iPhone 4S->iTunes "Transfer Purchases" not moving music

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Level 1

8 points

iPhone 4S->iTunes "Transfer Purchases" not moving music

I recently purchased 2 albums on my iPhone 4S. When I go to transfer them to my Mac (late-2008 MacBook), I use the "Transfer Purchases" option under File. I see the songs in iTunes under Music (in the main library, not on the iPhone), but they are all grayed out with the Sync symbol next to each song (also grayed out). Each time I select Transfer Purchases, iTunes goes through the process to transfer but immediately completes without moving the music. I only use one ID to purchase, so I don't get any unauthorized errors. I'm not sure what to do next.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Chris

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Dec 28, 2011 7:22 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 16, 2012 4:00 PM in response to cweirup

I'm having the same problem, except that my iTunes is running on a Windows PC. Same problem, though. Previously my purchased music would transfer to iTunes when I synced my iPhone, but this no longer seems to be the case.

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Answer 2

Jan 16, 2012 4:48 PM in response to jimmy2775

On the iPhone page of iTunes, I changed my backup from "Back up to iCloud" to "Back up to this computer". Then I clicked on the iTunes store and used the Purchased link. I found my music under "Recent Purchases" and where they had been shown as "Downloaded" before, they were now downloadable. Problem solved.

It seems like the iCould backup causes problems if used outside the US, so I guess I'll avoid it. Hopefully this helps you out if you haven't fixed the issue already.

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Answer 3

cweirup Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 18, 2012 7:56 AM in response to jimmy2775

jimmy2775, thanks for the info. Unfortunately, that didn't work for me. I already had iTunes backup set to "Backup to this computer".

However, I was finally able to download the songs, but not through an iPhone sync. Instead, I downloaded them via iCloud. I went into the iTunes Store and went to my account page (selected Account under my email address). From there, I went to the "Purchase History" section and clicked on the "See All" link. At that point, I clicked on the little arrow and was able to download individual songs or the entire album.

This doesn't really solve why I can't sync them from my iPhone, but at least I was able to get them onto my computer. Hope that helps.

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