kbps and that are Protected AAC files. Those are the songs that might be troublesome.

Ones that you bought after the iTunes Store dropped DRM (on songs, not on TV shows or movies) should play even on non-Apple devices, although they may contain embedded information about you to make it easier to identify you if you upload them to pirate sites. Those files will have a 256 Kbps bit rate and will not be "Protected."

It shows up in my iTunes -- it's downloaded, looks like all my other music. I can't even search for it in iTunes to download because iTunes instantly reverts to my library -- because I already have the music! I'd have to delete the music first, and no way should I have to do that.

If the album is in 128 Kbps DRMed format, it may be worth

• Dragging and dropping the files off to a folder (to save them, just in case)
• Deleting it from your iTunes Library
• Purchasing it on CD and importing the CD, or purchasing it again in non-DRMed 256 Kbps AAC format from the iTunes Store

to get an upgrade in sound quality and get rid of the DRM hassle.

william98 wrote:

Thanks for your interest and insights. I'd never known about such things, and especially not the 128 Kbps vs 256 Kbps thing, or buying upgrades -- despite all the many hours I've spent talking with Apple tech support over the years, I'd never heard about it. None of this makes sense to me, and I'm not convinced it has anything to do with Kbps. It's about authorization.

It is not about Kbps, but where songs purchased from the iTunes Store are concerned, looking at the Kbps is one way to help tell the DRMed songs apart from the non-DRMed ones.

I purchased the album from iTunes on Dec. 15, 2006. It is indeed 128 Kbps Protected AAC audio file.

As I thought it might be.

I don't know how much I paid for the album or any other DRM 128 Kbps albums, but it was pricey -- it's a 2h 39m album.

I don't know what Apple originally charged for buying whole albums, but if you had bought it "by the song", the price would have been 99 cents (plus sales tax) per track. Getting rid of that flat pricing model in favor of three levels (69 cents, 99 cents, $1.29) for single tracks was something Apple had to do before the record companies would let Apple drop the DRM.

I don't know how many other such albums I have -- really too many to look through one by one

This is why it would make sense to use the Song view in iTunes or Music, add the Kind to the view (if necessary), sort by the Kind field (click on that title), and/or search for the word "Protected".

I have very few such songs in my current Music library because

• I didn't buy much music from the iTunes Store before Apple dropped DRM. (I have lots of music purchased on CDs.). Most of my DRMed iTunes Store music was from a Pepsi bottle cap promotion.
• Most of the DRMed iTunes Store music that I did have was eligible for a paid upgrade.

Looking for these songs "one by one" would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. But why do that if you can get the sorting and searching tools in iTunes / Music to do it for you?

I should not have to buy all those albums again! That just sounds outrageous to me, especially if the other albums start doing the same thing. I can understand tech changing, and I've had to buy new computers and phones, but it seems to me that music should be permanent -- there's just way too much music out there that people have spent billions and billions of dollars on to suddenly make it outmoded or incompatible.

You shouldn't need to buy the albums again – but if we are talking about DRMed iTunes albums, it may turn out that most of the iTunes albums you bought are NON-DRMed – that we are talking about only a small handful of albums that are exhibiting the problem.

That could well be a glitch, but even if it is, and you can get it resolved, you bought those ones. in 128 Kbps AAC format. With lossy MP3 and lossy AAC compression, 128 Kbps is sort of a "lower level" for acceptable quality. So you might want to buy new versions (e.g., 256 Kbps AAC files, or CDs from which you can extract digital audio) just to get a sound quality upgrade. Dumping the DRM would be an added bonus.

If I drag&drop the files to a folder, then what do I do with them?

I was suggesting keeping the files as a backup – so that if you deleted the DRMed tracks from your library (with the intent of purchasing non-DRMed replacements online, or on CD), and later wanted the DRMed tracks back, you could just re-import them.

Aside: If we were talking about non-DRMed songs, and you wanted to play them on a non-Apple player such as a car stereo or a digital picture frame, dragging copies out of the library would be part of how you did that. Dragging and dropping just copies the selected songs. I also did some of that to move songs between two of my Macs (a desktop with a huge Music library, and a notebook with a smaller one).

Also, yesterday I actually tried to buy this particular album again, and iTunes wouldn't let me -- it just went straight to the album in my iTunes library.

It's trying to be helpful and keep you from paying for the same songs twice.

And like I said, that album plays on both of my older Macs, just as it was playing the last two Christmases on this new Mac -- until yesterday.

The Apple tech is supposed to call me back on Saturday, and he said he'd never encountered such a strange situation, why it's happening only with this album (so far) and only with this computer (so far). And he said nothing about DRM.

It definitely sounds like a DRM problem, and it's quite possible that this Apple tech didn't even start working for Apple until after they got rid of DRM on music in 2009.

I would suggest using iTunes to find out how much DRMed music you have, and to spot-check any other DRMed tracks to see if they play. Then when this tech calls back on Saturday, mention the DRM.

Do you have already have 5 computers that have been Authorized to play content with that Apple Account? I say this only because you mentioned 2 other Macs and the error messages appeared to mention an Authorization issue. You can only have 5 computers authorized to play content and when you reach that limit, you must deauthorize another computer, and if you no longer have access to a previously Authorized computer, then you will have to Deauthorize All computers, and authorize the ones you want to use again. More information on how you do that and check how many Authorized computers are being used is available here. Note that the limit only applies to computers and does not count iPhones/iPads.

Authorize or deauthorize your computer for Apple Account purchases - Apple Support

I wish I could make a CD of them on my old iMac and upload them to the new MBA, but that old optical drive failed some time ago.

If you want to transfer the DRMed songs as is, I don't think you need a CD burner. You could try this:

• Run iTunes on the old computer, and use the Song view to display the 69 "Protected AAC" songs.
• Select the songs in the iTunes window, and drag them out to an external USB drive of some sort (HDD, SSD, or flash drive) to make copies. (These copies will have DRM tied to the Apple Account that you used to buy the songs. The DRM shouldn't prevent you from copying the files, "just" from playing them on "unauthorized" devices.)
• Transfer the drive to the new MacBook Air and have Music import the copies. I am guessing that your old iMac has USB-A ports and that your MacBook Air has USB-C ones, but it's not hard to overcome that difference.
• Now you can do the song-and-dance to play the songs on the MacBook Air, instead of on the old iMac.

Authorize or deauthorize your computer for Apple Account purchases - Apple Support

Aside:

If I recall correctly, Apple may once have allowed burning a limited number of copies of purchased DRMed iTunes Store songs to audio CDs. This didn't restore sound quality – the CDs had the same sound quality as the 128 Kbps AAC files. But those CDs could be played on just about anything, and you could even re-import music from them, although using MP3 or AAC format to do the import would layer another level of sound quality loss on top of the original one.

william98 wrote:

I didn't check Info on all 69 yet, but the ones I did all were purchased and modified in 2006 but "added" in 2016. "Purchased" and "Modified" vs. "Added"? What's that? And they were purchased either with my Adelphia or Roadrunner email addresses. Very often purchased and modified are the same date, while added is years later.

My guess:

• "Purchased" is when you purchased the song from the iTunes Store.
• "Modified" is the last time that you made changes to the file, or to its associated "Get Info" metadata, other than to import it to a new computer. (There might be metadata changes that don't affect this date – e.g., it appears that iTunes and Music track play counts in a way that doesn't affect this date.)
• "Added" is when you added the file to your current Tunes or Music library.

I am looking at the Get Info / File information for Music's copy of a song on a Christmas CD which I bought long, long ago. ("Aaron Neville's Soulful Christmas". Highly recommended.)

Music shows "date modified" as 12/19/05, 6:52 PM and "date added" as "12/31/23, 11:06 AM". That 2005 date would be consistent with importing the song from CD on a PowerPC-based iMac, and that 2023 date would be consistent with importing a copy of the song file to the Music library on a Mac Studio. In-between, the song file would have been part of the iTunes library on an Intel-based iMac.