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

I had the same problem until I realized that only my songs labeled "explicit" were missing (possibly following the last iOS update). My fix was:

Go to settings>General>Restrictions>Allow content:music podcasts and itunesU

make sure "explicit content" is activated.

This made my purchased songs reappear in the music library purchased list and no longer be greyed out.

The solutions provided do help in solving problems similar to this, but I think the main thing that will help some of those who stumble across this same question is one that is really kinda simple and made me feel a bit dumb when I figured it out myself.

The albums displayed in the picture part of 'Purchases' when you first get to the listing is not a complete list. It's your 'Recent Purchases' list.

Use the text list on the left side of 'Purchases' and find the band name.

Click on the band/artist name, this will bring up the artist you are looking for.

From there you can download from the cloud like normal.

Hope that helps some people.

I was having the same issue where the purchased album would only show in the iTunes store grayed out as Purchased. I was unable to find them in hidden downloads or anywhere else in my actual music library. I solved this problem by transfering the songs from my iPhone to my computer, as that was where I originally purchased them (seems too simple now.)

So in iTunes with device attached:

File --> Devices --> Transfer Purchases

It seems like I should have been able to directly do this just with my account and my computer rather than having to hook up my two devices. It might be that I don't have the cloud set up on my computer since it's so old. But if the account info is all there then I should be able to still download from the store.

Having the same problem . . . however when I got the prompt that said it could not locate the song, instead of clicking "Locate", I clicked "Cancel" and the song immediately started playing. I thought this was incredibly strange but it happened with all of the songs that initially iTunes could not locate. It may have something to do with the fact that I have iCloud and the purchases songs were stored there. As counterintuitive as it sounds to click Cancel when iTunes could not locate it, it sure found it quickly!!! Another quirky iTunes "feature"!!!

***?? I just had this happen too. . . now we have to go thru these invisible steps just to get songs back????? I had just duplicated an album with its remaster and didn't want each song to play twice, now I have nothing. I hope apple gets it together on this one and returns to "Lets make this simple for our customers" methods of doing things. Sheesh

Can you please explain exactly what your issue is, and what you are unable to do? This thread is several years old, has gone through several iterations, and we are now in a situation where several configurations are possible, all of which will change the way things process. We cannot help you if you do not provide any specifics.

Cheers,

GB

This is the only thing that worked - logging out of iTunes and re-logging back in.

There are many related issues reported here. My issue:

Album shows in iPhone Music as "Purchased" and "Downloaded". Only problem is, Track 1 is not downloaded, and only shows up and is playable with an internet connection. It doesn't have the tiny iPhone icon that shows it's been downloaded. So if you go in Airplane Mode, Track 1 is missing from the album list.

Nothing in my case is "hidden" or in the cloud. The phone thinks its downloaded but it is not. I cannot re-download because it says all tracks are downloaded.

Logging out and back in made the track appear as locally downloaded.

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.