Song shows as "Purchased" in iTunes and won't let me re-download it, but it doesn't show up in my Purchased list. I want the song back, don't mind re-downloading, but it won't let me

Heh. Looks like the aggravated part of my post that was a rant was deleted--justifiably so--It was late and I was annoyed.

What I was not able to do was recover the 2 albums that I had purchased, then deleted from my phone by accident. I was unable to do it because I had no idea that when I deleted them, they were "hidden," and to get them back I would have to "unhide" them. So, I was unable to recover my albums in what used to would have taken 30 sec because they wouldn't have been hidden (back then; now that they are hidden, one must go looking around the net to find a fix---this is where I think Apple would do well to put a simple footnote, or confirmation screen upon deleting something that says, "to recover these songs/ablums/etc, you will need to "unhide" them here (put a link to where to go).

Thanks for the response. I know my 1st note was rambling. I'm still an apple fan though

Jon

I'm still not understanding your issue. If you are signed in to iTunes on your computer with the same Apple ID that was used to purchase those albums, then you have one of two routes you may need to take:

1. Go to "Purchased" under the Quick Links section in the Music view, and then select Albums>Not in My Library, click on the cloud with the little arrow to download

2. If they are Hidden, then click on your name in the iTunes menu bar, then on Account Info, type in your password, and when the Account Info screen displays, click on Manage next to Hidden Purchases under the iTunes in the Cloud section. Then click on Albums, and then on Unhide under the album name

If you are asking about something else, can you please provide more info?

Cheers,

GB

Re: #1) My thoughts exactly. But since they were "hidden", but I did not know that "deleting" meant the the album would be "hidden" I was confused as to why there was no cloud with down arrow. . . which brings us to . .

Re: #2) I had no way of knowing they were "hidden" -- I had never even seen that term in itunes at all, so I did not know to "unhide" or even to search for anything related to "hide or unhide" . . . I was just bumbling around trying to find my vanished albums that I had paid for.

So, for a non-tech pro like myself (though I'm usually not this lost), I do not read the long statements regarding every update for iOS or iTunes, etc when they come out . . . so I had no idea about albums being "hidden" and from reading the thread, neither did a large number of other customers like me. Now that I know, I can easily use #2 when needed (I've known how to do #1, it was pretty self explanatory with a cloud and a down arrow indicating download from cloud . . . if only there were a way to make the "unhide" path more obvious---thus my suggestion of a footnote or a screen that just instructs folks what to do (even put a "do not show this info again" checkbox up there too). Alternately, they could just put the cloud with the word "unhide" in it instead of just not showing it at all in the "not on my computer" list.

Jon

***EDIT: GB, I really appreciate you trying to help me on this . . . I think I got it figured out so pls don't feel like you need to keep responding to me, I am sure there are other folks still struggling that could use your expertise. Glad to know you are out there though. I'll try to find that link on the Apple page that you can submit suggestions to and I'll put my ideas there.

Thanks again 😀

This is because of category shuffling

iTunes and Apple TV UI (user interface) has a category tree similar to the one i use in my online store

Sometimes they recategorise a file and movie it to a new category

For example, i Purchased a Movie Bundle of james Bond movies.

Then the Bundle was reupdated with a new look

Going to this Bundle after that shows me a 'buy now' button, but i alread bought it

Going to view each individual movie allows play, but the Bundles never appear as 'purchased'

I also once got ripped for 40$ with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy - i purchsaed the extended edition

then a week later i could not find it in my library so went to 'redownload' it from iTunes

The bundle said 'buy now' and i thought it was just a login fail, and that if i purchased 'buy now' it would then after login tell me 'this is already purchased would you like to redowbnload'

But it didnt, it charged me another 40$

Later i found out that apple has about 3 different Lord of the Rings Trilogy versions, so now i have the standard trilogy and the extended trilogy, because of deceptive product display (search produced only one trilogy bundle, deceiving me into believing it was the one i had already purchased)

I have various items which are purchased but grayed out and wont allow download

One could also assume the possibility that it is deliberately or accidentally set to not permit offline viewing by the people who uploaded the file to iTunes for sale. Dont know if that is possible, if not then its Apple's Boob.

Exactly what I needed. The song purchase was hidden somehow so even though I deleted it from my library, it wouldn't let me redownload because it thought I already still had it. Had to unhide it first. Awesome. Thank you so much.

I had this problem as well, except I had pre-ordered an album and one of the songs wouldn't download, didn't show up in my purchased list but said purchased next to it, wasn't in the cloud and so on.

So I got on to Apple support and was told look in the cloud 😠 then the song was posted to my account by the support person but still couldn't download. I got fed up of all these emails going back and forth with no solution so I looked on here and saw someone say this which works!!! ....

Search for the song on the store by name then you should see the price button again and be able to download it, this worked for me except the original person said you should get a message saying you've already purchased this song re-download for free, I didn't get this but couldn't see any evidence that I had already been charged so I basically just re-bought the song.

But what is up with this and why don't Apple fix it? Clearly so many people have the same problem. I've been pretty fed up with Apple recently, the store kept crashing my whole laptop a while ago and I had to find a solution to that as well. Why not spend a bit more time fixing the things they've already created.

go to store,purchased, ignore albums look at list of artists on right hand side, click on artist the album will pop up click the cloud, if it's a compilation album you have to click on each individual artist, but laborious but only way I could do it good luck 🙂

hahyonhwatha wrote:

About 1/3 of my albums had stopped playing months ago and I couldn't find a fix.

The album icon had an x in upper left corner and songs had little exclamation marks and couldn't be "located". No download option at account level

Did you look in my /music/iTunes/itunes media/Music/ folder in Artist/Album folders for the songs?

if they were there but itunes simpy got confused, and you redownloaded everything then your music folder is twice as large as it should be.

Go there now and see if you have double songs.

If anyone needs help this is what I did:

I deleted the whole album that I purchased from my itunes. Then I when into Itunes stores into manage my account. Then went to Hidden purchases and clicked Manage and unhide that specific album and then redownloaded the album into my itunes and viola! It erases the plays and such but I'm just glad the Album is back into my itunes.

I Had this problem too, after being very frustrated I figured it out.

1. Go into your music app

2. At the top left there is a little person, click it

3. Then press view Apple ID

4. Then find the reading that says: ITUNES IN THE CLOUD, underneath it, it will say "hidden purchases". Press that and then retrieve music you have delete!

For some incredibly stupid reason Apple has decided to implement a feature that will hide purchased albums from your purchased list. In order to undo this stupid feature you must view your account, manage hidden purchases, and then select what you want to be no longer hidden. That album will now show up in your purchased list. Why would Apple ever have a feature like this; it's utterly absurd.

Thanks, that does help although it would be nice if Apple made these things far more obvious considering that is what we always loved about apple was the near fanatical adherence to quality UI and "It just works". However, I tried to do this to stop it from trying to auto-download TV shows from ages ago on a new Mac - it beachballed with a systemwide modal dialogue box (always on top even in other applications), unreachable due to the beachball and iTunes hard crashed had to force quit. Will try again later I guess.

Thank you for this - I was at least able to determine where my purchases were on a brand new Macbook Pro. Totally agreed this is jaw-droppingly bad, at the very least with the entire iTunes window open there is more than enough screen space for a button or something about this so that we don't waste hours trying to find out what happened to our stuff. Also annoying is that it appears you cannot select more than one at a time in the list on the left column? I tried with shift and apple key and it only selects *one at a time*. This is hugely annoying and time consuming since even after having to do the same thing to unhide what they hid without telling us, we then have to go through each one, one at a time to re-download. "Download all" button only works for one artist at a time highlighted in the left column. TOTALLY annoying and just a huge regression from the Snow Leopard days... sigh!

My current problem is that in iTunes on my PC, I authorized the computer but when I went to Purchased in the store, there's nothing there. It even says that I don't have anything. I choose Not on my computer and it still says I have nothing. I've gone to Unhide and the only hidden thing there is that U2 album everyone was forced to download in an update and then later was able to just hide it. I've seen a thing in another forum where someone said to delete the program data by putting it in the search menu, opening the folder location and then turning off Hidden files and folders. Everytime I do this it says that I need to have admin permission...I'm the admin...I give myself permission and then it fails to show hidden stuff. I've uninstalled the program and everything, went back to a restore point. Nothing works.

So now I'd just like to know what I'm doing wrong or at least what's the correct thing to do?

In my case the song showed up in my iPhone and the iTunes store as purchased, but the song in iTunes on my computer was missing. What worked for me on this one was I needed to 1) delete the song from iTunes on my computer first, 2) have my iPhone plugged into iTunes and active on the screen, 3) and then use iTunes File>Devices>Transfer Purchases from my "iPhone". Good luck!